MILL CREEK — Back when Mill Creek Country Club was corporately owned and members paid only for the opportunity to play — glorified green fees, if you will — the idea of enlisting volunteers to trim tree branches and paint the clubhouse walls would have been laughable.
These days, club officials just ask for a show of hands.
One year after members pooled their money to buy the club from the previous owner — Trajal, Inc. — Mill Creek CC remains awash with the pride of new ownership. And it’s not just talk, as evidenced by the turnouts for four work parties since the sale was finalized last June 30.
“Every work party we’ve done, the numbers get bigger,” Mill Creek CC general manager Simon Spratley said. “And I challenge you to find another private club in Washington where you’ll get 30 members showing up on a weekend, which is when they typically play golf, to spend time limbing up trees, digging up old roots and clearing scrub.
“And they haven’t had to be pushed,” he pointed out. “They’ve done so willingly.”
Likewise, 75 percent of the recent interior painting project at the clubhouse was done with members donating their time, Spratley said.
“Going forward, whenever we have things to do, a lot of it is going to be with volunteers,” Mill Creek CC board president Barney Dotson said. “And with the makeup of the people we have here, I don’t think we’ll ever have a problem getting things done. People pitch in.”
“I’m not fully convinced that if we had all resources in the world, there still wouldn’t be a lot of people who’d roll up their sleeves,” agreed board member Pat Baraya. “That typifies the type of membership we have. People put in countless hours. They’re proud of (the club) and they should be.”
From its opening in 1975 until its sale last year, Mill Creek CC was owned by private companies — first by United Development Corporation, Inc., which developed the entire planned residential community of Mill Creek, and later by Trajal.
Members had the contractual right of first refusal to buy the club if it ever came on the market, as it did in 2001 with UDC’s sale. That member-purchase effort came up short and Trajal bought the club, but when Trajal decided to sell in 2006 the members tried again, this time successfully.
At times, said Dotson, who spearheaded the purchase effort, “it was like a mission impossible” due to both legal wrangling and concerns about members being able to raise the necessary money. Still, what Dotson and other supporters employed was, he said, “the sheer determination to make it happen.”
Since the sale, members have delighted in “being able to have a voice in how it’s managed and how the resources are employed,” said board member Garry Loncon. “There were projects that were looked at before that we knew would enhance the club, but that we couldn’t undertake because we just didn’t own it. We had no voice at all. But now as a member-owned facility, we control our own destiny.”
Members have already begun lengthening the course with additional tee boxes. Back tees have been added on the first hole, transforming what had been “a 360-yard, relatively benign par 4 and making it into a 400-yard draw tee shot, so it’s now one of the more difficult holes on the golf course,” Spratley said.
New tees also are being added on the fourth and 18th holes, and should be ready later in the summer. Other holes may be similarly modified in the next few years, Spratley said.
For all the excitement, though, challenges remain, including lagging memberships due largely to a sluggish economy. Mill Creek CC has approximately 290 members (including 80 who did not convert to equity memberships at the time of the sale), and the goal is roughly 370, Dotson said.
To help get there the club has temporarily cut its initiation fee in half, from $25,000 to $12,500. By contrast, initiation fees at nearby Everett Golf and Country Club are closer to $20,000, and at Kenmore’s Inglewood Country Club they are upwards of $40,000.
For that bargain price, plus monthly dues, Mill Creek CC offers all the amenities of a top private club, including a congenial atmosphere, attentive service from staff (including new head pro Ryan Benzel) and, of course, a terrific golf course.
“The club,” Baraya said, “is a vastly different place than it was a year ago. There’s been a real attitudinal change, and I think that’s the main difference. But there are also a lot of plans going forward. And the things we’re doing now are for the members, as opposed to the profitability of a corporation.”
“Our goal is not to lose money,” Spratley said. “But our goal is also not to put a lot of money in the bank (for corporate owners). Our goal, every day, is that the experience for the member has to be exceptional.”
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