Manchester Country Club Gets New Lease on Life

The Manchester Country Club has been around in one form or another since 1917, and owned by the town and operated by a board of directors since the mid-1950s. It’s essentially a public course where golfers can either join for an annual fee that allows them to play as much as they want throughout the year, or opt to pay a “green fee” per round of golf.

But declining membership, and a burdensome lease agreement with the town of Manchester for the right to use the land, almost brought that whole arrangement to an end several years ago.

Now, the club has renegotiated its lease, reorganized its management, and reassessed the way it operates, and by all indications the changes seem to have revitalized the club and repositioned it for continued success into the future.

“Part of our streamlining or reorganization, if that’s what you want to call it, was to sort of take the board of directors and give them a backseat and let the managers actually manage,” said Rick Clough, who was recently named president of the Manchester Country Club Board of Governors, a 13-member panel that oversees the management of the club.

Clough said that among the recent changes that have helped to revitalize the club was an aggressive marketing campaign to help bring in more one-day players, which has helped to shift and stabilize the revenue stream the club now generates away from memberships and dues, as well as a greater emphasize on the availability of the club’s banquet facilities. Matt Gomez, who had served as superintendent of the club for seven years, was also promoted to the position of director of operations, which allows Gomez to make day-to-day management decisions that impact the club and its operations without the need to wait for the approval of the board, who only meet once a month.

“Having an owner/operator of the business on-site all the time, it really allows you to focus on the little details and really operate the place like a business,” Gomez said.

Several years ago, things looked bleak for the club. They were paying almost $250,000 a year in taxes and lease payments to the town for the right to operate the club – the town purchased the land the golf course sits on as part of a larger 1,000 acre purchase of watershed land in 1956, and then worked out an agreement to lease the golf course back to its Board of Governors, who would be responsible for the management and operation of it – while declining membership numbers and an inflexible management system was further hindering the club’s success, according to Clough.

After signing a new 10-year lease agreement with the town in 2008, under the same terms, the club found itself in a position where it could no longer keep up with the payments, and ended up defaulting on its lease. The town foreclosed on the properties onsite, since it already owned the land, and not wanting to be landlords and managers of a golf course, set out to try and find new management for the club.

A public bidding process was solicited, and the club’s Board of Directors was allowed to submit a bid for a new agreement to manage the club. Some members of the Board of Directors were hesitant to re-award the contract to the club, since it had just defaulted on its previous lease, but with only one other organization submitting a proposal, that’s what ultimately happened. 

Clough said he and the other members of the club’s board were keenly aware of the difficulties that arose because of the previous lease, so part of the new agreement with the town was a restructured 10-year lease that he said the club would be better able to manage in the long term.

“That lease is what kind of got us in trouble,” said Clough of the previous lease, which the club defaulted on. “It had a lot of escalator clauses in it.”

Clough said that one of the benefits of the new lease is that the club no longer has to pay taxes on the buildings on site, since the town now owns them, while the town benefits because the club is mandated to perform certain capital improvements and maintain and manage the property, sparing the town the expense and hassle. The annual lease payments are roughly the same under both agreements, although Clough said the changes in management style are already helping to bring in new revenue.   

“The truth is, the Manchester Country Club since it was founded, has paid the town millions and millions of dollars,” Clough said. “You try to find another public golf course that is a positive cash flow for a town. You won’t find it.”

Manchester Mayor Louis Spadaccini was one of the members of the Board of Directors who had concerns about re-awarding the lease to the club after it was unable to keep up with its previous agreement. Spadaccini said the new lease with the club was “much cleaner,” since the town now owns both the land and the buildings, and that it carries protections for the town including an escrow account that the club must keep its capital improvement funds in and a new town-appointed oversight board. There is also a clause that allows the town to end the lease if the club begins to default on it again.

“I had a lot of concerns back when this was done. My concern was awarding this contract back to the party that had just defaulted on it,” Spadaccini said. “The payments in terms of rent and capital improvements were not much different than they had just defaulted on, so I had some real concerns. But having said that, I want to see them succeed and I wish them the best.”

Clough, Gomez and the rest of the club’s new management said they can understand and appreciate those concerns, but also that they believe the club’s new structure and organization, as well as the passion of a small but dedicated group of core members who rallied around the club in 2008 when it appeared as though it was going to go defunct, will ensure that the Manchester Country Club is a thriving and successful public golf course for many years to come.

“I’ve been here for 46 years,” Clough said. “It’s really the camaraderie of the place, it truly is a core group of people that have been here a long, long time that really care about the place. It’s been run by volunteers…people have donated bushes, and trees and rakes for the bunkers and so forth to keep the place in the condition we want it. It’s just a really great feeling (coming here). It’s like walking into Cheers.”