The Community That Changed a Nation...

Okay, (flaunting my ignorance) so where is the Lakes Club?

 

If you walk to the top of Meeker Mountain (Viewpoint Lake Pavillion) and look east of the lake towards El Dorado you will see a 38,000 sq ft building. There's a nursing school in part of it; the rest sits vacant. At one point Theater Works used it for plays when there's burned down. When Meeker built it, it had multiple bars and restaurants. Now it has dozens of classrooms. Plus, it has amazing lake frontage that could be developed far better than it is. The building is owned outright but the land under it is owned by the Sun Health Foundation (holding it as a land lease). It is the one amenity the Webb Corporation didn't deed back to the community.

 

Well I have reached that stage with my knees where I don't walk to the top of anything, but I think I get the idea, thanks, Bill.

 

I get the icky feeling the Lakes Club will not be coming back available again. Banner Health and the Foundation have turned the space into medical/dental school, and since there is big money in school tuition, endowments, as well as Banner has consumed the space in its entirety. When looking on maps, the Lakes Club has been removed and its been renamed Banner School of Nursing.

The opportunity we could have had was never really presented to the board in a way it could have been made feasible, as I don't feel it was pursued in a way to have made it viable.

The mall next to the Bell Rec Center really is a reality that should be considered from my standpoint. That much acreage already developed, can be turned into something really usable. Let the leases expire, buy them out, whatever, but the retail market and brick and mortar stores are dying off, and where else can you get access to that kind of land anywhere in SC? Big expense, but land is not getting any cheaper in the area that is usable. The vacant lot on 99th and Union is too small, and with the expansion of Boswell, any additional chance at any land owned by the foundation is going to be nil to none. One more reason the Lakes Club will be forever a part of Banner and not the RCSC. Sorry

The address is 10484 W Thunderbird Blvd, Sun City, AZ 85351, It's name is Grand Canyon University Banner Boswell.

 

Wow, lots of stuff to respond to. For starters, i am an eternal optimist...unless people do really stupid crap over and over again, at which point my optimism becomes jaded. Rightly so, in my not so humble opinion.

So let's sort through the crap for some positive stuff and some not so. I subscribe to the great philosopher, Yogi Berra who stated brilliantly; "it ain't over till it's over." Hence i still have hope one day we will own the Lakes Club. And to your point E, no those who had the where-with-all did a horrible job trying to secure ownership. What they did was to pretend to try and take ownership. There's a huge freaking difference.

You are right, that's yesterday's news. Here's why it matters; those people who failed the first time around are still out there directing traffic. Sorry, i would love to be all warm and smarmy over our leadership but it is what it is. They were the ones who told us to shovel money at golf and now rounds are dropping like a rock and suddenly we need to make investments in our future based on data. Damn, where were they when a couple of us were screaming, "golf rounds around the country are on the fast downhill slope." Why would we be any different? Crickets, that's what we heard were crickets.

No, to my knowledge, neither of the "technology" candidates are running this year. Might have something to do with how ugly last year turned out. Always sucks when one of the biggest clubs in the community is bragging how they elected the winners. That coupled with how poorly the attack on their sexual orientation was handled.

Yet again, all yesterdays news. Except, we still are virtually nowhere in the quest to become more technologically driven. Our proposal from the long range planning committee for Request for Proposals (RFP) on a full evaluation of the communities technology needs was shot down, even though it was advanced by the chair and co-chair when we met and got support by email of the committee. Seems once it hit someones desk, it wasn't a good idea. Go figure. We did agree to "rethink" it next meeting. Lovely.

This is the prefect thread to have these discussions. There's several reasons i am writing our history in a readers digest version. One of them is to help people get their head around how and why Sun City was successful. Even the guys who built it, were smart enough to know it wasn't a one person show. It was a collective and collaborative process where input helped insure the best outcomes. Letting John Meeker decide everything would have been disastrous. Best of all, genius that he was, he understood it was a fools game to set himself up as the sole arbiter of all things right for a community he would one day walk away from. That is just as true today as it was back in the 60's and 70's; the more the GM and the board trust the community to be involved, the more they help create a community that works for the masses.

It will sound immodest, but tough; i probably know the community as well as anyone, (short of Ben or one or two others). Here's what that means, nothing. Because, ultimately, whether you know it all or know nothing, this community belongs to everyone that lives here, that has lived here. The more and better we reach out to the "owners" the better the chance to get it right. The more we keep the decision making process contained and controlled in small offices in the bottom floor of the Lakeview Rec Center, the bigger the chance to get it wrong. If they never made a mistake, i'd be more inclined to let them run wild. Sorry, that's not even close to being the case. We're all human, hence we error. It's why over the years, engaging the community was so successful a tool.

A couple of us begged the board/gm to open the doors and talk to the community about buying the Lakes Club. Not even a sniff of a chance, as we were told to keep it all quiet. That worked out well for us, all it did was insure we stayed on the all-golf-all-the-time train. As we move forward, we need to find ways to engage the community on wholly different levels. Technology can be one of those avenues we can use to grow the circle. Sadly, it can't be done with what we have now. It's why several of us on the long range planning committee are pushing for a complete reboot on how we reach the community.

Think i'm blowing smoke? One of the goals for this year was the ability to buy tickets online (something both Sun City West and Sun City Grand have been doing for years). Let's see how our roll out goes, how smoothly it runs and how widely accepted it is. Yet again, another simple test.

 

If you want us to chip in you'll need to name names. Please.

 

Hmmmmmmm. Well, did you inhale first?

 

Kat Kyle Kimmel and Jill McCullough

 

Thanks and please remind me again if they run again.

 

To Jill and Kat, if you are reading this, please do consider running again. The two of you have the qualities and experience this corporation needs. I also feel you folks know how to lead and not just follow.

You both will have my support and if you need help getting signatures, I suspect we have numerous folks willing to help get signatures as well as offer support in many ways. Know you have caught our attention with you skills and abilities.

I offer all of the support I can muster, and hope to see your return to the election roster.

 

I don’t know how much kinder I can be. Said with a smile.

 

You could have cookies & milk.

 

"2. Three (3) Directors in a manner set forth in the Corporate Bylaws, shall be elected each year to serve for a term of three (3) years and shall serve until their successors are installed. A Member/Director may be elected to a maximum of two (2) three-year terms, six (6) years total, on the Board of Directors.(Approved by the membership on Nov. 20, 2003)". I have recently reread this and it now has me curious. Can I run for the board again, as I did not get to have two (2) three year terms. One was only a partial term to back fill a vacancy due to another director leaving due to illness. Shouldn't that really count as an appointment, based upon the bylaws? Curious am I as to how this should really shake out.

 

EM, I was elected to a one year term, then reran for election and was elected to a three year term, thus a total of four (4) years. As I read the bylaws, "The term of office for an elected Board of Director shall be three (3) years. At the annual election, three (3) Board of Directors shall be elected for three (3) year terms. One, two or three-year elected terms enter into the six (6) year limit set forth in the Articles." Does not preclude a second term, only the amount of years service. I only have four years of service. Could I run again and serve 2 years of service and meet the requirements of the terms and the years?

And the answer is yes, I would run again if I can figure out how to.

 

Back to the object of this thread. How the history of Sun City makes it as great as it is today. It takes people willing to be outside of the box thinkers, those willing to shake the status quo, and realize how great life and living in this community can be. John Meeker lived his life to the fullest, yet made it a point to serve others in ways which created opportunities for a great community to thrive and grow. Can't wait for the next installment.

 

Just wrote the two cut lines we will be using for this weeks edition. Way too much fun to try and find the right pictures to tell the story, especially for those who don't want to read the whole thing.

Coincidentally, i stopped by the RCSC meeting this morning. I got there late and damned if it wasn't rapping up after a half an hour. Guess pickings were slim and so they cruised through it. They pulled the proposal regarding RFP's (Request for Proposal) from technology companies so we can re-evaluate it next month. Seems the idea wasn't "loved" by everyone.

All of which makes me smile. John Meeker was a genius and yet he was more than willing to ask those living here what they thought, felt was important. It is such an incredible lesson; the idea any one person should have all the answers is silliness personified. The more the board and management isolate themselves from the bigger picture discussions regarding the community, the more likely they are to come up short.

 

Easily my favorite to date: #11 Sun City...The Renaissance.

 

Most people are clueless, until they read the story and it all becomes clear. There's a chance, without John Meeker, Sun City would have stopped at Grand Avenue, Sun City West, Sun City Grand and countless other age restricted communities would never have happened. It's that dramatic.

When i wrote the header, The Community That Changed A Nation, it wasn't just blowing smoke.

 

Thanks Emily. Still working is going to be an overriding theme for years to come. Back in the early 60's they featured an entire series of ads centered on working men and women buying into the community. In fact, they used real Sun City residents in them. And of course back then 50 was the qualifying age, so there were more folks that did buy were still working.

The challenge with the GenX golfers will be they will be looking for quality, not quantity. The rounds they do play will be less, hence having a different course every day of the week is meaningless. All of which having a meaningful long range plan all the more important. In writing the series, while some things were trial and error, there is a clear path of successes we should be paying attention to. Sadly, we aren't.

 

Personally, I think we need a different plan... a plan that reduces our golf footprint. Otherwise, at it's current size/number of courses, golf will eventually become a money sponge that will increasingly consume RCSC budget as climate and regulatory changes become less friendly to the sport. The number of golfers is declining so I fear Golf in SC will be unable to remain any semblance of "revenue neutral".

From an article published in 2017 on Marketwatch.com: