Fort Worth Business Press, June 2, 2014 Vol. 26, No. 21 | Page 18

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June 2 - 8, 2014 | fwbusinesspress.com

cover story
uwoodhaven from the cover
The club, which confirmed the
ownership change several weeks ago,
has made several moves to reverse
declining membership. Among them
are inviting community groups to hold
meetings there at no cost, simplifying
membership and waiving initiation
fees, and beginning construction on a
new practice area.
More improvements are coming,
including lengthening the golf course,
Fairchild said.
Fairchild, who lives in New
Hampshire and New Jersey, said the
new owners want to bring the 42-yearold club “back to its former glory” as a
neighborhood centerpiece.
Investors, including former Texas
Gov. John Connally and Perry and
Sid Bass, started Woodhaven in 1972
behind a vision of a scenic, hilly golf
course community, and the club was
a longtime focal point. Woodhaven
has struggled for years with crime and
code compliance issues in its apartment
complexes.
“We look forward to being a catalyst
of change,” said Fairchild, who has
a lengthy business resume and is
currently chairman of Schipol North
America, which owns John F. Kennedy
International Airport’s Terminal 4 in
New York.
Added Bailey: “We’re moving in the
right direction.”

Fairchild

Woodhaven Country Club, under new owners, is trying to reverse a decline in membership and get homeowners in
the East Side neighborhood to come back.

Fort
Worth
City
Councilman
Danny Scarth, whose district includes
Woodhaven, said he hopes the new
owners can draw out the club’s value
as an “underutilized resource” in
Woodhaven.
“If that exists within the investors of
the country club, we want to work with
them,” Scarth said.
A strong country club would fit the
vision of the Woodhaven redevelopment
plan that was completed several years
ago; it calls for using the club as an
amenity for future senior living. The
plan also calls for a small city square
and light commercial services.

“The club is in the center,” Scarth
said. “As the country club goes, so goes
the neighborhood.”
The club confirmed its sale several
weeks ago. The first visible sign of change
came in mid-May, when construction
began on a practice area at the club’s
entry, including a putting green and
pitching and chipping surfaces. The
project also includes the relocation of
the first tee box.
“It’s going to look beautiful,” Fairchild
said. “It’s the first tangible evidence that
there’s a new sheriff in town.”
Several community groups that had
stopped meeting at the club because

Woodhaven Country Club’s owners are trying to lure homeowners in the neighborhood back to the club with a simplified membership structure.

photos by scott nishimura

of the high cost
are
beginning
to return. The
Woodhaven
Neighborhood
Association’s May
21 meeting, which
drew a full house,
was its first back at
the country club in

several years.
The
club’s
new
owners,
in
trying to boost declining golf and
social memberships, have invited
organizations to have their meetings at
the facility at no cost.
The club has replaced its complicated
membership structure with four levels:
$50 a month for a social membership,
$160 for a junior golf membership,
$200 for a senior golf membership, and
$220 for a full golf membership.
Fairchild declined to specify what the
club’s membership is, saying his group
is trying to verify the financial numbers.
Fairchild said membership is likely
lower than what former owner Lou
Scoma represented.
Fairchild said he plans to confer the
title of “ambassador” on community
leaders willing to help sell the club’s
story.
To make the scenic, leafy golf course
more challenging and appealing to
tournaments, the owners expect to
lengthen it to between 7,000 and 7,100
yards from the current 6,400 yards by
moving the tee boxes back.
That project would run in the “six
figures” and could begin as early as this
fall, Fairchild said.
Fairchild
promised
more
improvements as membership and
event bookings build. He declined to
say what his group paid for the property
or what it plans to invest.
Scoma told community leaders that
the new owners promised to invest at
least $1 million in improvements, but
Fairchild said that’s not true.
He said his group wants to lower the
club’s environmental footprint through
more efficient water use and other
systems.
And they want to improve the look
of the 100-plus-acre club, whose 18
holes wind throughout the Woodhaven
neighborhood, he said.
F