President's Message

It's my pleasure to be the club president this year. I used to think the main activity would be pretty much chairing the board meetings, but we have some challenging activities to deal with this year, most notably the bar renovations, and it has been taking up a lot of my time to work with Robert to get this going, as well as keeping our capital upgrades and improvements underway.

The bar has always been the hub of social activity for the club. Every decade or so it gets a cosmetic facelift of painting, a new rug, and second hand furniture. But now the bar itself and all the equipment are 30 years old and it's time for a complete renovation. There are repair bills every month.

Although these renovations have been a part of our capital plans for a few years, our original budgets were significantly underestimated. After hiring a design company to do our designs, and a lot of good work by the bar committee to select materials and colors, we solicited bids from five construction companies and received detailed quotes, only to find out it was going to cost us a lot more than anticipated.

However, a number of our capital improvements in other areas of the capital plan came in comfortably under budget, a few large items on our wish list can easily be deferred for a year or two, and our reserves will allow us to undertake this activity without risk to the club's overall financial position. The numbers and cash flows were carefully prepared and presented to the board for review in our August board meeting, and the board voted to proceed with the best contractor.

We also consider that the bar is a major investment in the future of the club, and once completed will likely last another 30 years, so we decided that half a job was no job at all, and it is in the best interests of the club to go ahead with a full and complete job to build a bar we can all enjoy and be proud of.

One of the major challenges we have faced has been the time it has taken to get this to all come together, and as such we were unable to proceed with a summer renovation. It was a difficult choice for the board to decide whether to go ahead with the construction now, meaning that for a significant portion of the fall we won't have our bar, or to wait for spring.

We looked at ways that the project could be phased, but there are few options available that wouldn't have to be redone in a full renovation. And waiting till spring means we might all be back in the same position all over again going out for new quotes. So the board decided, for better or worse, to bite the bullet and go ahead with the construction now.

It will be a difficult fall for us without the bar for the first 8 to 10 weeks, but when all is said and done we expect that this will be quickly forgotten once we start enjoying the new environment.

Although my primary message here concerns the bar renovations, there are of course other ongoing capital projects and club activities, and these will be constantly addressed by the board throughout the year. The major undertaking made by the board over the last 2 - 3 years has been that it is time to upgrade our building and invest in our future by bringing our facility up to date. The one major outstanding challenge that will have to be dealt with in the next few years is the seismic upgrade of the badminton hall.

We are also always interested in ideas and feedback so please don't to bring your suggestions to the office. Have a great year of fun and fitness everyone!