272: Board Chats: Future of Golf Club Design and Capital Planning w/ Phil Miller

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to Board Chats here on Private Club Radio brought to you by our friends, concert golf partners, boutique owner operator of high-end golf and country clubs nationwide, here on Board Chats. this is where we have boardroom discussions. This is where they take center stage finance strategies, governance, you name it anything related to making sure your boardrooms keep your club as stable as possible. And we're going to hear from executive vice president of development, construction and capital, phil Miller, over at concert golf partners. He has well over 23 years of experience in the hospitality industry. He also teaches some various classes at Cornell University, which is pretty cool, focusing on hospitality planning and facility management. We talk about the capital planning, development, renovations, design, all cool little things to help our clubs move forward. Without further ado, welcome our friend from concert golf partners, phil Miller. Congrats on your 30th club.

Speaker 2: 1:11

Yes, I'm very excited about that Great club Just a historical club Great area. It's a great area for us to move into location-wise. We're excited, Excited to start learning the membership and take care of their needs.

Speaker 1: 1:31

How long was the process?

Speaker 2: 1:33

with them. Well, the development side of it, just the connection, was probably well over a year And then, once we got to the point where due diligence started, it's pretty fast, pretty quick process. For us It was about 45, 60 days once we got due diligence going.

Speaker 1: 1:53

That's pretty quick.

Speaker 2: 1:55

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:56

That's pretty quick.

Speaker 2: 1:58

Peter and the development team do so much of that legwork up front communication and that just the collaboration with the board members. And then when it's my turn, i just come in and start working on the due diligence side with PSAs And actually the PSA is completed and working on the capital, every thing's ended for that club.

Speaker 1: 2:24

What's your back? So where'd you come from?

Speaker 2: 2:29

So I came to concert after about 20, 23 years in the hospitality industry. So I've been working with resorts, hotel resorts, spending all of my time in development, capital spending, capital planning, renovations, design. So I've been fortunate to work. I worked for two of the top older operators in the industry And I spent a lot of time with my first company I was 18 years with them And then my second company I was a little bit over five years.

Speaker 1: 3:07

So there's some solid runs.

Speaker 2: 3:09

Yeah, yeah, just some great opportunities at those companies and really great people in a great industry. So it was a great, it was just an incredible thing. So I was in a great position as a general segue when I got talking with concert about their needs and where the golf industry is in capital spending and where the portfolio is today and where we could be in the future, and it just sounded like some great synergies between where I've come from and the systems that I've worked within and the relationships that I have throughout that construction, design and hospitality industry to just kind of pull that into the club industry. But for me it's all about the. I love the planning, i love the process. Starting. I teach a couple of classes, i facilitate a couple of classes at Cornell Oh, no way. On hospitality, yeah, hospitality planning. We break it down into five different disciplines in this course. In this course for a certificate, of course, from initial planning to how do you plan your guest room, how do you plan your public space, how do you plan your back of house space And how does that all come together to develop, renovate or build from scratch a hotel. Then I also facilitate a few other facility management classes for them on how. Now, how do you properly run a facility management team in a large entity, a large hotel, convention center, resort, whatever? I enjoy a lot of that aspect And I do other smaller ones too, like contract and contract negotiations and contract administration. How do you properly do that? You know, setting up so you're not just you know putting your skin, you're yourself for your company in trouble.

Speaker 1: 5:10

So what were some of those previous projects like?

Speaker 2: 5:14

For hospitality. For me a project was mostly it could range from a new construction project, you know, 50 million, 80 million, you know, large resort or hotel complex to renovation, you know, and renovations and our type of properties with roll up scale to luxury, you know, would range anywhere from 15 million to. I mean, my largest renovation was actually $100 million in the state of Hawaii on one hotel. So you know my renovation, yeah, the renovation cost raised you know, it was everything in between from 20 million to 40 to 100. But you know the capital spending for the year, my average capital spending, outside of just renovations, which also included capital, you know just the capital needs. the yearly, daily capital needs that a property has with, you know, reshaping, replacements and boilers and chillers and air conditioning units and all that stuff that you know to operate it range anywhere from 150 million to 200 million a year. So I was, you know, really, really, really fortunate again to be in that position to have that type of quantity, to have that type of You know amount of work and you know to oversee.

