Despite challenges posed by a changing urban landscape and vastly different lifestyles from when it first occupied the property in 1901, the club is making the most of its special connections to golf and the community.
By Joe Barks, Editor
Glen Echo CC
AT A GLANCE
- Location: Normandy, Mo.
- Founded: 1901
- Members: 298
- Annual golf rounds: 13,000
- Golf course designers:
Jim and Robert Foulis - General Manager/COO:
Rob
Stewart - Golf Course Superintendent: Joe Wachter, CGCS
- Executive Chef: Terry Peirick
- Food & Beverage Manager: Reid
Warren - Membership Director:
Heather Schadt - Controller: Mary Martin
- Event Coordinator:
Kim Plaggenberg
In 1876, in what came to be known as “The Great Divorce,” the city of St. Louis, Mo., seceded from St. Louis County and became an independent city. Today, St. Louis still exists as one of only 42 U.S. cities that are not part of a county (39 of the others are in Virginia; the others outside that state are Baltimore, Md., and Carson City, Nev.).
For many years after the “Divorce,” the dividing line between St. Louis city and county, was pretty distinct. Where the county started, the country began. This provided much of the initial appeal for Glen Echo Country Club when it was founded in 1901 on an estate in Normandy, just over the county line. A trolley line brought people to the edge of the city, and from there it was just a quick buggy ride to the gates of what had been established as the first private, 18-hole golf club west of the Mississippi River, featuring a course designed by the 1896 U.S. Open champion, Jim Foulis, and his brother, Robert.
Three years after it opened, Glen Echo gained even more distinction when the third modern Olympic Games were held in St. Louis, in conjunction with the 1904 World’s Fair. As part of the competition, the Olympic Golf Championship was held at Glen Echo from September 17-24, with a Canadian, George Lyon, taking the gold medal.
Those remain the only Olympics in which golf was a medal sport (it will become one again when the 2016 Games are held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). And for over 100 years, Glen Echo has remained the only golf course in the world that is permitted to fly the Olympic flag.
That flag can be found on the 18th hole, overlooking a course that is still very much the same as it was in 1904, lovingly preserved these days by Golf Course Superintendent Joe Wachter, CGCS. It’s not too hard to still imagine how Glen Echo looked at that time, after entering the property through its original gates from 1901, and riding up to its Tudor-style clubhouse, which was built in 1927.
But outside and around the gates, much has changed, and the distinction between city and county is no longer as clear-cut. It’s not that it’s a bad neighborhood; it’s just ill-defined. While other clubs in the St. Louis area have settled into unmistakably suburban surroundings, Glen Echo has seen a transitional area, with half-occupied strip centers and modest residential pockets, develop around its property, creating a city/near-suburban no-man’s land that is now largely seen as someplace to go through on your way home, to work or elsewhere.
One of many improvements made possible by member generosity, a water feature with an Olympic flame now stands in front of Glen Echo’s main entrance, to provide an ever-present symbol of its unique link to the past and the club’s special spirit.
“The [capital fundraising efforts] really made everyone take a personal interest in the club and made their connection to it even greater. As a result, I am sure it has also helped our retention.”
—Rob Stewart, General Manager/COO
Successful Appeal
For Glen Echo, the changing outside face of its location has certainly compounded the challenge that all smaller private clubs in metropolitan areas have faced to maintain membership levels, especially during the recent recession. From its loftiest level of 385 members in the late ‘90s, Glen Echo’s membership is now just under 300, after a reduced-dues drive brought in over 30 new members last year. “Ideally, we’d like to get back to 350 members,” says Rob Stewart, the club’s General Manager/COO.
In turn, lower membership levels add to the challenges involved with maintaining, improving and expanding facilities—challenges that are once again compounded in the case of Glen Echo’s historic course and nearly 100-year-old clubhouse. But here, the club’s unique connection with the Olympic spirit has shown its special value.
After becoming the club’s General Manager in 2008 (he had previously been its assistant golf professional), Stewart saw that he needed to find a new way to supplement capital expenditures funded through assessments and reserves, especially since the club had just completed major irrigation and pool renovation projects in 2007.
Stewart decided to see if he could build some future capital fundraising efforts around special events held for, and supported by, the Glen Echo membership. He identified specific needs and sent letters to the members describing the goal (clubhouse interior improvements), and the plan for reaching it: a golf tournament and dinner at which items donated by members would be sold through live auctions.
Members stepped up immediately and donated valuable items such as vacation home stays, flights in private jets, prime seats and amenities for St. Louis Cardinals baseball games, a dinner prepared by a member who is an accomplished chef, and custom jewelry from another member’s store.
