Past Perfect: How LAAC Reinvented Itself for the Future

Summer 2016 

EMBRACING 

HISTORY 

THE LOS ANGELES ATHLETIC CLUB INFUSES ITS 

STORY INTO EVERY ASPECT OF ITS RENOVATION 

ALSO INSIDE 

Clubs Take Practice Ranges 

to a Whole New Level 

Engage Members Through 

Premium Dining Experiences 

Outsourcing Employee 

Retirement Plan Benefits 

Idea Fair: Giving Farm-to-Table 

a New Meaning

Summer 2016 

Table of Contents 

Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Club, DC 

Features 

16 

Core competency: Facilities Management 

Embracing History 

The Los Angeles Athletic Club infuses 

its story into every aspect of its renovation 

28 

Photo courtesy of Antonio Diaz 

A staircase hidden behind a bookcase in the Los 

Angeles Athletic Club leads to the Blue Room, a 

space that harkens to its speakeasy days while giving 

modern Angelenos the amenities they demand. 

That’s just one space the LAAC transformed during a 

multiyear renovation that incorporates historic details 

throughout the club. 

16 

24 

Core competency: Golf, Sports, and Recreation Management 

Putting the ‘Fun’ in Fundamentals 

Clubs take practice ranges to a whole new level 

The practice range, it’s often said, is the loneliest place 

on a golf course. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In 

fact, practice ranges at many of today’s golf clubs are 

making practice (gulp) fun and productive. 

In Every Issue 

4 President’s Message 

6 Member News 

15 Profiles in Excellence 

34 ClubSolutions SM 

37 Advertisers’ Index 

38 Idea Fair 

28 

Core competency: Food and Beverage Management 

Raising the Bar 

Clubs engage members through 

premium dining experiences 

Gone are the days when the pinnacle of club dining was 

prime rib and roast turkey, silver chafing dishes, and 

waiters in tuxedos. Today, members and guests dining 

at a club want engagement with an educated waitstaff, 

transparency in product origin, and a variety of choices 

to share and discuss. 

Articles in Club Management magazine have familiar colored icons 

that will enable you to use the magazine in the course of your workday. 

A green Pre-Certification triangle 

is designed for managers who 

have been in the industry for fewer than 

seven years. 

An orange Post-Certification square 

is designed for manag ers who have 

been in the industry for more than seven 

years. Some of these managers have 

already obtained their Certified Club 

Manager (CCM) designation, are 

competent in all 10 management 

competencies, and have completed a 

series of education programs. 

A blue Executive circle speaks 

directly to the high est-ranking 

managers within the industry, many of 

whom have more than 15 years of club 

industry experience. 

A purple All diamond suggests 

content that will be of interest to a 

wide cross-section of CMAA members. 

ALL 

Summer 2016 3

Facilities Management 

EMBRACING THE 

PAST 

The Blue Room uses vintage photographs, athletic equipment and 

other memorabilia to create a connection to the club’s history. 

Photo courtesy of Antonio Diaz

CONNECTING TO THE 

FUTURE 

The Los Angeles Athletic Club infuses its history 

into a renovation designed to reach millennials 

By Gregory M. Fields


When the Los Angeles 

Athletic Club 

(LAAC) began the 

most expansive renovation in the club’s 

history in 2014, the ambition of its leadership 

team wasn’t limited to spit-polishing 

the 125,000 square feet of its vaunted 1912 

Beaux Arts building. Instead, the caretakers 

of the city’s oldest and most storied social/ 

athletic institution carved out a thoughtful 

and bold renovation plan that speaks to the 

way today’s club members live, while celebrating 

its place in the city’s history. 

To do that, LAAC’s leadership undertook 

a wholesale reimagination of their target 

market, and then leveraged design assets to 

attract a new kind of club member. Before 

the first wall was painted or the first leather 

couch was bought, LAAC re-evaluated its 

marketing strategy. The club’s staple clientele—Brooks 

Brothers-clad financial district 

professionals—were aging out. Taking 

their place were digital entrepreneurs, loft 

dwellers, and adventurous restaurateurs, 

who were flooding 

into the cavernous, 

abandoned spaces 

of downtown and 

sparking an epicurean 

revolution. 

And what a revolution 

it is. According 

to a recent Los 

Angeles Times article, 

78 tech-oriented firms 

now have offices in downtown L.A.; GQ 

magazine has called the area “America’s 

Next Great City.” Successful, stylish millennials 

have lifestyle money to spend (average 

income: $100,000), and the club is centrally 

located to the veritable explosion of lofts, 

bars, shops, and cutting-edge restaurants. 

LAAC’s holistic experience—an all-inone 

location to work, work out, imbibe, 

and dine—was already the ideal antidote to 

L.A.’s traditional carbon-consuming culture. 

Pair that with a young, entrepreneurial 

class eschewing the car-centric suburbs 

Top: Both sophisticated and casual, the Blue Room has become a favorite spot for 

members. With several comfortable seating areas, it’s perfect for long conversations. 

Bottom: Prior to the renovation, the Blue Room was an underutilized 

banquet room. 

Photo courtesy of Cory Hathaway 

for a walkable urban experience in a place 

with a strong sense of history, and you get 

the perfect membership match. 

But identifying a club’s prospective 

clientele and understanding what they want 

are two entirely different skill sets. What 

was this new, serial-entrepreneurial class 

seeking for its ideal club experience? The 

answer turned out to be something very 

familiar to Angelenos. 

DESIGNING FOR THE DESIRED MEMBER 

Given that the club once counted silver-screen 

moguls Charlie Chaplin (who lived at LAAC 

Photo courtesy of Antonio Diaz 

18 CLUB MANAGEMENT


during his formative years), Walt Disney, 

and Mack Sennett among its membership, it 

seems logical that management employed an 

element of screenwriting technique to steer its 

rebranding efforts. LAAC’s renovation team 

created a character to personify the clientele 

they hoped to reach. They gave him a job; 

they knew where he lived. 

“We saw him as a serial tech entrepreneur 

who lived in the Eastern Columbia Building 

[a 1930 Art Deco landmark],” says LAAC 

Assistant General Manager Cory Hathaway. 

“From there, we built out 10 action items that 

would most appeal to this person.” 

These items would eventually become 

distilled into every management renovation 

decision, from the type of beer featured at 

the club’s restaurant/bar to the colors and 

surfaces for The Blue Room, a centerpiece 

of the LAAC’s revitalization. A whimsical 

speakeasy reimagined by British designer 

Timothy Oulton, the Blue Room’s only 

access is through a card-keyed door embedded 

in a faux book case. If you’re sharpeyed 

enough to find the door, a “hidden” 

Prohibition-era staircase lined with vintage 

photos leads up to the room itself. With 

every step, members literally walk through 

the club’s history. 

“We thought the ‘secret’ staircase added 

an air of intrigue that would appeal to our 

character,” Hathaway says. 

COLLABORATING WITH MEMBERS 

The LAAC membership is a highly vested 

community with a longstanding tradition 

of participation in club improvements (one 

club president famously sold off his living 

room furnishings to help pay the LAAC’s 

bills during the Great Depression). So 

naturally, members were involved in the 

planning process. 

To introduce the renovations, members 

were invited into a specially created Discovery 

Center. This showroom featured design 

boards for the project, renderings of the new 

spaces, locker samples, and a timeline for the 

construction of each area. (The 18-month 

project was broken into three, six-month 

segments, which allowed continuous access to 

the existing locker rooms.) LAAC members 

were encouraged to leave their own suggestions 

for management to review. 

Club leadership also took advantage of 

the expertise of members in the project. 

While LAAC has never had a standing 

design committee, it keeps a select group of 

member creatives in a shallow orbit. This 

way, their expertise can be tapped for idea 

generation from time to time. Members 

with professional skills in interior design, 

cocktail consulting, and photography all 

contributed to LAAC’s renovation. 

PURPOSEFUL REPURPOSING 

The club’s heritage, which others might 

have thoughtlessly pushed aside, was 

wholeheartedly embraced by management 

as a competitive advantage. This new breed 

of tastemakers and tech cognoscenti were 

living and playing in ironclad, carvedstone 

spaces from the trolley-car era. With 

its current 12-story location opening the 

same year as the launch of the Titanic, the 


Top: Members now have a crisp and modern place 

to shower after a day at the club. Bottom: The shower 

stalls prior to the renovation were functional, but felt 

and looked institutional. 

Photo courtesy of Josh Telles 

20 CLUB MANAGEMENT


Right: Prior to the renovations, the locker room lounge had a dated, mismatched look. 

Above: The new design of the lounge makes members never want to leave. 

club’s rich architectural environs evoke an 

authenticity that could not be fabricated. 

But what to toss and what to keep? The 

management team had to tread lightly. 

Retrofitting an historic space with newer, 

generic assets could undermine the club’s 

uniquely appealing character. Management 

sought to pinpoint that elusive dividing line 

between old-school and old hat. 

“We told our designers we didn’t want 100 

percent historic or 100 percent modern,” 

Hathaway says. “We wanted a balance.” 

The club’s streamlined, monochrome 

logo was replaced with the 100-year-old 

hand-drawn one. Old club photos, signs, 

trophies, and other memorabilia were 

pulled out of storage, reframed, and added 

to newly renovated spaces. 

The Blue Room is a perfect representation 

of this eccentric eclecticism. Charlie Chaplin’s 

LAAC-inspired short The Cure runs 

in a loop on one of 

the room’s walls. 

Vintage fencing 

masks fade into the 

Blue Room walls like partially obscured 

samurais. Hardcover books spool around 

a support pillar, and whimsical wall sculptures 

are arranged out of wooden tennis 

racks and violins—a nod to the club’s history 

as a center for sports and culture. 

“We thought it would be interesting to 

take ordinary objects and repurpose them 

in an unexpected way,” Hathaway says. 

This cohabitation of the old and the 

new results in design that is simultaneously 

striking for its contrasting elements, 

but still comfortable and familiar—like 

a dreamy, sepia-toned photo. As 

members connect with each other in this 

environment, they also connect to the 

club’s legacy. 


CRAVING CONNECTION 

The leadership mused that its model entrepreneur/loft 

dweller is likely deeply ensconced 

in online networking and a natural 

collaborator. Even traditional companies 

are taking a wrecking ball to their cubicle 

cultures in favor of open worktables. 

Similarly, the migration to denser urban 

environs naturally requires bumping up 

against neighbors instead of building fences 

to keep them out. LAAC’s top-to-bottom 

revitalization of the men and women’s locker/lounge 

spaces by Los Angeles-based SRK 

Architects embodies this epic shift toward 

making all aspects of life more social. 

“We could have added more lockers, but 

we really wanted to cultivate a more social, 

Photo courtesy of Josh Telles 

22 CLUB MANAGEMENT

elaxing environment,” 

Hathaway says. 

The hub of the space 

is a forum-style lounge 

area. With its open design, 

living room-ready couches, 

and big-screen television, 

the area invites social 

relaxation. 

Every design point is 

meant to encourage interaction. 

Even the shoeshine 

station offers dual, raised 

chairs so colleagues can 

engage in a tête-à-tête 

about their next digital 

start-up. NBA-style, woodgrain 

lockers replaced the 

club’s aging metal ones 

and provide an aura of 

premium comfort without 

the stuffiness. Bookshelves 

feature club memorabilia, 

including vintage sports 

trophies and plaques. 

Perhaps the most storied 

feature of the LAAC is the 

sixth-floor pool, sparkling 

beneath skylights and a 

vintage chandelier. LAAC 

was the first structure in 

Southern California to 

have a swimming pool 

above ground level, and 

the pool once served as a 

training ground for Olympic 

athletes. 

LAAC’s renovation 

brings back the Plunge 

Cafe, a poolside dining 

area where members in 

the 1920s and 1930s enjoyed 

poolside brunches, 

fashion shows, and New 

Year’s celebrations—just 

the kind of casual social 

interaction that today’s 

tech-immersed millennials 

crave. 

Greg Fields is a founder of 

the Occupy Digital Agency. 

He lives in downtown L.A.’s 

Arts District. 

Summer 2016 23

Past Perfect: How LAAC Reinvented Itself for the Future

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?