Winchester Country Club has retained Lincoln, Neb.-based Landscapes Management Company, a division of Landscapes Unlimited, to manage the 94-year-old member-owned property on a third-party, contract basis. Landscapes Management Co., which now provides management services to more than 40 golf facilities on a similar basis nationwide, officially took the helm at Winchester CC on Dec. 1, 2016.
"This had been in the works for several months. We did our due diligence," said Linda Miles, chairman of the Board of Directors at Winchester CC. "We realized the club needed the best operational help we could find and Landscapes Management Company represents exactly that. We called all their references and let me tell you, when you talk to so many board members from current and former clients of theirs, you hear the same thing: These guys know what they're doing. Just get out of their way and let them do their thing."
Winchester CC is located on 250 rolling, wooded acres in populous Northern Virginia, some 90 minutes northwest of Washington, D.C. The golf course was originally designed by Fred Findlay, with additions and updates through the years from Ed Ault, Dan Maples and Hurdzan/Fry. A new pool complex and six tennis courts (2 outdoor clay and 4 indoor Har-Tru) flank an attractive clubhouse equipped with one of the region's most desirable banquet spaces.
"Winchester Country Club is a proud and historic club with great facilities and a committed membership that had nevertheless run slightly afoul of golf's unforgiving post-Recession economy," said Tom Everett, president of Landscapes Management Company. "It's a financial situation we see quite a bit -- one that we've successfully tackled and reversed at dozens of other clubs across the country. We applaud the Board at Winchester for acting quickly and decisively to professionalize operations and secure its financial stability going forward."
Winchester CC is one of six golf facilities to secure management services from Landscapes Management Company in the last 12 months. Others include:
• Butler's Golf Course, a daily fee operation outside Pittsburgh, Pa.;
• Tippecanoe Lake Country Club, a private, member-owned club in Northern Indiana;
• The Mountain Shadows Resort in Paradise Valley, Ariz.;
• Avoca Golf & Country Club, a city-owned facility in Iowa; and
• Lanhai International Golf Club, a 36-hole private club in Shanghai, China, one of a growing number of projects Landscapes Management Company operates outside North America.
Landscapes Management Company provides operations and management services to more than 40 different golf courses, private clubs and resorts nationwide, as well as internationally. The firm is perhaps best known by its parent company, Landscapes Unlimited, which just celebrated its 40th anniversary in the golf course construction and development business. But Landscapes Management Company has in fact been managing golf properties since 1988.
Everett said that Winchester CC had done pretty much everything right over the last five years, keeping its debt load insignificant and reinvesting in the clubhouse, pool complex and golf course -- to remain competitive in an over-supplied market.
"But today, that sort of investment puts so much pressure on operations," Everett explained. "Boards can run the club just fine, but can they run it efficiently -- in a profitable way? That's the key question today, and I'm not sure volunteer boards really know where those inefficiencies are. What a firm like Landscapes Management Company brings to the table are proven operation strategies in areas like food & beverage, member acquisition/retention, course maintenance, guest- and event-growth strategies, and labor management.
"The club brought us in to leverage these skills and fine-tune their operation going forward, and that's exactly what we're going to do."
Miles, a former marketing executive at both Bausch & Lomb and General Electric, is plenty familiar with business systems and efficiencies.
"But I don't know how to market a golf course!" she said. "Contact lenses and plastics? Sure. But this is a different animal. Let me give you an example: Our golf carts. We lease them and we had an older fleet. We waited until Landscapes arrived to address the situation and I'm glad we did. By using their national contract with the vendors, we've lowered what we pay in lease fees and we got a brand new fleet in the process.
"That's the sort of efficiency I'm talking about. We couldn't do that on our own."
"This had been in the works for several months. We did our due diligence," said Linda Miles, chairman of the Board of Directors at Winchester CC. "We realized the club needed the best operational help we could find and Landscapes Management Company represents exactly that. We called all their references and let me tell you, when you talk to so many board members from current and former clients of theirs, you hear the same thing: These guys know what they're doing. Just get out of their way and let them do their thing."
Winchester CC is located on 250 rolling, wooded acres in populous Northern Virginia, some 90 minutes northwest of Washington, D.C. The golf course was originally designed by Fred Findlay, with additions and updates through the years from Ed Ault, Dan Maples and Hurdzan/Fry. A new pool complex and six tennis courts (2 outdoor clay and 4 indoor Har-Tru) flank an attractive clubhouse equipped with one of the region's most desirable banquet spaces.
"Winchester Country Club is a proud and historic club with great facilities and a committed membership that had nevertheless run slightly afoul of golf's unforgiving post-Recession economy," said Tom Everett, president of Landscapes Management Company. "It's a financial situation we see quite a bit -- one that we've successfully tackled and reversed at dozens of other clubs across the country. We applaud the Board at Winchester for acting quickly and decisively to professionalize operations and secure its financial stability going forward."
Winchester CC is one of six golf facilities to secure management services from Landscapes Management Company in the last 12 months. Others include:
• Butler's Golf Course, a daily fee operation outside Pittsburgh, Pa.;
• Tippecanoe Lake Country Club, a private, member-owned club in Northern Indiana;
• The Mountain Shadows Resort in Paradise Valley, Ariz.;
• Avoca Golf & Country Club, a city-owned facility in Iowa; and
• Lanhai International Golf Club, a 36-hole private club in Shanghai, China, one of a growing number of projects Landscapes Management Company operates outside North America.
Landscapes Management Company provides operations and management services to more than 40 different golf courses, private clubs and resorts nationwide, as well as internationally. The firm is perhaps best known by its parent company, Landscapes Unlimited, which just celebrated its 40th anniversary in the golf course construction and development business. But Landscapes Management Company has in fact been managing golf properties since 1988.
Everett said that Winchester CC had done pretty much everything right over the last five years, keeping its debt load insignificant and reinvesting in the clubhouse, pool complex and golf course -- to remain competitive in an over-supplied market.
"But today, that sort of investment puts so much pressure on operations," Everett explained. "Boards can run the club just fine, but can they run it efficiently -- in a profitable way? That's the key question today, and I'm not sure volunteer boards really know where those inefficiencies are. What a firm like Landscapes Management Company brings to the table are proven operation strategies in areas like food & beverage, member acquisition/retention, course maintenance, guest- and event-growth strategies, and labor management.
"The club brought us in to leverage these skills and fine-tune their operation going forward, and that's exactly what we're going to do."
Miles, a former marketing executive at both Bausch & Lomb and General Electric, is plenty familiar with business systems and efficiencies.
"But I don't know how to market a golf course!" she said. "Contact lenses and plastics? Sure. But this is a different animal. Let me give you an example: Our golf carts. We lease them and we had an older fleet. We waited until Landscapes arrived to address the situation and I'm glad we did. By using their national contract with the vendors, we've lowered what we pay in lease fees and we got a brand new fleet in the process.
"That's the sort of efficiency I'm talking about. We couldn't do that on our own."
