Year End Update
Endings are sacred; at City Club we pay special attention to them.
As we approach the end of the calendar year and prepare to go into winter, we try to do two things well:
In the five years Carlos has been a member of Chef Maria's kitchen team, he has never missed a day of work for any reason! That’s an incredible record till you learn that on average Carlos puts in 58 hours a week to prep, wash dishes and spot clean the kitchen from top to bottom every Saturday. In addition, Carlos takes on outside maintenance jobs, and as an X-Rodeo Star in Mexico, he tends to seven horses in his ranch in Lyons, delivers calves and raises hogs. In short, Carlos is the poster child of the hard-working immigrants who have made our country the envy of the world.
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I give thanks for living in a country with a constitution that allows transfer of power every two years without a shot fired and/or tanks rolling down the streets.
I am thankful to be in a loving relationship for over 40 years, and have the wisdom and commitment to survive its many ups and downs.
Bill and Pam Stewart joined City Club in April 2006, nearly a year after we opened, when we were more of a club in concept than in reality. While Pam was more outgoing, energetic and excited about the club, it was Bill who I bonded with and brainstormed about our vision for an ideal community.
One day I told Bill about an item on my bucket list which was to visit the Bohemian Club’s summer camp in the redwood forest north of San Francisco, which many believe it is harder to get into than Fort Knox. After listening intently, Bill casually stated “I am a member and will be glad to get you an invite for next summer.” While being a part of this all-American experiment was a lifetime achievement, the real highlight was spending ten days with Bill and the chance to get to know him, his lightness of spirit and his joy for life.
There is a lot of talk about how our country is divided, on the wrong track, and at the edge of civil war. From pipe bombs in the mail to mass shootings in schools and synagogs, from talk of impeaching the president to impeaching a sitting Supreme Court justice, at times it sure seems like the fabric of our society and democratic system is being torn apart.
The Founding Fathers understood the human nature and designed our system not for an ideal enlightened leader, but to withstand stressful times like we live in, so as long as we continue to exercise our right to vote, all’s well with our system.
The good news is we are finally growing, and fast, on many fronts.
The bad news is we are shorthanded and need help.
To keep you up with our progress, we are proud to announce we finally got Paul Cure to morph from a member in good standing to a staff member with a lot of potentials. Paul is an up and coming young local star who is involved in many aspects of Boulder from farming to Historic Boulder, World Affairs Conference to local politics. Everyone loves Paul and we feel fortunate to have snagged him as part of the front of the house Admin Team led by Nathalie Wilson who is already overwhelmed by how much there is to do while acting cool, pretending all’s good on all the fronts at all times at Highland City Club. See Paul’s picture and profile below.
As an engineer, I have always been fascinated by the physics of the flywheel. In his best selling management book, Good to Great, Jim Collins dedicated a chapter to the effects of the flywheel as it applies to the start-up and growth of an organization.
Asian cultures use the example of how bamboo grows an inch a year for the first four years, and then eighty feet the fifth year.
We are fortunate to have Maria Cooper as our Executive Chef for over eight continuous years. By any measure, this is a fantastic record of creativity, loyalty and service. To minimize burnout and maximize creativity, the secret to our success is twofold. 1) City Club is the only commercial kitchen in Colorado we know of that has no labor or food budget, so Maria plans her menu based on the best fresh ingredients available at the best price, not to meet a budget. 2) All City Club employees have unlimited vacation, as long as they have their work covered.
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A few years back, the biggest negative feedback we heard about City Club was that we had so few young members. Now that we have many great young members, the question is: how can we get our older members to mentor the younger ones.
Trying to get elder members to mentor younger members is like pushing on a string. The only effective way to mentor is by pulling, not pushing; by setting an example, not by talking.
With fall in the air, the theme of this Newsletter is Change. Change of seasons, economic change (see article below), and changes in the management team of Highland City Club.
After a year of productive service, Samantha Wolf is moving on to bigger and better things, and Nathalie Wilson has take over as our Front of the House Manager. Nathalie’s main tool of communication with our members will be this Weekly “News”Letter. To celebrate this change, we have changed the format of the newsletter to make it cleaner, simpler, easy to read, and match the style of our new website.
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At City Club we think of food as sacred medicine, and spend hours researching and discussing ingredients like oil, sugar, salt and the spices we use, to make sure our members eat the healthiest and most delicious food at the best value we can offer.
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City Club has been a proud sponsor of the Jaipur Literature Festival since inception.
What makes Boulder “The smallest cosmopolitan city in America” is events like The World Affairs Conference, The Shakespeare Festival, Boulder Symphony, Chautauqua, and now JFL. This free 3-day event is the intellectual Woodstock of our time, so please plan to attend.
City Club staff are encouraged to make their decisions by prioritizing health first, family second, and business third.
City Club staff and a few privileged members are fortunate to have 24/7 access to Dr. David Tusek and his medical staff at Cloud Medical for all their health and wellness needs.
As stated in our Vision Statement, City Club strives to prove we can work hard, and have fun, while discharging our social responsibilities to make our city, country and the world a better place.
Last week City Club, in cooperation with Boulder Lifestyle Magazine, hosted the second annual Grapes & Grass Festival. It promoted great bluegrass music, introduced our members and the general public to delicious wines, and benefited the non-profit Future Arts Foundation.
For the past few months we have been hammering home the message that we are finally done with construction, and are now focused on building our new team and growing our membership.
Every winning team needs a star quarterback, and we have been looking far and wide to find ours to grow City Club to its potential. Well, I am pleased to announce we have hired Nathalie Wilson as our front of the house manager.
Kids are back in school and it's dark at 6 am when diving into the pool. Our gardens are still at their peak so plan to stop by to pick a few crab apples.
Our current focus is on building and positioning our team for more efficient operation and growth. More on this with an announcement in next week’s newsletter, meanwhile, we are all excited about next Weekend’s Grapes & Grass music and wine festival. The Friday night portion of this event is already sold out but you can still buy tickets for Saturday. Next weekend’s weather forecast is sunny in the 80’s, so we are looking for a fun and easy late summer gathering of members and friends, and excited to share our beautiful grounds with the general public.
Maybe it's the weather. Or maybe we are growing too fast with not enough resources. Whatever the cause, it sure seems like chaos reigns and the best we can do is react, instead of be proactive.
After six months of hard work, our migration to the new operating program is complete, so now we are focused on learning and integrating the new parking control system. Nobody likes change, so charging for parking after 40 years of offering it for free feels awkward, but it beats raising our membership fee, which we have not done since inception in 2005.
It took us over two years and $2M to reinvent ourselves as Highland City Club. Hanging the new sign at the entry bridge was a symbolic gesture, showing we are done with this phase of our work and are focused on catching up with some deferred maintenance, completing our punch-list, and refining the operation of our facilities.
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By now most of us have had our summer vacations, are tired of the heat, and can’t wait for schools to start and ship out the kids. At City Club, we are planning for fall and want to give you a brief update on what’s going on here:
We are in the midst of making major staff changes in preparation for our post-construction growth phase. More details on this soon.
Please take a close look at the lunch topics for next week. If you can’t find a topic or two that triggers your curiosity, tell us what programs you would like us to focus on.