Let's Talk SAC...

But don't forget, perhaps some golf courses will be closed but they can't be sold to a developer unless the sale is approved by the Membership (hopefully 500 people!). And even then, there's still that 10 year deed agreement stipulating that it must remain a golf course for 10 years so I'm not sure that even if the property was sold that that 10 year requirement must still be played out?

Not sure what the tax base is on a golf course but suspect it's lower than normal commercial property? And if the RCSC were to simply change the area into Green Space I would suspect that the tax base would be even less?

Lots of unknowns, but I stick to my position that I believe Sun City is bloated and whatever they decide to do at the Mountain View location it should reflect that fact!

Just my opinion!

 

So we are really clear, not talking about RCSC golf courses. The 3 private are Sun City Country Club. Palmbrook Country Club and Union Hills. They too have covenants but once they go to seed and are fenced home owners become more more flexible.

 

Roger-that, but there is still a state statute (42-13154) that covers the conversion of ALL golf courses, and that requires the property will not be changed for the duration of the deed restriction, but I get it. If it's a privately owned course it can be sold without the RCSC's approval, however, it would still have to go thru zoning requirements and public hearings.

Not disagreeing, Condo's could be built on private golf course property, only suggesting that there are many hoops to jump thru to actually get it done!

Regarding RCSC courses, it's my understanding that, Yes, home properties values around the golf course would immediately decline, but if that property was just turned into Green-Space the property values would actually increase!

Not looking for an argument, just voicing a different opinion!

 

Country clubs and courses around the country have closed and developed (you can Google it) and there's always a fight from the home owners living on the courses. There usually are deed restrictions but courts have ruled you can't force a course owner to run a business they are losing money on. What they do is fence the course and let everything grow wild. Home owners looking at the eye sore typically become more pliable when faced with finding a workable solution.

The lands value for development is worth so much that a cash settlement can be reached and while the owners would rather have their golf course view, the buyout deal is struck. Sometimes it includes some green space so all is not lost when the developer starts building whatever is going on the property. It's a long slow process, but the 5th water management plan will become the impetus to move it along.

11 golf courses within Sun City is simply unsustainable.

 

You think???? I'll go one step farther. I don't believe viewing just a number (11) accurately emphasis the scale of things, and it's not just about golf courses. Let's take a quick look at the whole picture and exactly what 11 golf courses and 8 recreation centers looks like:

North Course
South Course
Lakes West
Riverview
Willow Creek
Lakes East
Quail Run
Willowbrook
Palmbrook
Sun City CC
Union Hills

Bell Center
Fairway Center
Grand Center
Lakeview Center
Marinette Center
Mountain View Center
Oakmont Center
Sundial Center
Sun Bowl Amphitheater

And...for all particle purposes I would kinda consider the bowling lanes at Bell and Lakeview as 2 additional venues since they are made available to the public.

All that within 14.6 square miles! That's 22 venues! More venues than we have in square miles!

Don't get me wrong, I love having so many amenities available but some of those amenities are on the downswing, like golf and tennis and we need to be smarter with our dollars if we're going to keep pushing the fact that we're the cheapest Sun City.

If you think 11 golf courses within Sun City is unsustainable, then why are we wanting to build another Taj Mahal recreation center at Mountain View?

If you really want to talk about fiduciary responsibilities and sustainability, then you really need to take a hard look at three things:
1. what we actually need
2. what we want
3 what can we afford

Living life is not getting any cheaper and it's time they take a good hard look at utilization data and the costs of maintaining, staffing and utility cost to sustain a rec center.

I stick by my belief...we are bloated! We're an Amusement Park for seniors!

 

I recall a statement that there are 5,000 Sun City resident golfers!
If that is factual, our community, while benefiting aesthetically and in marketability…do we NEED eight RCSC golf courses$$

 

I was going to wait but I have to jump in now. We shouldn't even think of getting rid of anything and we should keep improving what we have. Millions and millions of people play the things some are wanting to get rid of. Millions of people are in dart leagues. Millions of people play table tennis but if ask people walking out of Fry's where you could play they would look at you like you had 2 heads. At the focus group one person told me we should have racquetball; at the working group one told me we should have a garden club. If the people living here don't know how would anyone else? I used to live near an archery range. It was packed every night of the week! We need niche marketing! We have to go after the people that do what we have!!! I don't think we have one amenity or club that wouldn't draw people here if they only knew about it!

I have no interest in keeping rec fees low. That may be why we have the problems we have today. A large number of people moved here because it was the cheapest place around. How many use the facilities? I'm betting a very low percentage. They could care less about how the place is run, as long as you don't raise their fees.

