OCEAN PINES – While scheduled banquets and special events will continue, the yacht club will only be open to the public for dining Friday and Saturday during the offseason.
Last week Ocean Pines Association (OPA) General Manager John Bailey told the board the facility was scaling down its hours between November and March. Beginning Nov. 1, it will be open Fridays from 4 p.m. to midnight and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to midnight.
“Those are some initial steps,” Bailey said. “We’ve got a lot more going on.”
Bailey, who took over leadership of the association last month, has spent the past several weeks reviewing OPA food and beverage operations. He told the board during Friday’s meeting that he was looking at everything from the existing food and beverage contracts to unbudgeted customer discounts.
“We’re still under a total review,” he said, adding that he was looking at all of the association’s food and beverage locations. “I mentioned last month that finding a short-term solution was like one of those big Rubik’s Cubes. We had to look at existing contracts we had, anything that was on the books like banquets and receptions, as well as dealing with personnel issues both now and going into the future, as well as dealing with member expectations.”
He was quick to point out that he was referring to the facility as the yacht club, not “The Cove at Mumford’s Landing.” While the lengthier moniker was given to the establishment last year, community members have continued to refer to the building as the yacht club.
“We’ll probably be going back to ‘yacht club,’” he said.
Bailey said the limited hours would help the facility cut costs. Though he acknowledged that the Sunday brunches recently offered at the yacht club had been enjoyed by some, they’d proved too costly. Bailey said on the average Sunday close to two dozen people attended brunch, which required closer to 60 people to break even.
Along with the changes at the yacht club, Bailey told the board he was also making plans for the Ocean Pines Country Club. He’s now finished a review of the various plans and schematics of the second floor renovation, which was halted earlier this year. Bailey said that in thinking about the best end use of the space, he wanted to see one large meeting area there as well as additional smaller meeting rooms. He said that would provide space for special events at the golf course as well as space clubs could use.
“We could also have other community-wide events there,” he said.
Bailey expects schematics for that kind of layout to cost about $5,000 and the actual construction documents to cost $30,000. He hopes to present his proposal to the board in November. He said that unfortunately the project would not be done before OPA’s 50th anniversary golf tournament.
“You really are looking a year from now before you’re done with everything,” he said. “To do it right will take some time.”
