U.S. Assets Group News
Stately Golf Hall Sets Tone at The Founders Club
11/20/2005
Stately new Golf Hall sets the tone at The Founders Club
SARASOTA -- If you're among the fortunate few -- an equity membership is $90,000 -- to play a round at The Founders Club, course designer Robert Trent Jones Jr. reminds you of the rules of "the golfe" as the Scots played it.
"Get the ball in the hole," he says, "count your score to see if you were better than the other guy, and go get a drink."
Jones' layout of the recently opened Founders Club course is not intended for the "grip it and rip it" crowd. A Daly-esque long game isn't required to enjoy the par-72 course, he says. Nor is it a resort course designed to leave a lasting impression on the one-time player.
It's a subtle, nuanced golf course, Jones says, that will repeatedly challenge repeat players, with tees placed to accommodate players of varied sizes and strengths.
But no matter their score on the course, players are sure to be pleased when it's time to "go get a drink."
Golf Hall, named for the clubhouse that Col. J. Hamilton Gillespie built 100 years ago at his nine-hole course in Sarasota, was unveiled a week ago in a ceremony that was, like The Founders Club, private and dignified and heavy on the Scottish influences. A bagpipe band played and the Highland Dancers from Riverview High School danced. And even the developers of the 700-acre, 262-home community and "core" golf course -- Tom Brown, Jay Tallman and Fred Starling -- wore plaid golf attire.
Architect Sol Fleischmann, of Tampa's FleischmannGarcia, and interior designer Lori Fountain, of FT Designs, have created a 24,000-square-foot clubhouse with the traditional, low-country architecture found in the coastal South. Twelve miles from the coast (The Founders Club is east of Interstate 75 on Fruitville Road), the architecture is appropriate for the site, which features hundreds of moss-draped live oaks.
Outside, it features wide verandas, a steeply pitched roof with simulated slate shingles, six copper-roofed dormers, tall windows with dark-green shutters, and detailed columns on a brick base. The deep shadows will cool golfers during the summer.
Fountain's interiors are dark and calming, with wood floors, bead-board ceilings and white trimwork. The ceiling details are elaborate, underscoring the interior designer's role in creating the interior architecture, and not just coordinating colors and furnishings.
Fountain has worked with The Founders Club's co-developer, U.S. Assets Group, before. She designed the clubhouse and ouse and three lobbies at en Provence on Longboat Key, and the amenity level at the new Orchid Beach Club on Lido Key.
Fountain says the theme at Golf Hall was to "make it look like it's been there since the early 1900s, to give it a homey feeling." She's done so with weathered brick and copper elements, native woods and pecky-cypress wainscoting. There's plenty of overstuffed leather furniture and even some antiques, including an 1840s English library cabinet that will house trophies.
The ambience continues in the locker rooms, where the lockers are made of cherry and mahogany. The men's locker has a card room with poker tables and a big-screen television, while the women have a private sitting room.
There's also an exercise room and massage room in the fitness center, along with the requisite golf shop. And, in a most non-traditional touch, the golf course has a fax machine on the ninth green, so that members can advance their lunch orders to the kitchen.
Col. Gillespie could not have imagined such a thing.
Nor could the developers have imagined that they would have sold 130 home sites (starting at $400,000) to end users just a year and a half after starting sales.
"If you had told me at this stage there would be sales of 130 lots to end buyers," says Tallman, "I would have never believed it. Our initial (sales) projections were 50 to 60 lots per year. We're well in excess of what we projected."
The developers also thought house-lot packages would start at about $800,000. Now, entry-level is $1 million, with an average of $1.5 to $1.8 million, Tallman said.
Equity membership in the golf club is neither included nor required.
"But there is a strong incentive for buyers to join for resale purposes," said Tallman. "They have a period of time to elect to become a member, but if they have chosen not to, they risk not being able to get a membership in the future, given the limited number of memberships."
With social memberships, the total membership will be capped between 350 and 400, said Tallman, whose company typically develops high-rise condos.
He laughed when asked about comparing the two types of development.
"Subdivision work, there's a different set of challenges you run into there," he said, noting that The Founders Club was five years in permitting and design. "Certainly the whole governmental approval process was even more arduous than what we typically experience with the condominiums."
