Public Clubs Not So Flashy but Accessible

You say you don’t have $100,000 to join a country club? That even $12,000 for one of the smaller clubs doesn’t fit your budget?

Well, if you just want a nice place to hold cousin Thelma’s wedding reception, or a clubby spot to take a client for lunch or cocktails, many of Orange County’s public golf courses can fill the bill.

The clubhouses aren’t the same magnificent monuments you’ll find at, say, Big Canyon, where members luxuriate in an 80,000-square-foot facility. But many of the county’s 26 public courses have dining rooms and banquet facilities that are rented for private after-hours gatherings.

The public course clubhouses are no longer just a locker room, pro shop and bar and grill for the golfers.

The two newest facilities, at Rancho Santa Margarita and Tustin Ranch, illustrate the trend.

The 13,500-square-foot Mediterranean-style clubhouse at Rancho Santa Margarita’s Tijeras Creek golf course opened earlier this year and already has become the in spot for business lunches in the community.

Don Moe, the Santa Margarita Co. vice president for marketing, said the community’s planners held long and often heated debates about the size and function of the clubhouse and considered designs that ranged from an 8,000-square-foot pro shop and snack stand to a 30,000-square-foot facility with formal dining rooms for the black-tie crowd.

In the end, he said, a golf-oriented facility was chosen “because we have other large community facilities, now and in future phases, that we didn’t want to take away from.”

At the Irvine Co.’s public Tustin Ranch golf course, which is 20 miles up the freeway from Rancho Santa Margarita, Manager Ken Ferrell says the modernistic clubhouse is booked solid for weddings, dances and other community social events.

The clubhouse, which opened late last year, features a large dining-room plan that can seat as many as 250 people or can be subdivided into several rooms for concurrent use by smaller groups.

“We found as soon as we opened that there is a huge need for this in the surrounding community,” Ferrell said.