Ideas for Effectively addressing design and renovation

by C&RB Staff (editor@clubandresortbusiness.com)
April 2007
 

Keeping Things Cool: Scottsdale, Ariz., residents must learn to live with the ongoing potential for wildland fires, due to the extremely dry conditions common to the arid Southwest. To help prevent fires, The Board and Design Review Committee of the Desert Highlands club helped disseminate fire-prevention information and landscaping guidelines from the Scottsdale Fire Department to all members in its residential community, as well as to all landscape contractors working in the development.

“The brush clean-out not only helped to create a defensible space around homes and reduce the community’s potential fire dangers, it also improved visibility on our roads for drivers and walkers, and provided a more pleasing aesthetic,” says General Manager and Vice President Terra Waldron.

Desert Highlands also scores big points toward fire safety and good community relations with its “Guns &?Hoses” Golf Tournament, which invites members of the Scottsdale police and fire departments to the club for a complimentary day of golf and food.

The annual event “fosters positive working relationships between our community and the local departments,” Waldron reports. “The police officers and firefighters also get to know the Desert Highlands community and staff.

“We can also use this as a positive marketing tool,” she adds. “The members appreciate that we can do something to help the local fire and police, and understand that the relationships we are building can benefit Desert Highlands in fostering good will and a knowledge of our facilities, for when they are called here in the event of an emergency.”

Branching Out: Trees are among the oldest assets and most valued resources of many clubs—and perhaps nowhere more than at the Chevy Chase (Md.) Club, where the grounds include a “Taft Elm” planted by President William Howard Taft, and a black gum thought to date back to George Washington’s time.

To help not only protect and continue to propagate its living legacy, the club joined with the Champion Tree project, an international organization. Club staff and representatives of Champion worked together to take over 1000 cuttings of existing trees on the club property. The cuttings will be nurtured for two years under Champion’s supervision and then planted, both in groves on the club property and in selected spots in the surrounding community.