North Hills Club Gets Back in the Game

Golf has never been an option for this “land-locked” property—but failure almost was, until members and staff committed to making the most of the space they had.

by Joe Barks (editor@clubandresortbusiness.com)
December 2007
 

Summing It Up • Revivals can be prompted just by rethinking original visions and strategies, to adapt to changing times. • Properties that are limited by space, or are located in areas where some services are fully provided, can still find competitive niches. • Even F&Bsettings that are primarily lunch- driven can find profitable opportunities in dinner, takeout and banquet service.

Like many clubs, North Hills Club in Raleigh, N.C., has an “About Us” page on its Web site that provides the history of the property. And, as many of these pages do, the description of North Hills’ background talks about the original “vision” that led to the creation of the club.

In this case, the vision came in the late 1950s from a developer, Ed Richards, who wanted to “create a community-oriented swim and social club” for the neighborhood that he planned to develop around Raleigh’s first indoor shopping mall, which Richards was also building in the city’s North Hills section.

Richards proved to have perfect vision about how malls, and surrounding communities, would take off during the Baby Boom. The North Hills Club was incorporated and opened in 1961 with what its site now describes as a “quaint clubhouse,” three hard tennis courts, and one pool. After his mall and other developments in the North Hills section were completed, Richards turned the club over to the membership, and moved on to other projects.

Clear vision in one era, however, often needs to be rechecked in others. As the new millennium began, the operation of North Hills Club was proving to be as dated as “Happy Days” reruns.

“The original clubhouse was only 12,000 square feet, and had fallen into disrepair over the years,” reports C. W. Cook, the club’s current General Manager, in describing conditions as the year 2000 dawned. “The kitchen was only 225 square feet and barely capable of anything more than a traditional snack bar offering. No other modern amenities were present; [North Hills] was little more than a neighborhood swim club with a reputation for a strong tennis program.”

Beyond the Limitations
Because Richards’ original vision didn’t include a golf course, North Hills, described as “land-locked” by Cook, would have to continue to limit itself to being an athletic and social club as it rethought its strategies. But that didn’t mean it would have to limit amenities and services.

“A very forward-thinking Board of Directors came up with a two-phase capital improvement plan that would totally renovate our club and property in a very aggressive, five-year timeframe,” Cook reports. “As you can imagine, this vision wasn’t held by all members, and we had 110 members resign because of the assessments related to the improvements.

“Happy Days” are here again for the North Hills staff, after a five-year flurry of activity made up for 40 years of lost time.

General Manager C. W. Cook arrived during Phase Two to help finish the job on time—even with a new arrival at home.

“But the [Board members] who had committed to the plan held firm,” adds Cook, who was brought in as GM just before the second phase of the project began. “In fact, they had actually budgeted to lose 140 members. We all resolved to just tighten our belts and push forward with the second, and largest, phase—demolishing the existing facilities and rebuilding them.

“It was a most difficult time,” says Cook, who also had the “minor distraction” of the arrival of his first child during the last hectic weeks of construction. “But fast-forward to March of 2007, when we opened our new facility to a full membership cap of 700 families—and a waiting list to join that has grown [by mid-November] to 100.

“This is quite a feat, considering that we replaced the members who left with new ones paying higher entry fees and dues—and many didn’t even have a clubhouse to use for an entire year,” he adds. “But with a $10,000 initiation fee now—compared to $500 only 10 years ago—we have become one of the most desirable memberships in our region. A real buzz was created regionally about what we were doing, and it created a massive snowball effect—right after we opened the new clubhouse in March, we were averaging two to three new applications a week. We turned this into ‘the place to be’—people now tell us they need to get into North Hills.”

Transformed Inside and Out
North Hills’ new 30,000-sq. ft. clubhouse includes a 3,000-sq. ft. fitness center, aerobics room, steam rooms in both the men’s and women’s locker rooms, and a massage therapy room. The new building also includes a child care activity room, executive meeting room, and full-service tennis pro shop and tournament room.

