The Idaho Club

The Idaho Club is a 900+-acre luxury residential and golf community a few miles from Sandpoint, on the shores of Lake Pend Oreille in Bonner County -- home to the only Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course in Idaho. The property has a rockier history than its current polish suggests: the golf course originally opened in 1986 as the public Hidden Lakes Golf Course (Jim Krause design), and was acquired and redeveloped starting in 2006 by Pend Oreille Bonner Development (Charles W. Reeves, Chip Bowlby and Thomas J. Merschel) as The Idaho Club, with a Jack Nicklaus redesign reopening in October 2008 -- just as the 2008-09 financial crisis hit. The original clubhouse burned down that same year, and the development's original ownership group ran into serious financial difficulty during the downturn. The property was later taken over by Valiant Idaho LLC, which has led its recovery and current operation.

The community today spans 440 residential lots -- from smaller golf-course-adjacent lodge homes to larger custom homesites on Moose Mountain, plus estate parcels -- with homesite pricing reported to range from roughly $325,000 for forest lots up to $1,275,000 for panoramic lake-and-mountain-view sites. The Idaho Club's own materials state plainly that recreational amenities are not included with a homesite purchase and require separate club membership. In practice, this plays out in two tiers: buyers typically buy into a Lake Club membership at the time of a property purchase (giving access to the clubhouse, restaurant, pickleball courts, and the planned marina on Lake Pend Oreille), while golf membership itself is a genuinely separate, optional add-on -- the club's own description states residents may choose a social membership, a golf membership, or neither. Exact current pricing for either membership tier is not published and was not found this session; the Pro Shop provides pricing and a formal offering circular directly to prospective buyers.