Evergreen Partners’ growth strategy is not centered on how many clubs it acquires, but on what happens after ownership changes hands. That distinction has shaped how the firm approaches pacing, onboarding, and long-term planning across its portfolio.
Tom Hogan joined Evergreen Partners as President in December, bringing experience from Marriott, The Ritz-Carlton, Augusta National, and private club development and operations. His focus has been on building the structure required to absorb growth without disrupting day-to-day club operations.
“The goal is about five acquisitions per year,” Hogan says. “The pipeline is strong, but I don’t want digestion issues. We want to onboard clubs properly and get the foundations in place before moving too fast.”
Rather than treating acquisitions as endpoints, Hogan describes them as starting points that require careful sequencing.
“You’re going to get the deals,” he says. “Sometimes they take longer than you want, sometimes they move faster. The key is making sure you can absorb them correctly.”
Since joining the firm, Hogan has spent time inside each Evergreen club, meeting with leadership teams and walking properties alongside department heads.
“I want to understand what they need and where they see opportunity,” he says
That approach extends to early engagement with members.
“I’ve had conversations with members, and we have town halls coming up,” Hogan says. “I want to hear directly from them, too.”
Across clubs, Hogan says similar conditions tend to surface during the early stages of ownership.
“Some of these clubs that you take over—it’s been a developer who wanted to flip it, or a membership that’s had it for a long time—and they just hadn’t spent money on it,” Hogan says. “They didn’t have those foundations, what I’d call the Ritz-Carlton or Augusta kind of service standards. They don’t articulate it that way, but that’s what they want. They want someone to come in and give them the service and the product the place deserves.”
Hogan describes Evergreen’s initial priorities as operational rather than visual.
“Job number one is developing the people,” he says. “Training them, helping them understand service standards, and building leaders inside the organization.”
To support that work, Evergreen is standardizing financial and hospitality systems across its clubs.
“We’re aligning our back-office and hospitality systems so information flows cleanly across the organization,” Hogan says. “That system flow is critical. It gives consistency without taking away the club’s ability to operate day to day.”
Those systems are intended to create visibility and alignment, not control.
“You need a foundation that lets information flow,” says Hogan. “If you don’t have that, everything else becomes harder.”
Capital planning, Hogan says, begins with a longer view of what each club is intended to become.
“We start by asking, ‘What does this club want to be when it grows up?’” he says. “That might be a five-year or 10-year view.”
From there, capital decisions follow.
“Once you understand where the club should be positioned, then you can start thinking about capital in a more methodical way,” says Hogan. “Governance matters.”
That structure allows clubs to address immediate concerns while maintaining continuity over time.
“There are always quick wins,” says Hogan. “Things members have been frustrated about for years. You fix those first. Then you can have more meaningful conversations about the future.”
While Evergreen is building shared standards across its portfolio, Hogan emphasizes that individual club identity remains intact.
“Each club needs to be who it is,” he says. “But there also has to be a core level of service and product that defines what Evergreen stands for.”
For Hogan, that balance underpins Evergreen’s long-term ownership model.
“This isn’t about buying, flipping, and exiting,” he says. “It’s about owning, improving, and building something that lasts.”