Golf Course Superintendent Joe Wachter, CGCS (upper right) now lovingly cares for a course that has always looked very much as it did for the 1904 Olympic golf competition. The course’s historical accuracy was further restored by last year’s bunker redesign/reshaping project (left), which was funded in large part by member donations made through special fundraising events.
When Stewart first used the voluntary fundraising approach in 2008, close to $160,000 were raised for clubhouse interior improvements that included new furniture, paint, carpet and framed archives to properly display Glen Echo’s history and Olympic connection.
Last year, it was employed again, to help complete a bunker redesign and reshaping project through which golf course designer Kye Goalby, the son of St. Louis-area golf professional and 1968 Masters champion Bob Goalby, created flat-bottom, grass-faced bunkers to dramatically improve aesthetics and visual impact by framing the green complexes, while at the same time preserving the course’s historic character. The project, completed under budget at a cost of $175,000, also stands to significantly reduce future maintenance costs.
Stewart took care to create separate funds for all voluntary contributions made for these projects, and to maintain full transparency so members could be assured that all donated funds were used for their intended cause, and not diverted to other purposes.
A pool replacement project that created a family-friendly facility with popular water features was completed in 2007.
And, while support for both the clubhouse and bunker projects was immediate and enthusiastic (each dinner was a sellout), Stewart resisted the temptation to try to tap the same wells too often. “You can’t continually ask for everything,” he says.
Further, Glen Echo’s staff members have made their own contributions, by finding ways to cut more than $1 million in operating expenses over the past five years. “A big part of it has come from payroll reductions,” says Stewart, “but it has also come from being smarter about expenses for things like flowers and bands, and in general getting away from operating like an old club, and more like a business.”
While Stewart took care not to overextend his appeals to members, he was pleasantly surprised by how the voluntary spirit became infectious, as members came to understand the need to help keep the club’s facilities, and image, in the best possible shape. Several times, when Stewart pointed out another facility need or shortcoming to a member, he received quick, and quiet, offers of contributions to help resolve the issue. And through
one member’s generosity, improvements were made to the clubhouse’s main entrance that included a new water feature commemorating the club’s special place in history with a two-foot-wide, gas-fired flaming Olympic torch
“One of the great things that came out of doing capital improvements through volunteer funds is the spirit of community that it fosters,” Stewart says. “Both times, the vast majority of the membership came out and supported the cause greatly, and in both instances we raised more funds than were needed. It really made everyone take a personal interest in the club and made their connection to it even greater. As a result, I am sure it has also helped our retention.”
Carrying the Torch
With golf once again set to be an Olympic sport, Stewart and his staff recognize that a special, once-every-century marketing opportunity is presenting itself, and they are not lacking for ideas on how to seize it, to try to gain maximum leverage from Glen Echo’s unique connection to the Games.
“We made contact with Gil Hanse [who is designing the Olympic course that will be used in Rio], to make sure he knew about Glen Echo’s role in Olympic history, and he found it interesting and said that he might try to tie-in a suggestion or feature of one of our holes into his design,” says Stewart. “We’ve talked about trying to arrange an exhibition match here for the U.S. team and then give them a black-tie send-off to Rio. It’s a limited window that we have unique access to, and we’re not going to dismiss any idea that could help more people learn more about Glen Echo and our history.”
There’s even hope that the area’s tie-in to the Games could lead to a revival of the neighborhood around the club, as part of a proposed “Olympic Boulevard”-themed renewal project that would not only have support from the long-divorced city and county, but also from the fast-growing University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) campus that has sprouted within a three-wood of Glen Echo’s back fence.
Rob Stewart is a realist, though, and knows that plenty of political batons could be dropped on the way to trying to bring those plans to the finish line.
With golf once again set to be an Olympic sport after a 112-year hiatus, Glen Echo’s members and staff have no shortage of enthusiastic ideas for how they can help to share and spread the special spirit that’s sustained the club from its earliest days.
He also recognizes that other options for Glen Echo need to be kept open.
“We could be acquired by UMSL, we could consider merging with another club, we could look to move,” he says. “But even if the area stays the same, we still think the best option is to continue to make the most of what we have here. We have a gem of a golf course with a unique story that no one can match, and we have a location that, from a standpoint of where it is on the map, is perfect—it’s ten minutes from anywhere.
“We also have a membership that has shown time and time again that it has a special attachment to the club and is willing to step up to help do what it takes not just to keep it going, but to do so in a way that preserves its traditions and unique sense of community,” Stewart adds.
“Our challenge as a staff is to find ways to convince members and families that even though they may not live or work near here, the club can still be the focal point for all they do,” Stewart says. “That’s not an easy thing to establish when you’re driving up to a building that dates to 1927. But time and time again, I’ve seen people join here and fall in love with the place and the people, and have it quickly become an extension of their home and their family. So I don’t think we’re going anywhere.”
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