Blackberry Ridge honored as Business of the Year

by Dennis Dalman

editor@thenewsleaders.com

What began as farm property and turned into one of the finest, most beautiful golf courses in the region was honored as Business of the Year by the Sartell Chamber of Commerce at it annual awards ceremony at Blackberry Ridge on Nov. 17.

(For other winners, see related stories.)

For many decades, Donnie and Veryl Fenlason farmed on land they grew up on northwest of Sartell when Sartell’s population was in the mere hundreds. As the men aged, work on the dairy farm became too difficult for them. They and their wives, Linda and Kittie, began to daydream about the possibility of maybe doing something else with their land and retiring.

“The original idea was that we were going to have a managed business (on that land) and then we’d go to Florida, and they’d just send the checks,” Kittie said years later, laughing at the memory.

A neighbor made the crucial suggestion to the Fenlasons: Why not develop the land into a classy golf course?

The Fenlasons hired Joel Goldstrand, a golf course designer, and after mammoth amounts of planning, designing, excavation work, not to mention expense, the 18-hole golf course and event center opened in 2001.

The place flourished. However, a terrible shock happened in 2009 when Donnie died of cancer, and only 10 months later Veryl succumbed to non-Hodgkins disease. Linda and Kittie suddenly found themselves as grieving widows, not knowing how to carry on or what would become of the golf course they’d all worked so hard to ensure its success.

However, demonstrating the true grit and hard-work ethic their husbands had all their lives, the two gritted their teeth, rolled up their sleeves, sought expertise and training, and kept the business going. It wasn’t easy, but the two sisters-in-law succeeded. Linda became the business’s chief executive officer, Kittie its chief financial officer.

Since its founding, Blackberry Ridge Golf Course and Event Center has been a magnet not just for golfers but for lovers eager to be married in a landscape of beauty and in a reception banquet hall that seats up to 300. Blackberry Ridge has received scores of rhapsodic testimonials from married couples who still wax nostalgic about their happy wedding day at Blackberry.

The business is also the venue for reunions, parties, local business banquets, corporate events and many fundraisers. The club-house restaurant, dubbed Grill 19, is well known for its topnotch foods and beverages.

A big reason for Blackberry Ridge’s honor as Business of the Year is because since its beginning, it has donated time, money and energy to so many individuals and organizations, including the Sartell-St. Stephen Education Foundation, the Salvation Army’s Philanthrofeed program, the Sartell Chamber of Commerce and United Way of Central Minnesota. Each year, the business donates about 250 rounds of golf to area non-profit organizations so they can do their fundraisers via golf games at the course.

Those who know and have loved Blackberry Ridge from its beginnings are very aware the homes of Donnie and Veryl Fenlason are still there, sitting just off of golf hole No. 11, next to the red-tiled barn now used as a maintenance building. That sense of tradition and the changes from Fenlason farmland to successful golf course still happily haunts Blackberry Ridge and Event Center.