From the TMCC General Manager in the January 2015 Meadoword:
There is always risk in change
Doing nothing, however, does not stop change; it will happen regardless of what we do. The Meadows, The Meadows Country Club, the residents, and the members will continue to age, and that will bring about its own change.
TMCC has had all the time in the world to make their private club model work and hasn’t been successful. MCA Homeowners perpetually subsidizing a private club is not an acceptable solution. It isn’t going to get better without taking action. Something needs to change.
No one has all the answers and a lot of work would need to be done to figure out the best new approach in our situation. But here is why we think semi-private is worth a long, hard, thorough look. There is no better time to start looking for a better way forward than right now.
Why do we think the semi-private model holds the most promise?
- We would continue to have memberships which would provide priority access to “everything”. This minimizes the change for current TMCC members and minimize the risk they would leave.
- Having memberships is beneficial as it provides a stable base of revenue for the course, and creates a feeling of community at the facility.
- It would allow us to utilize all the tee times on the Meadows/Members course that are currently unused and wasted. Same for dining facilities, fitness facilities, and potentially tennis.
- It would move us past MCA Homeowners subsidizing a private club.
University Park and Rosedale are two examples of clubs made the transition to semi-private long ago.
How would things change for TMCC members?
LOTS of guesswork and assumptions ahead, but here goes:
- Most characteristics of existing golf membership categories could likely be maintained. We could continue to offer different levels of membership with different costs and benefits, just like the current Platinum, Gold, Silver, Young Professional golf memberships.
- Exclusivity would be given up. This is partly a club “feel” but it also means giving up some opportunity for spontaneous games if the course is busier with new fee-paying golfers. They’d also see a lot more different faces at the facilities.
- But “priority” would be maintained for members (first access to tee times, events, etc)
- Seems reasonable that cost of most membership categories may go down as they are no longer paying for a private club, although that may not be true for all situations.
- Some categories like “Social” and “Sport” may no longer exist as all persons would have that sort of access to the facilities. So those members would get the same access at no cost.
Overall, it would look and feel mostly the same, other than the facilities being busier generating more revenue.
How would it be managed?
Recognizing its role as the owner of the recreational and dining assets, MCA would oversee the operations. There would likely need to be some new legal entity to hold the assets.
Currently TMCC outsources the management of the facility to ICON. Obviously, MCA could hire ICON and all the current staff to continue to manage the facilities. ICON’s experience could be a great resource for understanding and evaluating alternatives but this may not be possible while they are under contract with TMCC. If TMCC wanted to work towards a solution and allowed ICON to participate, that would be ideal.
TMCC also has a large structure of committees that provide governance and do legwork. This sort of structure would continue to be useful and productive, but under the MCA Board (since MCA Homeowners own the assets). It would be a challenging transition, but if most TMCC members remained they would have a lot of incentive to continue to have influence over the direction of the facilities.
Demand for golf has been very high in the last few years. NOW is the time to capture that demand.
There will be lots of challenges and lots of things to figure out. But it is worth the effort to find a long-term solution that is better for MCA Homeowners and improve their access to the assets they own.
LETS MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN BEFORE CHANGE HAPPENS TO US
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