Northern Bear golf course will open this year despite fire that destroyed clubhouse

Blair McDowell thought maybe the call he got from the Strathcona County fire department in the middle of the night was a false alarm.

It wasn't.

The clubhouse at the Northern Bear golf course burned down in the wee hours on Saturday.

"I couldn't believe it," McDowell, the Northern Bear's director of golf, told CTV News Edmonton on Tuesday, adding the fire is still under investigation and there's no dollar value yet to the damage at the course located about 20 kilometres southeast of the Edmonton city limit.

Fire crews answered a 3 a.m. alarm at Northern Bear, which was designed by golf legend Jack Nicklaus and is slated to host the PGA Tours Americas' ATB Classic in late June. The fire destroyed the building quickly, the fire department said on Saturday.

Despite the fire that destroyed the "extravagant" building, McDowell says the course will open for 2024, probably using temporary facilities such as trailers while ownership mulls plans for rebuilding the clubhouse.

It could be at least a year or two before a replacement is built, he said.

"That's our hope," McDowell said. "We've talked with a couple of other courses that (a fire has) unfortunately happened to, where they've had to rebuild, and that seems like a (common) timeline."

With files from CTV News Edmonton's David Ewasuk