MILL CREEK – Since Mill Creek Country Club opened in 1975, members have enjoyed belonging to one of the premier private golf clubs in the north Puget Sound area.
Sort of.
Though everyone pretty much loved the golf course, many members were not happy with their non-proprietary membership agreements, first with United Development Corporation, the original developer of the entire Mill Creek community, and later with Trajal, Inc., which bought the club from UDC in 2001. The members longed to have equity memberships, which would give them actual ownership of their club.
“Quite honestly, I think we used to feel like second-class citizens,” said Rick Jorgensen, a Mill Creek CC member for almost 20 years. “There’d be days when it was nice (weather) and the members wanted to play, but there’d be some kind of outside event scheduled by the owners because they wanted to make money. And they had a right to do that.”
It was, added Bonnie Gemmill, another longtime member, “like being a guest because someone else owned it.”
The dream of many members, then, was to pool enough money to buy the club if it ever came up for sale, which it did a year ago. On June 29 that sale closed, meaning Mill Creek CC (which includes an adjoining tennis club) today belongs to its equity members – 226 and counting.
“I think you already see a difference in attitude,” said Jorgensen, who is part of the club’s new nine-member board of trustees and is president-elect for next year. “There’s more pride in the club than there was even three weeks ago. It’s a different feeling going to a place that you’re a part of, rather than just being a customer.
“The members are now the owners, and that’s the bottom line,” he said. “This puts us on a par with Inglewood (Golf Club in Kenmore), Everett (Golf and Country Club) or Sahalee (Country Club in Redmond). We’re not second-class citizens anymore, by any means. We’re now a member-owned club and we’re proud of that.”
“The atmosphere has just been humming, just buzzing,” Gemmill said. It is, she went on, “the pride of ownership. Before, we could make recommendations and (the owners) could either hear what we wanted or not. But now we get to fix the club up the way we like.”
Over the years, Mill Creek CC’s membership had the right of first refusal to buy the club if it went on the market, but two previous bids by the members fell short, the last time when UDC sold to Trajal. This time, though, current members and about three dozen new members stepped up and bought $25,000 equity memberships, with current members getting credit for the cost of their previous initiation fees with UDC and Trajal.
The reason this effort succeeded, said board president Barney Dotson, is because “everybody had a burning desire to become a private club. And I think when people realized that we had crossed the line in the purchase and that we were raising money, it just seemed to snowball. They saw that this could be a reality.”
As the deal neared completion, he said, “the attitude changed completely and it’s just been overwhelming to me. It’s our club now and there’s been a big push to do a lot of things. Everybody is coming up with ideas and everybody has volunteered to help. There’s just so much pride in ownership at the moment and I think things are only going to get better.”
The goal, Dotson said, was to raise at least $3 million, meaning members would have to finance some $2 million for the $4 million purchase price, $360,161 for the balance of the course management contract with Forest Valley Golf, Inc., and other costs that ended up pushing the final total to around $5.25 million.
Instead, members raised $4.3 million, leaving only about $1 million to be covered by a loan. That, Dotson said, was “the greatest satisfaction … having people step up to the plate and support the purchase of the club by raising that $4.3 million. There was just a lot of momentum for this to be a member-owned club.”
There is also a push for continued growth. Mill Creek has around 340 total members (including those previous members who did not upgrade to equity memberships), and the goal is to reach 400.
“We’re going to go out to the community … and try to raise the additional memberships,” Dotson said.
Including, Gemmill added, finding women to join what she called “a very active” women’s club.
Some changes have already occurred, most notably the hiring of general manager Simon Spratley along with other new staff. For now, though, no changes have been determined for either the golf operation or the course itself, although nine committees have been formed to evaluate all aspects of the club.
In time, there will be member assessments for capital projects because, Dotson said, “assessments are part of life in a country club.” The irrigation system will eventually need to be replaced, he explained, as well as repairs to the cart paths and clubhouse.
“But for right now,” he said, “we’re still getting our hands around what we’ve got. Nothing is going to happen overnight. It’s not going to be knee-jerk. People need to express their opinions on what needs to be done at the club … so they understand where we’re going and how we’re going to get there.”
Still, whatever changes do occur, Jorgensen said, will be “changes that the members want, rather than changes that the owner wanted. Because now the members own the club.”
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