IWGR AT A GLANCE
• Clubhouse Size: 53,000 sq. ft. |
When Joe Alegre told friends and colleagues last year about his appointment as the new Director of Sales and Marketing for the Hyatt Grand Champions Resort, Villas and Spa in Indian Wells, Calif., he was often asked exactly where Indian Wells was located. “Near Palm Springs,” Alegre would respond.
“Palm Springs?” many would then say. “Isn’t that the place where Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope used to always hang out? Has anything new happened there in 20 years?”
Alegre would just laugh and say that while he couldn’t speak for Palm Springs, he could assure them that something very new, and noteworthy, was indeed happening in one of the next towns over.
He’d then start to describe how the city of Indian Wells, population 4,433 and all of 15 square miles large, had completely remade its two existing golf courses on the city’s 150-acre, Indian Wells Golf Resort (IWGR) property into championship-caliber layouts.
He’d go on to say how the golf course makeovers were just part of a bigger project—on which the city would spend a total of more than $70 million—that also included building a futuristic, lavishly appointed 53,000-sq. ft. clubhouse that would include a $3 million porte cochere, a sheer water wall feature, and a 5,000-sq. ft. “retail center” that would take golf pro shops to a whole new level.
Then Alegre would describe how not only his Hyatt property, but three other luxury hotels within walking distance of IWGR, were also making significant investments, to help turn Indian Wells into a hot destination that golfers, vacationers and meeting planners would not only know about, but beat a path to—no matter what they might think of Palm Springs.
Most of Alegre’s friends were still skeptical. So he finally told them to take a look at Indian Wells when it would be on TV in late November for the LG Skins Game, held on the resort’s refurbished Celebrity Course.
“I have gotten quite a few calls from people who remembered to watch,” Alegre reported with a laugh in early December. “Pretty much all of them have said, ‘Hey, Joe, now I see what you were talking about—any chance you can find me a room there, and help me get a tee time?”
Finding His Calling
Roger Behling is counting on a lot of phone calls being made out of Indian Wells, too, after people begin to make their way to IWGR. A Class-A PGA professional, Behling was brought in by OB Sports Golf Management to be the resort’s General Manager, after OB Sports was contracted by the city to manage the property.
“The big goal here is to have guys calling their buddies back East in the middle of January or February,” Behling says after stopping at one of many picturesque vantage points while leading a tour of the two courses. “We want them to be so inspired that they’ll stand on a tee and call to say, ‘Hey, I hear it’s snowing back there; I just wanted to let you know I’m standing here in my shorts, and you wouldn’t believe how beautiful this place is.”
Behling actually brought himself to OB Sports and the city, after hearing all that was being planned for the property. He first got familiar with golf in the desert in the late ‘60s (yes, the Hope and Sinatra heydays) and felt a strong connection with the Coachella Valley region of California ever since. After embarking on a successful career during which he has helped course and resort developers launch properties around the world, Behling was one of the first to apply for the IWGR director’s position.
“This is the first city-owned property I’ve ever helped to develop, and I think I picked the best city to work with in the country,” Behling says as his tour moves through the still-under-construction clubhouse (now scheduled to be fully open by May). “A lot of the [course] developers I’ve worked with start out with great plans and ideas, but then cut back as you run into the added costs and other hurdles, which you’ll always have. But in this case, the city has held fast to what they want this place to be; their reaction has been that delays aren’t the end of the world—they want us to always slow down, keep the quality, and do it right.”
Indian Wells has that luxury because it is not using any new tax dollars for the project, having built up an ample capital improvement fund for the property through previous initiatives (while the population is small, Indian Wells has the highest proportion of millionaires of any city in the U.S.). But with the city now “built out,” Behling says, attracting tourist dollars, while also becoming a course-of-choice for golfers who live and come to the region has become the operative strategy.
“There are 1,600 hotel rooms within a sand wedge of the property right now,” Behling notes, “and there’s still room to build one more [resort hotel] nearby; I think that will happen within a couple of years. We think we’ll eventually have between 80,000 and 85,000 [annual] rounds played here, with about 50 to 60% of that coming through the hotels. But at the same time, there’s tremendous potential for not only attracting local and regional play, but also turning the clubhouse into a central gathering point for the community.”
Spectacular Shopping
A big part of that attraction will come from how the revamped Indian Wells Golf Resort will be positioned to capture its share of something else the Palm Springs area has long been known for: shopping. The new clubhouse’s “retail center” will not only feature two club-fitting bays, but also big-screen TVs, a wine bar, and most of all, an assortment of merchandise that will go far beyond golf shirts, shoes and hats.