 

Strategic Alternatives Committee Meeting
July 21, 2023

Currently in phase three, developing alternatives and recommendations for the future of RCSC facilities, including a Sun City Performing Arts Center and sports venues.

• Video of 7.21.2023 meeting
HERE

• All inclusive SAC work website:
https://suncityaz.org/rcsc/strategic-alternatives-ad-hoc-committee-sac/

• The committee members who have and continue to dedicate much time and effort:
https://470eec.p3cdn1.secureserver....07/7.12-Public-Use-Only-CommitteeList-003.pdf

 

Hey O&T you struck one of my chords of discontent. We've simply become believers that we don't need to market Sun City and all it has to offer. The argument goes that when we sell 2000 plus homes a year; why bother? What we know historically, no matter how successful Sun City was from 1960-1978, the marketing never stopped. When people bought and moved here, they knew exactly what they were getting, buying into.

After more than 15 years of telling everyone how cheap we were, that's what we have become; a cheap place to live. It's exactly why i've always argued our message mattered; our slogan became our branding. We became the cheap fun place to live. For those with rental properties, it worked out really well. Oddly enough, the RCSC benefited by it as well. As the RCSC membership plummeted from a high water mark of 38,000 to a mid 32,500, they still collected the lot assessments from the rental owners and if the renters elected to buy a privilege card(s), it was even more money in the bank.

It was a circular argument because by keeping everything cheap, we insured rentals and we insured revenue. The questions became; did it help us build and maintain a sense of community. Did it it help us grow the numbers of club members? Perhaps of most significance was this question: Did we stay on top of everything to insure we remained a first rate community?

Based on the RCSC board president's most recent article in the Independent and the added comments from the interim general manager regarding the budgeting process, it sounds to me like there may well be other issues we have neglected as well. Looking back at the cluster-flock we know as our technology disaster, i suspect the truth of where exactly we are is going to be disappointing to many who thought our perfect little Utopia was just that.

Marketing and branding can be an expensive proposition; as can education and communication. Which is also why i have touted those in charge come to grips with our history. The community and the membership can fill many of those voids at a fraction of the price on hiring outsiders. The one thing my good friend Ben taught me was so simple: "just ask them."

 

Went to the SAC meeting today, 7/28, and it didn't appear to me that they are any further along with making a decision than they were when they first started?

Nobody knows what to do with Mountain View, as a whole, or where to build additional pickleball courts, where to build the Performing Arts Center, Mountain View or Lakeview, or how much seating is required???? Seems the seating has now been recommended to increased too around 600?

The elephant in the room is the cost and how much do we have to spend? No numbers have really been stated to any definitive degree because nobody knows, and it's only now that they're going to bring in an architect to help determine what can be done with the space available....anywhere!

The next meeting, when the committee bombards the architect with questions should be interesting.

In the meantime, I have two questions:
1. Why haven't I heard anybody suggest eliminating the Lawn Bowling Court at Mountain View and build additional Pickleball Courts? RCSC currently has 5 Lawn Bowling Courts, 3 of which are in Phase 1.
2. Not to criticize old folks, but....if the Performing Arts Theater is scaled down to about 300-350 seats, are the Players, or whoever else will be using the facility, up to the task of putting on several more performances?

300 seats vs. 600? If you build it, will they come?

 

“ 1. Why haven't I heard anybody suggest eliminating the Lawn Bowling Court at Mountain View and build additional Pickleball Courts? RCSC currently has 5 Lawn Bowling Courts, 3 of which are in Phase 1.” ~ FYI

Insights: Lawn Bowling discussed. High usage for tournaments and all other play, Mountain View and other locations need to remain.
Lawn Bowling is a BIG DEAL!
Strategic Alternatives Committee Meeting July 21, 2023 Video HERE

• Lawn Bowling Presentation - Norm Dickson @ time stamp 1 min 33 sec
• SC Lawn Bowling facilities are Best in the US, considered World Class, the only thing in SC so highly rated, hosted the US nationals, Bell and Lakeview center clubs Oct. 31-Nov. 5. 2022, etc. - Karen McAdam @ 1 hour 35 min

 

This was suggested at the July 14th SAC meeting.

 

Sorry, I missed that meeting!

Did anybody mention the dirty little secret? If you take each Club individually and add up all the members you get a pretty high number. But if you do a deeper dive and cross reference each member by name you will find that many members belong to several Clubs cutting the actual number of members considerably less! At least that's what I was told by a member of the Long Range Planning Committee who was looking into all the utilization numbers.

 

And that utilization data shows limited use of the lawn bowling facilities. The SAC committee does a great job of videotaping the meetings—check it out.

 

Exactly! So why do we need so many?