Speaker 1: 6:41

Now you've been, you know, doing this a while and you're newer with concert. Any like emerging trends or cool things you see happening that you know A are good, but then also that you know concert might be on the forefront of.

Speaker 2: 6:57

Yeah, definitely, you know, as I joined concert over the last year and it was, you know, the learning process of how we look at a club, And it may not be just an existing club we have today, but it might be a club that we're looking at bringing it into the portfolio. It's really interesting to see our ops team and they're so talented and they're so, you know, they're so creative in looking under every stone for a revenue opportunity And that's not. you know that's with existing membership and you know what future membership I look like. They're so creative and learning from them has been crucial the last couple months, really, and what we're seeing, you know the trends I'm seeing are, you know, outdoors venues. you know flexible outdoor spaces that can transfer from, you know, from meetings to events to, you know, to special occasions, and it may be a quasi indoor outdoor space that attracts, you know, groups within the membership. Well, some of the things that we're doing on the interiors clubhouse are our flex spaces. you know flexible event spaces where they can be transformed from smaller to larger space activated with bars. You know we can transform our bar space too, and our member bar space to have great events for the membership And it's just great. It's great to see how our F&B teams are in, our operators, how they really look at these. you know every square foot of the clubhouse and you know are trying to exsituate it and really promote every area that they can. So, and then one of the really cool things I think we're working on that, i think we're on the forefront and it's activating the spaces that are typically dead on the interclubhouse or in the golf course. you know, at any given time. So you know they drive at a range, for example, it's dead right, there's nothing going on. So what we're trying to do is we're bringing in top tracer technology and providing the membership with their own personal top wall. You know experience. So now we can get the families out there, the birthday parties, you know, the graduation parties, just to get together. We can get them out to our day or night out to our ranges and have parties. you know, and it's really exciting to see that come along, and you know we're looking for every opportunity to give our members just a new experience, you know, within the club.

Speaker 1: 9:44

And I'm sure those glow in the dark light bulbs. Oh my God, i'm sure those glow in the dark. golf balls are really popular. then too, they are. They're fine.

Speaker 2: 9:55

It's a great opportunity for the young to get together, You know, and it's not, you know, it's just exciting to be young kids, as you know, and the parents can sit back and enjoy themselves, you know, and have a great family atmosphere. You don't have to wait for, you know, two hours at your local Tottengolf to try to get a bay. you know, come out to your own private one.

Speaker 1: 10:19

I refuse to wait.

Speaker 2: 10:24

Like it's great technology, great fun, and we're happy to bring it to our membership. Any like declining trends or things you see not being as popular anymore, maybe losing its flair or Well, i'd say that would be club by club, you know, in region by region, but again kind of parlays on what we're doing more aggressively with flexible spaces. You're seeing less of that fixed. you know that transfixed dining room, you know, yes, it's only open from this time to this time and you know now, you know it could be, could feel a little stuffy because there's just no activity going on and you might be the one or two you know people in there grabbing something to eat or drink, whereas more of our dining experiences are. They're in flexible spaces that have a flow with the need of the club and you don't feel like you're in a vast wasteland of space, you know, at different times of the day. So I think that the design trends are going more towards that flexible, open, integrated space, if you want to, clubhouse.

Speaker 1: 11:34

What have been some past hurdles? you know in kind of delivering, you know capital projects.

Speaker 2: 11:41

A lot of that stems from COVID, as you can imagine. The supply chains, you know we were fortunate the Gulf initially was, i think during COVID to have a lot of interest, you know, and they were able to continue to operate well. I think projects suffer just because we were very busy. We were very busy with our membership and activities but we couldn't give material, you know, and that goes from lumber to drywall to electrical components, all the way up to, you know, mechanical equipment and anything with a circuit board you just couldn't get. And that's really only come to ease and be more readily available over this early part of this year. So we're just now getting to the point where we can design and plan. We can plan, design and really procure a project under our normal timelines. Then, you know, in the past we were really at a lot of the suppliers' mercy. You know, when we wanted to start a project we had to. Really, you know, we had to sit and wait until we knew when we were going to get product. Yeah, and now we're back into reasonable timelines for most of our products that we need.

