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February 21st, 2020
Hello Residents and Members,
Congratulations on your purchase of these two beautiful golf courses! We look forward to preserving, protecting and transforming these assets. Now is an exciting, fast-moving time of transition and we would like to share as many updates as we can. Our updates include information about new hires, course maintenance, and menu development. We are working diligently to open the courses for the golfers that we know are chomping at the bit to play and to enhance the available offerings for our resident members. While not all of this information is complete, we did not want to wait any longer to start our dialogue with you.
New Names
A great bit of news, which you may have recently seen announced, is the renaming of the golf courses. Both names reference the natural beauty of the community and share a great sense of geographical pride. The former East is now The Club at Sugarloaf. The abandoned clubhouse over there will get a huge facelift and will bear the name Sugar Shack. The former West is now The Club at Valley of the Moon and the Quail Inn will be Luna.
Team Members
We have already hired Greg Anderson as General Manager, Debbie Reiber as Controller and Operations Manager, Alison Prather as Event and Activity Planner (she’s in charge of all the fun ), and Dustin McIntosh as our Golf Course Superintendent. Dustin is joining us from The Fountaingrove Club, having been super there for the last many years. His first official day is Monday Feb 24th.
Our AGP team is Larry Galloway, Kenna Galloway, Chris Hamill and Pat Kelley. Larry is the senior partner in the group and visionary for our plan. Kenna is our communications, advertising and marketing lead. Chris primarily is responsible for permitting, renovations, infrastructure repair and replacements, as well as all equipment purchases and leases. Pat is the project lead and the point person that all decisions flow through. He will work hand in hand with the local team leaders and our employees to execute our plan.
Golf Course
As we all know, the golf course has been shut down for nearly a month. The irrigation system was depressurized and turned off during that shut down. I can’t overstate how big a deal that is, or how important getting the irrigation system back up to function is. This can be a difficult task and includes lots of pressure blow outs and repairs. Fortunately, we have flown in three folks from our other clubs to get going on this challenge and other maintenance priorities. These priorities include deciding what equipment needs replaced, spraying for a few diseases, and working toward fertility and weed control. I could type a book on all of this, but I think I will stop here. As soon as Dustin is on board, he will immediately start hiring and training our maintenance team. Please be patient and trust that we are moving as fast as we can. It’s in everyone’s interest—especially ours—to open the golf course as soon as possible, so that golfers can resume activity and we can collect some money.
Clubhouse and Food and Beverage
I’m happy to say we’re way down the road with the development of our initial menu. We’ll offer the best ice cream from the top ice cream producers in the country. We’re buying our beef from a farm in Kansas, and it’s going to be awesome. We’re using the same supplier Salt and Stone uses—but ours will be a better cut . We’re getting bread, pastries, and treats from Costeaux. Danny Barbos from Italy is coming in to train our soon-to-be-hired chef and cooks on his pizza, pastas, sauces, salads, and appetizers. Our professional Southern Pride rotisserie smoker should arrive the first week of March and Otis Pollard, our competition BBQ champion, is flying in from Georgia to train everyone on world class BBQ. Our initial seafood provider will be Costarella Seafoods. This past week while some of the team was in town, we worked on sourcing locally roasted coffee and we are close with both our provider and the machinery we intend to purchase for great drip coffee and espresso drinks.
Unfortunately, what I can’t tell you is when to expect all the permitting and remodel work to be complete, which has to be completed in order for us to use both clubhouses as intended. I should have much more on that for the next update, as that information and the timeline it reflects are getting close to being clear.
Golf Membership Options
Our next update will also include our complete list of options for Golf Membership. You can expect options to join Sugarloaf and Valley of the Moon separately or combined. You can expect a monthly pay option or a prepaid, discounted option. There will be a new membership type that we always find great success with—the Practice, Learn and Play membership—which is an ideal option for those that just want to play in the afternoons. There’s a lot more to come on this but we are close to finalizing our offerings. As you may know, per the lease agreement, any legacy members from the former Oakmont Golf Club can retain what they already had or change to a new category that fits them better. More to follow on this soon.
Thank you all for your patience and support during this time of transition. We are moving as quickly as we can out of this phase so we can begin the new. This has been a long engagement, but we are only ten days into the marriage and the team has made great progress considering that. You will be hearing from us with more updates soon.
All the best,
Larry and the team