 

Great question for the SAC. Of course the same could be said for many of the activities in Sun City. It was suggested by a member of this chat group that Sun City is “bloated” with so many facilities.

 

Between sitting in the room and watching the meetings i have missed, it truly has been an enlightening process to watch. It's fairly clear to me, not all stakeholders are created equal (take that however you want). As a lawn bowler i could easily just get on board and say we need 7 lawn bowling greens...but do we really? Do we really need 45 picklelball courts when we are done with MV (we currently have 27). Do we need another tennis venue? All of these are questions we should be answering; both for the short term and the long term.

I just read a lengthy article online this morning regarding theater and they are in trouble around the entire country; and yet yesterday we were told by the Players a 300 seat venue wouldn't be nearly enough; they needed 600 seats. Then to add to the misery index they passed out an interim plan for when MV was down that could add another half a million dollars to the RCSC budget for renting a space for them (by the way, last count showed 94 members).

At some point everyone (and i mean everyone) needs to get real about what we "need" and what we "want." Every single thing proposed comes at a cost. Whatever we build should be future-forward driven. I'm not a fan on FYI's comments we have too much, i am 100% behind his suggestion that we need to determine our costs per center/amenity and being able to pay for them. We've made it too easy to say whatever it costs is fine by me.

The real shocker for the SAC is when the cost to build anything hits the table. Most of the committee have been supportive of the performing arts theater. Watch what happens when the cost to build it eats up the entire budget for the Mountain View remodel. I'll just say it right now, loud and clear: If you build a 600 seat theater with the storage space, dressing rooms and large foyer, there won't be 10 cents left for anything else.

There's been a boatload of mistakes made the past 15 years. In many cases, it is hindsight and like most, i've been guilty of touting how cheap it was to live here. It was shortsighted and folly to think it could go on forever without the bill coming due.

 

You may not be a fan, but you can't deny that based on currently available utilization data none of our amenities are used anywhere near capacity.

The only motivation behind my comments are for just one thing, and that's to live within our means. Build what we need and scale back on things that we don't. Why duplicate amenities when the existing ones aren't fully utilities?

 

Because statistical data is based on open hours, not practical utilization. The easiest for me is to pick on lawn bowls. Virtually no one bowls during the summer months; it's too hot. Our bowling season is during the fall/winter and the data there is wholly different than what happens during the summer. Even with that, when a green is open from 7 in the morning till 8 or 9 at night (equivalent to the center being open) it is unrealistic to assume bowlers on them at all hours of the day.

Let me be really clear, that doesn't apply to just lawn bowls; it's common across clubs and other Sun City activities. Think not, drive by any golf course in the summer when it is 115 and count the golfers. I have data in hand from a board member who did an amazing job extracting golf utilization numbers and during the prime time (Nov-April), golf functions at nearly 100% occupancy. That means any tee times we give to outsiders ahead of members is short-sighted.

But let's not stop there, almost any club with permanent space sits vacant often. The Sun Dial Men's club is a spectacularly successful club donating hundreds of thousands of dollars across Sun City organizations over the years (from bingo). Put a meter on the hours they are open and see how often the space is filled. Many dedicated spaces are more sporadic than having a steady flow of traffic. The point is there are often popular times when people want to go do things. Is the answer telling RCSC members if they want space, they need to go when something is open?

The classic example was Karen's research into flat space and utilization data. I was stunned at how low the percentages were, but think about it. Take for example the Bell social hall. Nice rooms, but clearly underutilized. What's the solution there? Make members go use it when they don't want it or need it? Yet from a practical standpoint, when they need it for dances or gatherings it's a wonderful venue. Same with the flat space at Marinette, same with Sun Dial, same with Lakeview, same with same with Oakmont, same with multiple spaces at Fairway and to some degree that space we were in at Grand yesterday.

More to your point was the argument we heard the week before at SAC when someone said we needed the basketball court at MV. That we needed the multi-purpose space for large gatherings. Really? As i pointed out, a basketball court is 50x94; how many people/chairs would that hold? Which is where and why i agree with you going forward on what we do. Making decisions that fit both our needs and what we can afford makes sense. Coming out of the pandemic everything was turned on it's head. Some clubs will recover, some won't.

The MV remodel is badly needed. What that entails is a whole other discussion. The good news is, those expectations have been tamped down a bit. There's still a lot of work to do and as the financials are discussed, the movement will be even more dramatic. I don't have the answers, it's why i like the SAC and their efforts to date. The realities of what we can afford versus what we want versus what we need will be hitting everyone smack dab in the face.

I suspect that will be our come-to-Jesus moment.

 

And that's what's my main concerned is all about. I don't want to have that "come to Jesus" moment come after the amenities have been built and money spent!