Ease of maintenance and versatility make tents a popular option for outdoor events.
The locations on club properties where events and social functions can be held are seemingly endless, from banquet halls and ballrooms to poolside and on the green. Combining the comfort of indoors with the serenity and beauty of a club’s natural surroundings, outdoor tents have become increasingly popular options for clubs looking to make member events extraordinary.
Frequently sought by brides and appreciated by golf tournament participants, outdoor tents are versatile spaces that can be easily tailored to any event. Properties that are subject to winter weather typically opt to keep the structures erected six months out of the year—which, along with regular cleaning and upkeep, can help them last for years.
SUMMING IT UP
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Temporary tents are also ideal for clubs that are testing the waters of a permanent outdoor structure, avoiding the costs and maintenance demands of adding a building to the property, while gauging member interest in the event space.
Surprise Inside
At first glance, most event tents look the same: a hard-to-miss white structure overlooking picturesque greens. When Camas Meadows Golf Club erected its tent, it started out with just the tent itself. But adding an interior fabric liner the following year put the public facility in Camas, Wash., over the top, says General Manager Chris Garrison.
“First they see the aluminum structure, so they anticipate it won’t look very good on the inside,” Garrison explains. “But when they walk into the tent, it’s more than they ever expected.”
What prospective clients find is an 80-ft. x 40-ft. space with four chandeliers hung from the white, fabric-lined ceiling, plus walls, accent lighting, a balcony, electricity, and room for 200 guests. The tent is located on a concrete pad near the clubhouse, eliminating the need for portable toilets.
“We drape fabric over the poles, so you don’t see the aluminum,” Garrison says. “That makes it look softer. People walk in and say, ‘This is a tent?’ ”
Depending on the event, Camas Meadows has a standard setup consisting of a generic floor plan and the necessary accessories, such as a dance floor, stage, or raffle table. “It doesn’t vary too much,” Garrison says. “It’s a flexible facility, though, so we’ve had wedding planners come in and say here’s a concept my client has, and we can see the creative floor plans that planners come up with.”
Each month, the club’s staff pressure-washes the tent, to clean off dust accumulated from the parking lot. Landscaping around the structure is also maintained, but the tent itself is “pretty low maintenance,” Garrison says, with the biggest expense coming from the need to patch holes, which are only visible from the inside of the tent when the liner is not up.
The structure, which stands 25 feet tall, goes up in April over a four-day span and stays up for six months, covering the time that clients request its use, Garrison notes. He predicts that the tent will last one more year before it needs to be replaced,and credits its five-year shelf life to the fact that the structure is taken down and stored for half the year.
Once the tent comes down for the final time, the club will have to decide whether to continue using the temporary option, or spring for a permanent structure. At this point, Garrison reports, 40% of the club’s revenue comes from weddings—a revenue stream it’s looking to expand by promoting a full-time person to sales, specifically for weddings. “Our success is changing the model on our staffing—we need someone doing this 12 months a year,” he says.
Wind Breaker
Nine years ago, Arrowhead Golf Club in Littleton, Colo., constructed a tent to give golf tournament participants a place to have a meal after finishing a round. Over the years, however, the outdoor wedding trend has taken over the 3,200-sq. ft., tent’s use.
Like most properties, the club takes down the structure during the winter to avoid incurring ice damage, but it still tolerates and withstands strong weather while used in-season.
“Being a tent, it’s not perfect, but it fully covers and closes,” says General Manager Sean Kerns. “The tent does an excellent job blocking the occasional rapid winds and the majority of the rain.
“We do use a squeegee to eliminate that little water that has flowed in from the windy rains,” Kerns adds. “Since we’ve used a professional installer to put up the tent, we’ve had less in-house maintenance from unexpected weather due to proper installation.”
For cleaning, the club uses nothing but “a little water and elbow grease,” Kerns says. The tent’s solid-white walls include plastic-window arches, strategically placed to give guests a view of the property’s ancient red sandstone rocks. Providing those looks of the outside extends the clubhouse’s own “quintessential Colorado” views, Kerns notes.