With model homes now under construction, The Founders Club has 276 home sites; about 130 are sold, with many of the others reserved by the selected builders -- John Cannon Homes, Lee Wetherington Companies, Todd Johnston Homes, Marc Rutenberg Homes, Pruett Builders and Taylor Woodrow Homes. About 100 of the 275 equity golf memberships have been sold.
"Get the ball in the hole," he says, "count your score to see if you were better than the other guy, and go get a drink."
Jones' layout of the recently opened Founders Club course is not intended for the "grip it and rip it" crowd. A Daly-esque long game isn't required to enjoy the par-72 course, he says. Nor is it a resort course designed to leave a lasting impression on the one-time player.
It's a subtle, nuanced golf course, Jones says, that will repeatedly challenge repeat players, with tees placed to accommodate players of varied sizes and strengths.
But no matter their score on the course, players are sure to be pleased when it's time to "go get a drink."
Golf Hall, named for the clubhouse that Col. J. Hamilton Gillespie built 100 years ago at his nine-hole course in Sarasota, was unveiled a week ago in a ceremony that was, like The Founders Club, private and dignified and heavy on the Scottish influences. A bagpipe band played and the Highland Dancers from Riverview High School danced. And even the developers of the 700-acre, 262-home community and "core" golf course -- Tom Brown, Jay Tallman and Fred Starling -- wore plaid golf attire.
Architect Sol Fleischmann, of Tampa's FleischmannGarcia, and interior designer Lori Fountain, of FT Designs, have created a 24,000-square-foot clubhouse with the traditional, low-country architecture found in the coastal South. Twelve miles from the coast (The Founders Club is east of Interstate 75 on Fruitville Road), the architecture is appropriate for the site, which features hundreds of moss-draped live oaks.
Outside, it features wide verandas, a steeply pitched roof with simulated slate shingles, six copper-roofed dormers, tall windows with dark-green shutters, and detailed columns on a brick base. The deep shadows will cool golfers during the summer.
Fountain's interiors are dark and calming, with wood floors, bead-board ceilings and white trimwork. The ceiling details are elaborate, underscoring the interior designer's role in creating the interior architecture, and not just coordinating colors and furnishings.
Fountain has worked with The Founders Club's co-developer, U.S. Assets Group, before. She designed the clubhouse and ouse and three lobbies at en Provence on Longboat Key, and the amenity level at the new Orchid Beach Club on Lido Key.
Fountain says the theme at Golf Hall was to "make it look like it's been there since the early 1900s, to give it a homey feeling." She's done so with weathered brick and copper elements, native woods and pecky-cypress wainscoting. There's plenty of overstuffed leather furniture and even some antiques, including an 1840s English library cabinet that will house trophies.
The ambience continues in the locker rooms, where the lockers are made of cherry and mahogany. The men's locker has a card room with poker tables and a big-screen television, while the women have a private sitting room.
There's also an exercise room and massage room in the fitness center, along with the requisite golf shop. And, in a most non-traditional touch, the golf course has a fax machine on the ninth green, so that members can advance their lunch orders to the kitchen.
Col. Gillespie could not have imagined such a thing.
Nor could the developers have imagined that they would have sold 130 home sites (starting at $400,000) to end users just a year and a half after starting sales.
"If you had told me at this stage there would be sales of 130 lots to end buyers," says Tallman, "I would have never believed it. Our initial (sales) projections were 50 to 60 lots per year. We're well in excess of what we projected."
The developers also thought house-lot packages would start at about $800,000. Now, entry-level is $1 million, with an average of $1.5 to $1.8 million, Tallman said.
Equity membership in the golf club is neither included nor required.
"But there is a strong incentive for buyers to join for resale purposes," said Tallman. "They have a period of time to elect to become a member, but if they have chosen not to, they risk not being able to get a membership in the future, given the limited number of memberships."
With social memberships, the total membership will be capped between 350 and 400, said Tallman, whose company typically develops high-rise condos.
He laughed when asked about comparing the two types of development.
"Subdivision work, there's a different set of challenges you run into there," he said, noting that The Founders Club was five years in permitting and design. "Certainly the whole governmental approval process was even more arduous than what we typically experience with the condominiums."
With model homes now under construction, The Founders Club has 276 home sites; about 130 are sold, with many of the others reserved by the selected builders -- John Cannon Homes, Lee Wetherington Companies, Todd Johnston Homes, Marc Rutenberg Homes, Pruett Builders and Taylor Woodrow Homes. About 100 of the 275 equity golf memberships have been sold.
