Customized lockers help make the men’s and women’s locker rooms much more than quick stops in the UT Golf Club’s new clubhouse.
Usually, when a tour is given of a new multimillion-dollar clubhouse facility, locker rooms don’t rate much more than a quick look-in on the way to see other parts of the building that are thought to be more unique and exciting.
But when Steve Termeer, General Manager/Director of Golf for the University of Texas (UT) Golf Club in Austin, led a visitor through that property’s new $8 million clubhouse (“From Land to a Brand,” C&RB, September 2009), he made not only the locker rooms, but the lockers themselves, a highlight of the tour.
The customized lockers, with Longhorn logos “branded” into the top of each door, have added more special touches to the place where “the drives of Texas are upon you.” |
Termeer stopped in the center of the men’s locker room to note how the rows of over 300 lockers had been designated, with lettering in the school’s signature “burnt orange” color painted onto the white walls at the end of each row, as sections named for University of Texas golf team legends such as Tom Kite, Justin Leonard and Harvey Penick (the club has a licensing agreement with the school and is the team’s home course).
Then Termeer sat down on a bench in front of one of the rows of double-tiered lockers. He pointed to how the longhorn logo of the university (and the club) had been “branded,” cattle roundup-style, into the top of the dark-stained, knotty alder wood in each locker’s grooved, recessed-panel door. He then opened one of the doors, to describe how the size and placement of all shelves, drawers, cubby towers, lock boxes, clothes rods and hooks were custom-designed, working with Dallas-based Legacy Lockers, to maximize the efficient, practical use of the inside space.
“It’s not your normal locker design, inside or out,” said Termeer, noting that the 44 lockers in the new clubhouse’s women’s locker room have the same look and features. “[Legacy] helped us think everything out, to make sure the look of the lockers would fit in with all of the other branded touches and colors we wanted to have throughout the club, and also to make sure they would function well as they were used, even during times of peak play.“
As the new clubhouse has come to life for the club’s 430 local and 300 regional members since opening in October 2008, the locker rooms have proved to be especially popular and lively spots, Termeer says—with the look and function of the lockers themselves playing a central role in helping to create and maintain a warm, comfortable atmosphere.
Now, as word spreads about the special experiences to be found at the UT Golf Club, Termeer and his staff go out of their way to make extended stops in the locker rooms and point out the features, such as the longhorns branded into the lockers, that make a lasting “impression” on new-member prospects, too. C&RB
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