PAR Excellence : Country clubs: Orange County developers bank on the growing demand for golf courses and social amenities as baby boomers hit their 40s and 50s.
If these buildings last as long as those of the ancient Incas and Mayans, future archeologists might someday be plumbing the remnants of a series of huge, handsomely appointed structures scattered throughout Orange County.
Mostly in the southern half of the county, these structures would be found situated like major temples in the midst of vast green parklands.
And, in fact, the country clubs of Orange County are shrines of a sort: cathedrals of consumption, temples of the builder’s art, monuments to the good life.
Nowhere is that more clear than in the private South County communities of Coto de Caza and Dove Canyon, where during the past month rival developers have unveiled huge, multimillion-dollar clubhouses that have become the focal points of their marketing plans.
Not long ago, it was the golf course that developers crowed about. Any large, master-planned community worth its full-page ads in glossy magazines had to have a designer course--preferably one designed by a former professional golfer or a big-name golf architect.
That has given rise in Orange County in recent years to half a dozen world-class courses. Several more are on the way, as the Irvine Co. develops its Newport Coast resort complex.
Golf courses help developers sell homes, both in gated communities with private courses such as Coto and Big Canyon or in open-access communities with public courses, such as Tustin Ranch and Rancho Santa Margarita.
Surprisingly, only about 25% of the people who live in a course-oriented community are golfers, developers say. The other buyers are attracted by the parklike setting or by other amenities in the community.
So the clubhouse--once primarily the refuge of golfers seeking that 19th-hole refresher--has taken on new importance as a social center for the entire community.
Developers are banking on the growing demand for golf courses and country club facilities as the nation’s baby boomers hit their 40s and 50s. At that age, the developers believe, many will find a game of golf or set of tennis, followed by cocktails or Perrier, more to their liking than a 40-mile bicycle ride and a slug of water from a plastic bottle. And at that age, a goodly portion of the baby boom generation has achieved the level of affluence necessary to support a country club lifestyle.
“In the communities we build, we try to provide a full-service facility for the whole community,” said Edward A. Merritt, manager of the Coto de Caza Golf & Racquet Club, which has just opened its clubhouse--a $14-million, 44,000-square-foot facility with tennis courts and swimming pools.
“There is obviously a tremendous emphasis on golf,” he said, “but there are large segments of the community that want social facilities and a large segment that wants tennis, so it makes us refocus our thinking to give strong emphasis to other facilities.”
Merritt, who has managed other golf communities for Arvida Co., Coto de Caza’s master developer, said about 70% of the homeowners buy memberships in the club, with about two-thirds of the members joining for “the social functions or the tennis or swimming” rather than the golf.
Dove Canyon developer Garth L. Chambers said his goal in designing the planned community “was to have the golf course and clubhouse anchor the entire community, much like country clubs are anchors to communities in the Midwest and East.”
People join fancy clubs for varied reasons, but the top motive may be that they “provide you with a haven,” said Louis M. Marlin, an Orange lawyer who recently joined the Dove Canyon Country Club.
For his $42,500 initiation fee, $375 monthly dues and $50 monthly minimum food and beverage purchases, Marlin gets to golf all he wants on Dove Canyon’s course. His wife, who is just learning the game, and their baby daughter are also included in the membership.
The Marlins do not live in Dove Canyon but would like to build a home there someday. But Marlin finds the club a place both to relax and do a little business. And it’s important to him that he finds a sense of neighborhood there.
“It goes back to when we were kids and all wanted to belong to a special club--a place where you feel special and not everybody can come into. That’s the basis you start with, and it works whether you are talking about a club like this or about you favorite neighborhood bar,” he said.
“It is an escape for us. My wife is not a golfer yet, but (some days) we drive out there after work and have drinks. It is a place to be together and to make friends. It really is like belonging to a neighborhood, only in our case we go to the neighborhood instead of living there.”
Coastal Southern California has a large population of successful professionals like Marlin. They are the people that developers of golf course communities are targeting by building luxurious clubhouse facilities, said Alfred Gobar, a Brea real estate economist.
Orange County, according to Gobar, could probably support nearly twice the number of golf courses it now has. Nationally, there is about one golf course per 38,000 people, he said, while Orange County right has about one course per 70,000 people.
Developers of private courses use the lavish clubhouse facilities that are part and parcel of a golf-oriented development “as flash to attract the caliber of people they think they need to buy their homes,” Gobar said, and as a tool to sell memberships to non-golfers and to people who do not live in the developer’s community.
“In the old days, golf communities were exclusive,” he said. “But now it is so expensive to develop one that they cannot limit membership to just the residents. They have to go to a broader market.”
The Coto de Caza clubhouse is less than 2 miles--or about nine holes of golf--from Dove Canyon’s just-opened $12-million, 47,000-square-foot clubhouse. The two facilities are strikingly similar, with lots of stone, glass and highly polished wood--redwood at Dove and Honduran mahogany at Coto--and built on hillsides to blend into the landscape.
While not technically competitors--a full membership at Dove costs twice the $21,000 initiation fee at Coto--the two country clubs are pulling from the same pool of potential members, who do not have to be residents to join. Their respective ads play up the joys of belonging to a club with facilities that include:
* At Dove, a Jack Nicklaus-designed course, private meeting rooms, a mixed grill and a formal dining room, men’s and women’s card rooms, lounges, spas and a European chef.