“It’s going to be spectacular, not only in how it looks and in the shopping atmosphere, but also in the quality and selection of what we’ll be selling,” says Director of Golf Joe Williams. “The retail area will certainly not be your typical golf shop; we’ll have custom-designed displays and shelving, a fireplace and couch, and high-end fashions that go well beyond golf-related items, to also include things like swimwear, leather coats and jackets—even gowns and cocktail dresses.”
Patti Graham, with experience that includes work for Saks Fifth Avenue and The Limited, will be the resort’s new Director of Retailing. She likens how the new clubhouse’s shopping space will be arranged and presented to “a small department store,” and says that while high-end items will be featured, the merchandising strategy will also make sure there are plenty of selections that “the average person and traveler can afford.” In all cases, says Graham, the emphasis will be on “items that seem special and have a resort feeling to them—things you just don’t see everywhere.”
This expanded and ambitious approach to retailing is just one way that Williams, who has been at the property since 1996, is now marveling at what he calls IWGR’s “night and day” transformation. When run by a previous management company, he reports, the approach was to “pack ‘em in,” and annual rounds exceeded 100,000 in the late ‘90s.
Now, however, Williams is redirecting his golf staff to focus on creating a “member for a day” experience for all players—including Indian Wells residents who are still able to play the new courses (because the residential rate has not been changed, even with the upgrades), for the incredible, city council-mandated fee of $35 per round.
“It’s a big change in approach from when we used to be running eight foursomes an hour through the course, all day long,” says Williams. “We’re emphasizing to all of the staff that we don’t want to, or have to, act primarily as marshals anymore, but can instead focus on customer service and being true player assistants.”
Two Jobs in One
In charge of maintaining the new courses is Casey Conlin, a Certified Golf Course Superintendent who was brought in from Somerby Golf Club in his native Minnesota to supervise grow-in on the Celebrity Course (which opened for play in November 2006) and construction on the new Players Course (which opened a year later).
The two courses have purposely been given distinctly different, but “equally desirable” design concepts and playing experiences, Roger Behling says, to maximize the appeal for hotel guests and encourage them to play both courses during their stays (which average three to five days). The Celebrity Course, where the LG Skins competition was held, is a Clive Clark design, and features scenic water elements and stunning arrays of wildflowers covering out-of-play areas.
Like Roger Behling, this was the first time working with a city-owned property for Clark, a British native (and former Ryder Cup player) who now runs his course design business from Palm Desert, a neighboring town of Indian Wells. “It was a different animal in that I’m used to working directly with owners or small management groups,” Clark says. “In this case, there was a mayor, city council, a large array of consultants, and others on the city staff, and that made the whole planning process longer. But through it all, the directive was very clear: They wanted a course that would feel like a private club and help them turn [IWGR] into a world-class resort. And they were very fair about listening to what I felt was needed to accomplish that.”
The Players Course is a John Fought design, featuring wider playing corridors and more classic tee boxes and sand-face bunkers. From Casey Conlin’s standpoint, organizing the IWGR grounds staff to maintain two such distinct courses is not as challenging as “changing the culture, increasing the standards, and understanding what it takes to attain that private-club feel,” now that both courses have been upgraded so far beyond the previous layouts.
As part of that cultural change, Conlin is hoping to even change the look of the IWGR course and grounds crew, trying to get away from the “maintenance uniform and gas station-shirt look” to perhaps have the staff wear collared polo shirts and khaki pants that more closely resemble golf attire. “It’s tough in the summertime, when it’s so hot, to find that type of clothing that can work,” he says. “But if our objective is to be world-class, I think it’s important to consider.”
Building a Brand
Also preparing to take another important aspect of the new IWGR to a higher level are Clubhouse Manager Erik Estrada and Executive Chef Matt Fife. Both arrived in the last half of 2007 and so far have only had one F&B outlet to operate: the Fairway Grill located centrally between the two courses. But when the new clubhouse opens, plans are to extend the “private club” atmosphere throughout, via an “IW Club” branding concept.
Fife is excited about the possibilities of utilizing the full extent and beauty of the two courses, to create and execute exciting approaches to both regular dining events and special catering assignments. “Everything’s in play within the property,” he enthuses. “Nothing says we can’t ever find a way to take a grill to wherever it’s needed. We’ve been given the liberty to create a new [F&B] business however we best see fit, which is very unique. We’re certainly not being stifled or stuffed into ‘running a club’ a certain way.”
Adds Estrada, who came to IWGR after 12 years in private clubs: “It’s shaping up to be the number-one resort clubhouse I’ve ever seen. The city has been first-class in every way they’ve gone about creating it, and they’ve been very receptive to our ideas. We know there’s tremendous potential, just from what we’ve already seen in terms of volume at the Fairway Grill, which is fast approaching a $1 million a year operation. Overall we think we can do upwards of $4 million total in F&B here, with maybe half of that coming from banquets. There really are no boundaries that we can see.”
Tell Us What You Think!
You must be logged in to post a comment.