New restaurant, bar and golf course The Front 9 opens in Kansas

KANSAS — The Front 9, a new restaurant, bar and event center located at 6730 N. TR 69, Kansas, opened its doors last week and began offering American food, drinks and a gathering space in the place where Nature Trails Golf Course used to be. Co-owners Tracie Eakin and Christine Spencer, sisters from the nearby area who attended Bettsville schools as kids, have been applying a fresh coat of paint to the original restaurant and course since November 2018. "We bought the place at an auction, mainly because we didn't want to see it go away," Eakin said. "We wanted to try to keep it within our community for another 50 years." Eakin said they began planning the day they bought the property and have worked on upgrading and remodeling the place every day since. "We added a patio, replaced the entire roof, repaved the parking lot and more. We've really made a lot of updates and modernized everything," she said. Eakin said The Front 9 will be offering American food much in the style that Nature Trails used to serve, but with a "nice spin." "We're making really great flatbread entrees, for one thing, and we're lucky that we have a really good cook," she said. The shelter house behind the restaurant has also been updated and Eakin said they hoped to eventually have concerts and other outdoor events there, as well as rent the back space out to groups once they have time to plan such things. "We just hope to make this place a really nice gathering spot for people to come to and relax and have a good time," Spencer said of the restaurant and bar. The biggest difference, perhaps, between the old business and the new is, as the name suggests, The Front 9's golf course will feature nine holes rather than 18. The 75-acre course is currently still closed due to more maintenance needed on the greens in particular, but The Front 9 has begun selling memberships for next year and Eakin and Spencer expect to open the course sometime this fall. "I want to get pictures of the shape the course was in when we got it compared to where it is now," Eakin said. "It's really come a long way since then – the green on hole 5 was completely dead, for example. "We only have two outside guys right now doing all this work, and they've really done a lot already," she said. "There's just a little more to do with the greens before the course is ready," she said. Eakin stressed that The Front 9 is a community-oriented, family business to its core. "I live right around the corner from the place, and most of my family is here: my sister co-owns the place with me, my mom and niece help out, my husband works during the day, Christine's wife works here when she can and my 21 year-old son will come home on the weekends to help tend bar. "We're definitely dedicated to making The Front 9 a place that's going to be here in the long run, and we always want people to have a good time here," Eakin said. And Eakin said the community has been waiting ever since they started remodeling for their new business to open. "People have stopped by every day the last six months or so to ask us when we're opening. That has given us a lot of energy along the way to make this place something our community can be proud of," she said. For more information about memberships or the restaurant and event space, The Front 9's website can be visited at thefront9.com.