New board looks at array of changes to improve golf course’s
position
Customarily over the years, shooting a round at Bolado Park Golf
Course may have been a crapshoot at times, because the club had a
policy forbidding tee times.
That and a host of other longstanding practices are changing at
the Tres Pinos-area club, as it has made headway in the past four
months in trying to reverse poor economic fortunes that nearly
closed the 65-year-old course.
New board looks at array of changes to improve golf course’s position
Customarily over the years, shooting a round at Bolado Park Golf Course may have been a crapshoot at times, because the club had a policy forbidding tee times.
That and a host of other longstanding practices are changing at the Tres Pinos-area club, as it has made headway in the past four months in trying to reverse poor economic fortunes that nearly closed the 65-year-old course.
Bolado Park Golf Course leadership – three new directors were elected in February elections to the five-member board – has made drastic steps to change the club’s direction. In the past four months, since a temporary closure prompted by gradually declining revenues over the years, the club has done everything from improving basic maintenance, to aggressively pushing to host community events, to providing better, more nutritious offerings on the clubhouse menu to entice more visitors for lunch.
It is some of those basic, gradual changes – such as setting tee times and preventing customers from walking away from a round of golf because the wait is too long – that the organization hopes will lead to a healthy fiscal position in the months and years to come.
Director Richard Anderson noted how the club is developing a three-year business plan, which it didn’t maintain in the past. Treasurer Phyllis Swallow, who joined Anderson in an interview with the Pinnacle, said the club hired a new manager, Adele Key, and how the healthier menu has brought out more patrons for lunch as of late.
“The little things like that make a big difference,” Swallow said.
Anderson listed off an array of changes under way at the club, which had struggled financially for about a decade, largely due to increased competition, declining grounds’ quality with lacking maintenance, and a failure to adjust to economic conditions through pricing and promotion.
The fiscal problems came to a head at the turn of the New Year, when the club was forced to close for three days before reopening with the help of a loan.
As a whole, the two main goals are to improve the fiscal position and better the level of communication with the 33rd Agriculture District that owns the property and leases it to Bolado.
Specifically, though, the momentum swing can be attributed to such changes as holding three benefit tournaments in recent months, with another planned for May 13 for the Portuguese Lodge; adjusting greens fees and membership packages; developing a website with those aforementioned tee times; promoting the use of a rental facility holding 75 to 100 people, with the hope that businesses, schools and organizations might have interest in using it; and “a lot of tree trimming” and other maintenance, Anderson said.
It has been one step at a time for the club’s leadership, with a “big emphasis” on the driving range and clubhouse at the outset, Anderson said. Charity from the community has helped, too.
“The donations have just been awesome,” Swallow said.
Donations can be made to Bolado Park Golf Course, a nonprofit organization, through the Community Foundation for San Benito County.
For more information, call the club at 628-9995.
