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Ansley GC
Doubles Down for Success The 107-year-old Atlanta-area club was well ahead of its time in giving members both city and suburban settings and a full range of family-friendly amenities.
Photos Courtesy oF ANSLEY GC
By Joe Barks, Editor
WHEN A TRADITION-RICH COUNTRY CLUB in a major city merged in 2006 with a high-end golf club 30 miles away, it was hailed as an innovative solution to the challenges that faced both types of operations—and indeed, those behind the creation of the new Mayfield Sand Ridge Club in Cleveland were soon inundated with calls from managers, owners and Board members from clubs in many other metropolitan areas who wanted to explore a similar strategy and sought insight into how the Mayfield transaction came together and was working out. But as a C+RB cover story in February 2009 (“Merger on Mayfield”) pointed out, the real trailblazing and precedent for Mayfield’s merger strategy had actually occurred several years earlier. Those who were involved with bringing about the Mayfield combination, in fact, had relied heavily on guidance they received from those who were behind the merger in 1999 of the Settindown Creek Golf Club in the Atlanta suburb of Roswell, Ga., with Ansley Golf Club, in one of that city’s mostestablished neighborhoods. The two situations were strikingly similar, despite taking place in locations that were over 700 miles apart and had much different Ansley GC’s Settindown Creek campus (pictured above), acquired histories and economic and cultural profiles. through a merger in 1999, provides a pastoral complement to the Settindown Creek, like Sand Ridge, was a “pure amenity-filled energy offered to members by the club’s property golf club” with a nationally recognized golf course, in midtown Atlanta (pictured at right and on cover). in this case designed by Bob Cupp. But its owners 14
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4/5/19 11:34 AM