* At Coto, a Robert Trent Jones Jr.-designed course and a second course under construction, private meeting rooms, a mixed grill and a formal dining room, men’s and women’s card rooms, lounges, spas and workout rooms, nine lighted tennis courts, two pools and a European chef hired away from the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City.
A third South County country club, Marbella in San Juan Capistrano, is also recruiting members.
The club’s year-old, 50,000-square-foot Mediterranean-style clubhouse is typical of the new breed of facility, offering not only plush locker rooms but also a dining room and other facilities for non-golfers with at least $2,500 for a social membership without golfing privileges.
“We are designed for everyone,” membership director Susan Jacoby boasted.
“This is a place where people can socialize,” she said. “We have weddings here, and holiday festivities. . . . And instead of driving to one place for swimming and another for tennis and another for golf and somewhere else for dinner, a family can do all that right here. We are five clubs in one.”
Along with golf, tennis and swimming, the club has a half-size croquet lawn, full-service spas where members can get massages and facials, an aerobics center and a toddlers’ pool. The club also has a child-care center and an auto detailing service.
The initiation fees at the county’s private clubs range from a low of $12,000 at Alta Vista in Placentia to about $145,000 at Big Canyon Country Club in Newport Beach--which has a long membership waiting list.
In addition to the full membership, many clubs offer reduced prices for limited golfing memberships and have lower-cost social memberships, with initiation fees ranging from $100 to $20,000.
Monthly dues and food and beverage costs can boost the price of membership substantially. Full membership dues range from $220 to $340 at country clubs, while limited social membership dues go from $60 to $200.
Most clubs also require a $50 minimum monthly purchase of food and beverages.
Still, there are enough golfers and people hungry for a club environment that the costs do not hamper membership drives, club managers report.
Chambers, Dove Canyon’s developer, said a resident of Palos Verdes recently bought a membership at Dove Canyon and then “drove up the hill and bought a model home from one of our builders so he’d have a place to stay when he came down here to play.”
At Marbella Golf and Country Club, fewer than 40 of the 700 full memberships are left to sell, just three years after the club opened.
The club, which sells equity memberships--unlike Coto de Caza and Dove Canyon--began marketing full memberships at $50,000 and now sells them for $85,000, said Jacoby, the membership director. That represents a 70% gain in the value of the membership.
While many of the county’s clubs sell only non-equity memberships--in which members have no ownership stake in the facility--the big new clubs such as Coto de Caza and Dove Canyon are expected to convert to equity once the surrounding community is completed.
Merritt, the Coto de Caza manager, said that Arvida typically converts memberships to equity shares in the clubs at its developments and that once a club’s roster is filled, memberships usually shoot up in value.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if memberships here are selling for $100,000 by the end of the decade,” said new Dove Canyon member Elliott Kushell, a management consultant and professor at the Cal State Fullerton School of Business.
The cost of a country club membership, he said, “is no different for me than buying a boat would be for an avid boater.”
Coto de Caza Golf & Racquet Club * Size: 44,000 square feet * Cost: $14 million * Design: Modeled on the turn-of-the-century Craftsman designs of Pasadena’s Greene and Greene.
Dove Canyon Country Club * Size: 47,000 square feet * Cost: $12 million * Design: After the styles of Frank Lloyd Wright and Cliff May, the creator of the California ranch look.
Fees at O.C.’s Private Country Clubs Orange County is fast becoming a key member of the Southland country club set, with 15 private clubs available for those with the social drive--and cash--necessary to join up. The following chart shows the current cost of memberships:
Country Club Golf Monthly Social City Initiation Dues Initiation Alta Vista $12,000 NE $240 none Placentia Big Canyon 145,000 E 340 20,000 NE Newport Beach Coto de Caza 21,000*NE 265 1,000 NE 26,000**NE 265 1,500 NE Dove Canyon 42,500 NE 375 2,500 NE El Niguel 65,000 E 255 300/year Laguna Niguel Los Coyotes 31,000 NE 260 100 NE Buena Park Marbella 85,000 E 295 2,500 E San Juan Capistrano Mesa Verde negotiable 293 500 NE Costa Mesa (equity) Mission Viejo 40,000 E 265 300 NE Newport Beach 23,000 NE 275 500 NE Old Ranch 20,000 NE 290 125 Seal Beach Pacific Golf Club 17,000 NE 240 2,000 NE San Clemente Santa Ana 125,000 E 285 3,500 NE Seacliff 25,000 NE 270 150 Huntington Beach home purchase is required Yorba Linda 40,000 NE 220 500
Country Club Monthly City Dues Alta Vista none Placentia Big Canyon 200 Newport Beach Coto de Caza 60 60 Dove Canyon 50 El Niguel 65 Laguna Niguel Los Coyotes 30 Buena Park Marbella 100 San Juan Capistrano Mesa Verde 110 Costa Mesa Mission Viejo 40 Newport Beach 40 Old Ranch 80 Seal Beach Pacific Golf Club none San Clemente Santa Ana 135 Seacliff 45 Huntington Beach Yorba Linda 70
E Equity membership. The members own the club and their individual membership; they are free to sell their memberships if they wish. The membership fees shown for equity clubs are generally an average, because members sell their memberships at whatever the market will bear. NE Non-equity membership. The club is not owned by members, but by a corporation or other interest. Members may resign but cannot sell their memberships. Memberships are purchased through the club if they are available. * Fee for residents. ** Fee for non-residents. Source: Individual clubs listed Researched by: DALLAS M. JACKSON / Los Angeles Times
