Ken, Chris, Mark, et. al.,
The more I think of this dilemma, the more I think it occurred because the generation in charge, the generation who ran the clubs and incurred all the debt, didn't listen to the wisdom of the generation that went through the depression.
My dad was 17 in 1929.
He had been orphaned for three years.
He told me how difficult life was for him and his four younger brothers and sisters.
How they found food, eating out of garbage cans, how, like Harry Potter they had to go live with others, how my uncle Tony ran away from one of those homes and hopped a freight train south, only to be surprised one morning when the railroad guards opened the door to the box car and shot and killed the other hobos, sparing him because he was a child.
They had a hard early life and they never forgot it and the values they learned from that life.
They were "security" conscious.
My father and many of his generation feared debt and avoided it if they had a choice.
Many's the time that his peers related horror stories about the Great Depression to me and my friends.
They wanted their experience and their message to sink in, and it did with me.
For the most part, that generation was fiscally conservative.
The next two generations, less so.
Especially with other people's money.
Club after club, other than the old line clubs, spent money on anything and everything.
Capital and operating budgets soared, suddenly, clubs had to be all things to all people.
Every members whim had to be satisfied, so budgets became bloated as facilities and operations expanded.
But things were happening that club leaderships were ignoring.
Utilization of the club facilities was changing drastically.
Dual income earners had more shared responsibilities and clubs were no longer the focal point of the community,
Hence younger members arrived early, played golf and returned home and the older members were eating at the abundance of available restaurants and not from the same menu week in and week out.
As expenses increased, derivative members, always the life blood of clubs, diminished in number.
And, clubs for the most part weren't "family" friendly with minimum ages for golf, pool, dining and licker room access.
So, the dynamic was changing, utilization was changing, but, SPENDING was up.
Because clubs were now populated less and less by generations of members, there wan't the same love for the entity, so when big projects loomed, rather than pay as you go, debt, other than the mortgage, became the rave.
I remember clubs holding mortgage burning parties when their mortgage got paid off.
When getting rid of the financial albatross around the clubs neck was a big deal and a reason to celebrate.
But, the next generation felt differently. Spend now, get bigger and better, indulge ourselves and we'll pay for it later.
The voices of reason, the voices of the old timers were being ignored in favor of the fervor to get everything they wanted.
So, they spent money on anything and everything and they financed it with debt
No problem when the economy and business were good, just raise the dues and assess.
Enter the current downturn in the economy (I blame Greenspan
)
Members leave, but the burden of debt and the high cost of operations doesn't remain static, per member, with fewer members, so a downward spiral of escalating costs per member causes more members to leave, causing the burden per member to increase.......
Along with this, members got older, many retired, some died, but their ranks weren't replaced by an equal number of younger members due to costs. And in many cases, the clubs were so strapped that they couldn't redeem the departing members bond and many new young perspective members couldn't afford to pay the bond
Note: most clubs gave deep discounts to derivatives who joined, but not to their peer age group, another mistake.
The combination of ignorance and arrogance coupled with the loss of financial discipline has led to the current situation and the desperate quest for new, younger members.
But here's the best part.
Knowing all of this, many clubs won't change to meet the new dynamic.
They won't change their operation.
They want to preserve their "culture" even if that leads to the path of their demise.
If I was a young perspective member, I'd look at the club's debt, their financials and their culture.
Clubs that run prudent, trim operations, absent debt, should survive and thrive in the future.
End of rant