As for the interior, Arrowhead sets the tent’s mood with appropriate lighting. Six floodlights (three on each side) are used and then softened with an amber gel material, to keep the space ambient. Different gels can be used to better suit the desired colors for the event. The club also recommends various lighting vendors to install lighting décor, such as Chinese lanterns or globes, chandeliers, and even simple strands of white bulbs.
The ceiling is covered with a soft, parachute awning liner that not only covers the metal structure, but “leaves brides with a whimsical vision of their wedding—like they are going to have their reception in the clouds,” Kerns says.
A Tent for All Seasons
Deviating from the norm, The Golf Club at Newcastle (Wash.) keeps Prestwick Terrace, its 3,000-sq. ft. multi-purpose, heated tent up all year long.
“We don’t think of using it just in-season,” General Manager David Uchida explains. “Social events do want nice weather, but corporate events just want the space.”
There is a difference of about 60 feet between the exit of the ballroom foyer to the tent, Uchida says, so the club erects extra tenting during the off-season to cover guests, providing a transitional area so an event is not affected by the weather. The club began tenting this footage a couple of years ago, keeping guests for holiday parties, which Uchida describes as a “good piece of business,” from getting soaked.
Though keeping the tent up year-round is not common for most clubs that are subject to seasonal changes, Uchida reports that the structure is fairly resilient. The Newcastle staff performs daily cleaning duties like wiping down the panels, vacuuming out the baffolding and keeping the exterior clean, as well as occasionally vacuuming up any moisture that makes its way inside. The company that installed the structure performs repairs, such as re-stitching a zipper, on an as-needed basis. And though the structure can be enclosed, the side paneling is rolled up during the summer, to keep air flowing through.
It Takes Two
Traditions at the Glen, a resort in Johnson City, N.Y., sees a wide variety of activities in its two tent structures, both of which go up in April and come down in November for the season.
The Glen View tent, measuring 7,200 sq. ft., was constructed in 2004. General Manager Candace Jones describes it as “almost a circus tent” that is used primarily for golf tournaments.
Though the Valley View tent, which went up in 2006 and measures 2,400 sq. ft., is used mostly for wedding ceremonies, Jones stresses that limiting how each space can function is a detriment.
“Every space is available for sale,” she laughs. “Why limit ourselves? We use our tents for showers, business meetings, cocktail receptions, barbecues, networking events, reunions, church raffle parties…you name it.”
Though the resort does advertise—and Jones raves that she has “a fantastic team”—one unique way that Traditions at the Glen brings in business is through word-of-mouth generated through its weekly “Cans and Clams” event. Held in the massive Glen View tent, the resort welcomes as many as 1,000 people to the social affair, offering live music, cans of beer, clams, shrimp on a stick, steak sandwiches and more.
“It’s an outdoor event that gets people outside and enjoying the evening,” Jones says.
The event is open to the public at no cover charge. Because everyone who attends is a prospective client, showing off how the space can be used benefits the property. And for guests of the resort who are on site for a wedding or other event, it’s a bonus social opportunity. “You don’t have to have a fortune in your pocket to go out and have a good time,” Jones adds.
Between the two structures, size is the biggest difference. Valley View has a chiffon veiled ceiling with natural lighting and curtains on the sides that can be taken down, while one side has more of a door view. Similarly, Glen View opens up on the sides—with one side overlooking the glen and the other going out to the patio.
The tents have taken on some inclement weather, with one being damaged by a hurricane in 2012. The resort purchased another tent in 2013 because it didn’t want to take a chance on having the damaged one fixed.
“It has withheld so much weather here,” Jones says. “It gets windy up on the hill, so if we know there will be high wind, we secure the stakes and close everything up.”
Once the tents are taken down for the season, the Valley View tent is stored on the property, while the Glen View tent is stored at a separate facility. The resort’s staff then clean both tents before they go back up, taking about a week to ensure they’re sparkling.
“You have to be creative and think outside of the box about how to use the space,” says Jones. “It’s another building to sell—you have a ballroom and a meeting room, so you have to think, what can I use this for? People want the extraordinary.”
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