Inside a sprawling former industrial building just a chip shot from the Lake Washington Ship Canal, a Seattle tech veteran and his longtime friend are building the kind of golf and social sanctuary that they feel modern Seattle is missing.
Founded by tech veteran Shankar Sundaram, a former Boeing engineer and enterprise sales leader, alongside co-founder Ryan Schaffer, a University of Washington grad who also worked at Boeing, East West Club aims to reimagine the traditional country club.
Inspired by the multi-generational Indian household Sundaram grew up in as well as the close-knit neighborhood clubs of his East Coast youth, the name East West is a nod to bridging those traditional cultural values of family, community, and hospitality with a modern Pacific Northwest lifestyle.
The ultimate goal is to create a “third place” centered around genuine, family-friendly connection rather than corporate networking or status.
“A lot of the clubs in Seattle are a little bit older and maybe just built for a different time, for a different demographic, and we’ve changed,” Sundaram told GeekWire during a tour of the space this week at 10 Dravus St. in the Queen Anne neighborhood. “We don’t have six hours to go spend at a country club. We also don’t have $100,000 to go join.”
The vision for East West Club is starting to take shape across multiple indoor and outdoor spaces in what used to be a metal fabrication studio run by the late artist David Gulassa.
Spread across nearly 8,000 square feet between two buildings, the space retains its industrial roots with exposed timber beams, rich wood accents, and high concrete walls. Heavy construction on the primary building hasn’t started yet as the team awaits final permits from the city, but once built out, the footprint will feature a “golf lab” with wide indoor simulator bays and 500 square feet of digital putting space, alongside a private 19-foot immersive simulator bay.
The broader plan includes a quiet library lounge, a pour-your-own-beer wall, a café area, and a back-alley wellness nook featuring dry saunas and red-light therapy.
Sundaram, who is married to Armoire founder and CEO Ambika Singh, wants the club to serve as a convenient, family-friendly extension of members’ homes — a place where people can drop in for an hour rather than committing an entire day.
“We want you to bring as many people as you want,” Sundaram said. “We want you to host meetings here. We want you to actually come here and do your work here.”
East West Club will also function as an events space, where members can come together for curated gatherings, tastings, music, workshops, speaker events and more.
Rather than building out a full commercial restaurant, the club plans to rely heavily on local neighborhood partnerships. Sundaram is leaning on friends for advice on the café and coffee setup and talking to neighborhood spots about possible daily fare, alongside monthly curated dinners hosted by guest chefs.
“A big part of the vision for East West is to use the club as a platform to bring together some of the best of Seattle — partnering with great local restaurants, chefs, wineries, breweries, golf and fitness professionals, and other people doing interesting things around the city,” Sundaram said. “We want the experience to constantly evolve and give members new reasons to come together.”
To fund the buildout, Sundaram and Schaffer are opting for a community-driven bootstrap model rather than taking on heavy debt or institutional equity. They are capping their initial “founder” cohort at 100 members, asking early adopters to buy in upfront.
For the first tier of 25 founding members, a $25,000 buy-in covers four years of all-inclusive family membership, along with a $450 quarterly food and beverage credit. The early bet appears to be paying off: after launching a simple waitlist on LinkedIn three months ago that drew 120 sign-ups, Sundaram invited an initial batch of 14 people to tour the unfinished space three weeks ago — and 13 of them committed on the spot.
“These early folks are taking the biggest risk,” Sundaram said. “Prepaying for something is not very common… but we’re funding this through getting 75 to 100 founders. The total club capacity is 250 people, so the idea is, if every founder goes and gets two people, that’s the club.”
Subsequent founder tiers will gradually increase in price, and once the club opens its doors — targeted for March 2027 — the model will shift to standard initiation fees and monthly dues.
Members won’t have to wait until 2027 to start gathering, either. The team plans to open a temporary “Founders Clubhouse” to early members by the end of September, kicking off a full calendar of social programming, tastings, and events throughout October — including an Oct. 11 open house — while construction proceeds on the other spaces.
If the Queen Anne location reaches its 250-member capacity, Sundaram and Schaffer already have eyes on scaling the concept, perhaps with an Eastside location.
While indoor simulator technology is a core anchor of the space, Sundaram noted that golf is not the sole prerequisite for joining. Roughly half of the initial 14 founding members who signed up do not even play golf, seeing value instead in having a neighborhood spot to host friends, throw parties, or watch sports.
For those who do want to hit the virtual links, the club plans to partner with local instructors for lessons and youth programs, but the broader design caters as much to casual socializing as it does to perfecting a swing.
When asked about competition, Sundaram points out that East West Club isn’t trying to compete with commercial entertainment chains like Five Iron Golf or high-end, pure-play golf training centers like Evergreen Golf Club.
“If you just want to go hit up a sim and go have a burger and fries, there’s lots of spaces for that,” Sundaram said. “In the city, there’s nothing that’s like this. Golf is the glue, but nobody else is really bringing in this modern aesthetic.”
Keep scrolling for more artist renderings of the planned spaces at East West Club:
