05-10-2021 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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MINUTES OF THE ORONO CITY COUNCIL MEETING Monday, April 26, 2020 6:00 o’clock p.m. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Page 5 of 10 12. PARKS COMMISSION CHAIRMAN’S UPDATE – Continued money and they are reinvesting it back into the parks in the City. In the past, Chair Roath thinks there were some missed opportunities; last year proved the golf course can be successful as the rounds at least doubled (estimated around 16,000) and had almost double revenue. Expenses pretty much stayed the same in that doubling of the revenue. He demonstrated a swing of $163,000 in one year at the golf course which is pretty incredible and proves that people like the course and enjoy coming out. The pandemic was the reason many people went to the course and now is the time to think about how to get people there post-pandemic. Chair Roath said the 100-year anniversary is in three years and the approach is to stage some of the things to finish in 2023 and culminates in a celebration in 2024. The group wrote three vision statements for the summer business which helps guide what they do and the first is: Orono Golf Course is an accessible golf course. Its reasonable, competitive fees are commensurate with style and quality of the 9-hole course. A focus for the Orono Golf Course is to build a sustainable business that continues to be popular with locals, adult leagues, and other regulars. Chair Roath noted accessibility means they are not trying to be a premium, elite golf course. They also want to take a business approach to this and continue targeting the same customers that have been visiting the golf course for years. A reason this is a good time to move forward is because there is a changing competitive landscape in golf courses – they are going away – and at the same time people have changing preferences for how much time they spend on the golf course and this feeds in well to a 9-hole course. Over the last couple years, Jason Goering has made great improvements to the course, removing trees, irrigation work, improving the turf, and equipment investments. Now they think they need to invest in the business side. Seals noted there was a pretty significant drop in rounds shown on screen over a few years. Mayor Walsh said there were years they could not open the course until May because of rain and sometimes they had rain the entire month of June. He noted if they lose a month, it is hard to make that up. Edwards said the biggest correlation in the number of rounds tends to be how good of an April they have. There have been past years where the course opened in March and those are fantastic years. It also depends on when the rainy weather is as last year it was the perfect storm of COVID and it rained in the middle of the week and weekend weather was great. They got great numbers on weekend play. Chair Roath continued saying the second statement is: The Orono Golf Course is a nine-hole course with facilities to host casual corporate events, fundraisers, and other large centrally organized groups. This is currently a missed opportunity as there are some current limitations that must be addressed to capture more of this type of business. These limitations include the inside space as the clubhouse is small, limited parking, and they do not have staff capable of selling group events and managing them. Chair Roath shared the third statement: Orono Golf Course offers a great pairing of fun golf, and easy “apre-golf.” Or skip the golf and socialize with friends overlooking the beautiful landscape. The theme here is food and beverage; they need to offer something that will keep people there before, during, and after they golf. He noted food and beverage sales are extremely small compared to the golf sales; he thinks the demand would be there if they had the offerings but in the past the sales have not been there. It is a question of whether they are offering enough, the right food and beverages that people want, and the staff capable of