Speaker 1: 13:01

Have you noticed any opportunities coming from some of these challenges? You know the only way through is through, and I know everything's like a learning experience, so have you guys learned anything throughout that time in practice?

Speaker 2: 13:18

Definitely. I think it's just being more proactive in the planning, the time that we allow for planning, i think, you know, a lot of times we have these, we have these ideas, we have this desire to jump into a project and then we realize not going to get down as quick as we can, because it takes time to document the project correctly. It takes time to get a permit. I mean, getting projects permitted too has been a Achilles' heel for a lot of municipalities that we work in. But there's those little, those unthought-in-all items that just take longer. And we're, you know the experience that we have as a company and the amount of projects we've done. We've been able to really learn from those and now we're setting up our timelines, you know, with very reasonable expectations and giving ourselves the right amount of that pre-construction, pre-planning time that we need.

Speaker 1: 14:18

Now, how do you contribute to the whole process of acquisitions?

Speaker 2: 14:24

Well, from acquisition side, once we've identified a potential club and our business development team has done their exceptional work with working with the members, the committees and really getting them to understand who we are, how we can help them, how we're here to take that baton and run this club that they so love and have done a great job cultivating we're ready to take that next stop Once they agree with that. And then the ops team and myself that's when we get involved. We go in and we look. The ops team does a great, the operations team does a great job of again assessing where are the opportunities. There's things that are going great in the club. There's maybe some hidden gems of low hanging fruit. There might be some more long term strategic ideas that we start talking about. And then that's when I come in, we start pricing that out. We put a budget together. It could be as simple as hey, what's it going to take just to do a carpet change for this clubhouse? Or what's it going to take to build an event center or a pavilion or, like I said, an outdoor decks, event space? what's all that going to cost? And I work, i put a budget together and we all agree on what also visiting I forgot to be the big point was also listening to the members, too, why they are confident in us, but what they'd like to see within capital from us, that's we have the capital. There's a lot of times we're coming in because they don't have the capital. They have a lot of great ideas and a lot of desires, but they just don't have the capital that we're able to put it in the clubs. And so we listen to them and most of the time we're coming in, we're building our capital plans based on what their current needs already are. That's the first step And then taking our growth and our ROI type projects that we know will accentuate and be profitable for the club in the future. So that's when we're working together to build these budgets And these built budgets. Well, it might be initial capital day one. That's how the other beauty we are ready to put capital in day one. We don't have to wait for a reserve to build, we don't have to wait for a construction loan to be bought out. We're ready day one. So we have additional capital that we want to put in. Then we have a two and three year plan that we put together and we complete over that time And things come in and out, as you know. As your own real estate do, things pop in and become more of a priority, and that's again the benefit of having a company like Concert. we can add and flow with those needs And if we need more capital than what we originally planned, it's available And we're ready to do the right thing for the club and its members.

Speaker 1: 17:37

That's very big. I think that's when you start seeing. The value is when stuff like that happens and how it's handled. So how else does Concert differentiate itself in terms of the planning and the execution of capital? And those are just two cool things. How else do they show their value?

Speaker 2: 18:02

Well, i think the value created is again getting in right away and having that capital available, as opposed to a member-owned equity club. They've got to raise the capital on projects that they're talking about and assess the membership, and we don't do that. We say from day one there'd be no assessment. Capital is on us, capital is what we're going to be responsible for. That helps in one way of getting quicker into the projects. But the way we address capital is again we listen to the members but we go right into design. We have design experts that know the club world. We have procurement experts that know the right sources. We've got contractors lined up all over the country that knows the needs of a club, of how we have to get in, phase it correctly and get out in the certain off-seasons that we have. And unfortunately, with member-owned equity clubs, they're working on committee basis, right. So you might have a committee in design, then you might have a committee for finance And then you've got to get it. You have a committee maybe overseeing the construction And those people are working hard. Those people are volunteering their time and their resources for the good, but they're experts and professionals at something else. They're trying to do what's best for the membership, but they're the lawyers and the doctors And then the sales professionals, and they need to be doing that And they need to be coming to the club and enjoying the club and not having to worry about all of the ins and outs and the struggle of doing major projects. So I think our advantage is that again we listen, we understand the needs but we're able, just from our expertise and our systems and our resources throughout the hospitality construction industry, we're able to get in and just enter and attack these projects a lot quicker and a lot more thoroughly in detail than I think most of the other clubs are able to do on the one-off basis. And I've got economies of scale. I'm working on four, five, six projects a year of renovation. So I've got economies of scale where I'm able to. I've got the large quantity discount pricing on carpets, on lighting, on seating, on mill works, for bars, for everything. So it's again the one-off club members. They don't have that advantage for mass cost reductions and we fortunately do.

Speaker 1: 20:58

Yeah, that's Peter and I were talking about that on. I think it was the last episode on finance. just like the savings and buying power is just massive. It is.

Speaker 2: 21:09

And that's my job is to get out there too, to these manufacturers and teach them who who Codser is, and then piece them who the 30 other clubs that we have within our group and know that, hey, I'm doing a lot of work And I've got a lot of capital out there billions of dollars and I'm bringing. I don't have to have just one carcass manufacturer or one seating manufacturer, I have two or three. So we don't get the right answer on a time. Somebody tells me it's a 12-week lead time and I need it in 10. I can go to the next manufacturer until I get the right lead time And again, we have the resources to do that and to search for and make sure that we're getting these projects done efficiently, quickly, so the members don't feel the pain. That's the biggest thing. I don't want them to feel the pain. I want them to be able to just one day see it and go wow, you guys, we're done, Yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:08

Just disrupt their flow as much as possible and get them out there using the services. Yeah, what does an acquisition really involve? What's that process?

Speaker 2: 22:21

Well, you know, once we get involved from an operational and capital standpoint, the first assessment is, again, condition. What are the conditions? You know, that's when I'm typically on a club. I'm walking around meeting with the current general manager and the staff, even meeting some of the members. You know, when you're saying, what are your future plans, what have been your future plans? What are your needs? I could see with my own eyes. You know what some of the needs are, but I want to hear from them. That's the first step And we assess that and we get all of our data in on what the. You know what. The third process, that may be a list of five projects, it may be a list of 30. Yeah, i don't, you know, you never know. And then you know those are the need, condition-based projects. And then we dive into the once we do what we started with diligence, we do a property condition analysis. That's where we bring in experts, engineers, architects to do a deep dive behind the wall. You know again, i can see and I know what we need from a visual standpoint, but I need somebody to be in the roof, you know, on top of the roof, in the. You know, in the plumbing, in the electrical, make sure there aren't any surprises. You know that we need to know about today, to plan for and budget for. You know I don't want surprises when we're in construction or renovation. I want to be able to plan for it. So you know. Does you know some of the plumbing need to be upgraded? Does the electrical? is it inadequate? You're talking about dealing with some of these historic clubs and clubs that are from the 40s and 50s and 60s And sometimes you find out there's not enough electrical capacity to run the. You know the current equipment that we need, you know, to be successful. That protection, roofs, windows, doors. You know weatherproofing is all of that. You know proper. So you know, or does that need to be planned for? Maybe not, maybe it's not today, but is it something on the radar that you know might need a roof in five years from now? That's great. I want to know for it, i want to plan for it. So it's part of our capital plan. So it's not one of those surprises that you know. Now I need to put most of my capital for the year on a roof. I want to be able to plan for it for the right time, You know. So once we get you know the condition needs, the property condition assessment needs, the infrastructure needs, then we look at those, those what we call growth projects or return on investment project. What are those things that we can add to the club, you know, added value projects. We always add a extension to the driving range. You know, or is it? would it be a? maybe would it be a green's renovation or a bunker renovation that they haven't already been? you know been. You know looking at doing, you know could it be adding an event center or pavilion, like I said earlier. But you know that's get all that data. You know I pull, i pull a budget together. I work with the business development team, but it always has to you know that that budget of initial capital and future capital has to flow with the pro forma And it has to be within the preform of, you know, the integrity of the preform, and then we sit down and if it's not, then we figure out a way that we'd have to. We can make it work. You know, and, and you know, we just really we really work together as a, as a great cohesive team, from business development to operations to, you know, my capital side. You know to, to get to the right capital plan. Yeah, and, and we're really emphasizing now going forward, you know what is that right capital plan. Is it a three year capital plan or is it a five year? Yeah, some, some it's three, some it's five, it just depends, you know. On on on the overall needs Now.