F&B is covered through a 66-seat casual dining restaurant, 55-seat adult lounge, kid’s snack bar, 200-seat ballroom, and an outdoor lounge. Elsewhere on the grounds, the five-year plan also built or renovated 18 tennis courts, three swimming pools, a pool house, an outdoor pavilion for events, and a children’s playground area.

“Obviously we’re a little biased, but we feel we’ve gone well beyond that ‘neighborhood swim and tennis club’ profile to now have one of the finer athletic/racquet clubs in the country,” says Cook. “And the way in which it was done was almost a ‘field of dreams’ reality. I’ve certainly talked with enough of my fellow GMs to know how these things often get bogged down or fall apart altogether, even when the vision is there, because no one pulls the triggers to make sure the plan is carried out.

“And if you would have told me all of this could be pulled off in a five-year timeframe, I would have said no way,” Cook admits. “But the Board, and the members, were unwavering in their determination to make it happen. Even when we got into the peak pool season and had to work out of two construction trailers, members were so excited about the new building, we didn’t skip a beat.”

A new event pavilion and children’s playground area have helped to connect indoor and outdoor activities.

Phenomenal Feasts
Beyond the upgrading of its core athletic offerings, Cook notes that the transformation of North Hills as a social and dining venue has been nothing short of “phenomenal.”

“The changes in F&B have been unreal—it’s really a night-and-day difference,” he says. “Where we maybe did 10 to 15 lunch covers before, now we do 70 a day. And while we’re primarily a lunch-driven venue, we are now having dinner on Thursdays and Fridays, with as many as 85 covers a night.”

On the banquet side, the degree of revival has been even more dramatic. “Prior to the renovation, the most we ever did, event-wise, was $60,000 a year,” says Cook.

“Even with just opening in March, we’ll do $400,000 in banquets alone this year. For an 18-day timeframe that’s coming up, we have 31 events on the books.”

Even with a banquet-room capacity that’s smaller than several nearby country clubs, Cook feels North Hills is filling a needed niche. “We purposely stayed on the smaller side,” he says. “We can handle up to 400 for cocktail events, but we’ve found there’s quite a healthy demand in the 200-seat event range; many people want the more intimate setting that we offer.”

Internally, regular events for members are also taking off—even when they’re not held on site. North Hills’ phonelines were “burning up” before Thanksgiving this year, Cook says, as members called to take advantage of a turkey-to-go special (and only to go—the dining room was closed).

North Hills will always be a lunch-driven venue, but it has found healthy demand for dinner, too, on selected nights.

“We probably prepared 50 to 60 [Thanksgiving meals],” Cook predicted before the holiday. “It’s an entire spread, priced at $85—and our staff was out of here by noon [on Thanksgiving day.]”

As the rest of the holiday season approached, he was also preparing to handle unprecedented numbers for the club’s annual Santa Brunch—to the point where he fully expected to give St. Nick some overtime. “For the first time, our Christmas events are now going to be on par with Mother’s Day and Easter,” Cook says. “We already have a long enough waiting list that it looks like I’ll have to send Santa back out a third time.”

All of this reflects not just the new influx of membership, Cook feels, but response to the creation of an “entirely new club experience.”

“We think there’s a real place for a heavily family-oriented club that’s in the niche between the high-end golf and country clubs, and the city clubs,” he says. “The people who we see now inquiring about membership are in their late 30s and early 40s, and they’re making it clear that they feel this is the place they will want their families to be for the next 20 years.

The “neighborhood swim club” has clearly moved up in the club world.

“Even without golf, time is an important consideration for them, and they want to be able to find as many amenities as possible in one place—and not just athletic, but also dining and social. The Board here saw that we could either respond to that need and reinvent ourselves, or die a slow death. Based on the response we’ve seen almost as soon as we started to make changes, I don’t think there’s any question that we took the right path.” C&RB