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Clubhouses are not only expensive to simply maintain but they must periodically be renovated. Failure to renovate physical assets will result in worn, outof-date facilities, often leading to a reduction in members and possibly the demise of the organization.
CMAA published Club Renovations: How to Have a Successful Outcome! in 1997. It includes sample contracts, suggestions for the general manager for surviving a renovation, and ways to gain membership approval. In addition, a chapter in the book includes sample letters regarding the financing of club renovations, and how a couple of clubs handled their respective projects. Anecdotal evidence, however, does not represent how club renovations in the United States are financed, and many finance questions were not addressed.
Club Management has featured many clubhouse renovations over the past decade. The focus has generally been on (1) restoring an aging club to its original beauty, (2) how the renovation has increased the club's membership, and (3) the increased efficiency accomplished by renovation. There have been virtually no articles published in Club Management in the recent past on how clubs have financed clubhouse renovations.
Therefore, research was undertaken to answer a number of questions regarding the renovation of clubhouses as follows:
* What part of the clubhouse was renovated?
* What was the cost of clubhouse renovations?
* How were the renovations financed?
The answers to these questions for current renovations and limited comparisons to past renovations were the topic of a survey directed to club executives.
The Sample
A mail questionnaire was sent to 500 members of the Hospitality Financial & Technology Professionals (HFTP) associated with the club industry. Usable responses were received from 123 executives resulting in a response rate of nearly 25 percent. The titles of the vast majority of respondents (84 percent) were controllers while 7 percent identified themselves as general managers. The remaining 9 percent of the respondents held other positions in their clubs such as assistant controllers. The vast majority of respondents (82 percent) were associated with country clubs, while 7 percent identified with city clubs and 11 percent with other clubs such as yacht and athletic clubs. The membership and annual revenues of clubs of respondents varied as shown in Table 1 from less than 250 members to over 2000...