Speaker 1: 26:07

how does it benefit both parties?

Speaker 2: 26:11

Well, it's, you know it. It starts with you know how long has the has the membership committees, how long have they been really working on capital needs? And that's the first question, right, and you know, and, and what we find is these you know these, these clubs that are are at the point where they really see added value to bring in a concert, have been really struggling with, with coming up with their capital. You know their first of all, determining between the groups what is the right capital. You know where should we put capital? That's their first. I think that's their first stumbling block with within a lot of these, these committees and the you know, the members that are just getting a group of people to agree on on on a certain scope I call you know, designed by committee. It's impossible to do that. It's, it's, it's. You know, everybody wants their little piece of it And you know and that and that and that and rents me, so they should. That is their club, that's what they, yeah, what they work hard and enjoy being at. And I think it's just sometimes it's just difficult for them to get off the starting block. And I think if you ask a lot of those type of members, it is they have got great ideas, you know, they got a great vision. It's just it's hard to get on the stumbling off the starting block with with a, with a agreed upon scope, and then and then the biggest question in is where's the funding come from? You know, how, how do we? how do we get the funding for this? Do we take out another loan? Do we assess? No, neither one of those are great ideas. You know, neither one of them they want to do And that's think, that's, that's our, again, our advantage, you know, and our, our added value to these, these clubs, is let us do that for you And changes for you. Your club, your club operates your club, you know you get to now enjoy the club and and we take on that burden And we all benefit from it at the end. Great, great looking clubs, great, you know. Great looking golf course and happy gas, happy employees, happy, you know happy members, that's where it's about.

Speaker 1: 28:16

Are there any cool design trends You know we're talking about trends earlier any cool like design trends you think that are going to help change the future of private clubs?

Speaker 2: 28:28

Design trends, you know you, extraordinary, really great. I think it's really the evolution of, again, the F and B. I think that's what's going to change most in the club, not having going back to the later. earlier we talked about the very box set, siloed areas of the club. you can only have dining here, you can only have the bar here, you can only have this here. I think the new trend is so much more flexible, open, free flowing, just like we all live in our houses, our living, our kitchen's living rooms, dining rooms. They're all one space. now It's all one space and that's how the clubs should feel and should react. Other than having separate ballrooms and board rooms for events, the rest of it should be very transitional. It trends from a design standpoint where you talk colors and styles and all that. That's again very demographic, very locational related, and it's trendy. What's going on right now. That's what we try. We work really hard not to be trendy in our design. We want, first of all, what is the history of this club and that design is going to match that history and play off of it and accentuate that history. It's not going to be so trendy that in a couple of years you're going to feel like you need a renovation. That's not how we think and how we look and how we choose our materials and our design. Ours should be everlasting, and the condition should be the only thing that drives us to renovate again in the future, not something that's out of date in style.

Speaker 1: 30:28

How do you measure the success of your design projects?

Speaker 2: 30:33

Well, at the very beginning of the project we sit down and we do an assessment where we match what the members would like to see in that renovation. We talk to the staff who's been working within that club for a long time what operational needs we have. We think about again what are those growth type projects, those growth type areas that we can bring into the club. At the end of the day, if we've matched up all of what everybody has put in there and what their desires are, then I think that's success. Again, somebody's not going to like the color gray or the color gray red. I can't make everybody happy about that, but what I can make them happy about is when they walk in the doors. We've given this club every element and every advantage that it needs to be successful and we've given the members everything that they could want for in an experience. When I see people enjoying it after renovation, sitting around enjoying it and just loving it, that's not making me happy.

Speaker 1: 31:52

How long is a normal design?

Speaker 2: 31:59

Once we have the plan there's a plan, we want to go renovate the witness club then it's typically about a four to five month design process, working from zero to 100% completion of design. Then we have typically another four month process for procurement depends on where those products are coming from, if they're domestically, international or where, how much time it takes to make those products. Once we know when our products are going to be hitting or where we're working, we start the renovation. That renovation could be anywhere from, depending on the size and the scope. Could it be anywhere from a three to five month renovation, depending on the complexity of it. It works itself in to be about a year or so from really that birth of that idea to finishing up and having members back in the club.

Speaker 1: 33:07

What's your approach to planning and executing all these renovations without disrupting the member experience? We touched on it earlier. But how do you do that? What steps do you take? You guys have done so many, especially with hotels and all that stuff too. You must from your work in the past. It's hard stuff doing it as things are continually going daily. How do you all manage that?

Speaker 2: 33:35

It depends. Is it a very seasonality aspect to it? We obviously want to be renovated in the lowest season. I just finished. We're just wrapping up a project in Denver. We were able to do it through the winter when the club's not even really being used. We shut the club down, still providing some events and some activity outside for the members in Colorado Snow related activities. They did a great job doing some F&B and events for them on the weekends with snow tubing and ice skiing, things like that. We were fortunate to close that club. We were able to get the entire club under renovation at one time. We took that five months to completely renovate it. It wasn't the clubs that we can't close down and it's not feasible. Or just looking at our clubs in Florida, they're open all year round. Most of the southeast right You're open year round. We just have to look for the low I'm using a term from House of Diarr low occupancy times right When there's less events going on. There's really very few club activities going on and that's again could be the first quarter of the year. So we really worked. And those that are still operating, where we don't wanna shut down the restaurant and the bar at the same time, maybe we wanna, we work on half the clubhouse, with working on the bar and the dense space, but we keep the restaurant space open and still provide the guests. I have no members an outlet to come to in addition to the golf, in addition to golf. So again, that's so. Location-wise, everything, everyone was different, unless again you're seasonal Colorado or Northeast, where the clubs truly do shut down. Yeah, those are nights to have Right.

Speaker 1: 35:43

How do you incorporate sustainability and kind of a little bit more eco-friendliness into your construction projects?

Speaker 2: 35:52

No, we're always looking for the opportunity. That's the first thing that we talk about when we sit down with our design team, my architectural and engineers. I just I don't want it to be the same old way of doing things. I want them to look at what are we more sustainable product? We're doing a lot less wall covering in wall miles because we much rather do have painted products, and that's less waste, that's less of the OV type of output. We look at carpets. We look at carpet squares that don't have to use glues. We look at sustainable product sustainable recycled carpets. We look at fabrics that haven't come from recycled products too. There's a lot of that. Used to be really hard to do that and be sustainable in an interior type renovation or new construction, but they're becoming more and more ways for us to incorporate that From an infrastructure side or from a plant side. A lot of the equipment we buy we want it to be as efficient as eco-driven as we can. We're designing new air conditioning systems all the time that are highly efficient, using less gas, using less carbon dioxide, putting out less carbon dioxide, and try to do not only what's great for us. Can we see a return on that but it's the delta between the costs have come down so much that it's you have to look at everything you're doing in a sustainable way. Now it's good practice and I know our Agronomy Department carries that from the course too. I mean they have the same desires and the same opportunities that everywhere they look, they're trying to be sustainable And how we can be. we can show that our value of coming in and taking that burger tron without them losing it in the touch and the home that they feel there at the club. And I think that's probably their biggest fear. And we try, i think. I think once they get out and see our clubs and talk to other members who've gone through that other board members, other dis-cadral members I think that they're surprised to find it. We don't affect that. We really truly do what we say. We come in, we do your projects that you need, we provide other value-added projects and we spend our capital. You don't have to come with any of that. You just get to now, just be a member and a joint member of the club right, sit back, relax, enjoy.

Speaker 1: 38:40

That's what we want.

Speaker 2: 38:41

That's what we want to stress.

Speaker 1: 38:43

Well, i appreciate you being on here. I'm sure we will have more conversations. Thank you, phil, for coming on the show, really appreciate it. Look forward to having you on in the future as well. There's that episode of Board Chats. We's ended by our friends over at Concert Golf Partners, our chief owner-operator, black Private High End Golf and Country Clubs nationwide. If you're interested in recapitalization or just how the process works, or just want to say hi, head on over to ConcertGolfPartnerscom. That's ConcertGolfPartnerscom. If you would like to recommend a topic for Board Chats, head on over to privateclubradiocom. Drop us a line and we'll be more than happy to discuss it on our next episode.