March 4 member input meeting

Thanks to those members attending the first input meeting - Jeff Walter, Ron & Cheryl Lee, Gregg & Pam Calderwood, Tom Swiler, Lynn Crabtree, Charles E Walsh, Willie Peugh, Melodee Walker, Jay Johnson and winning the farthest away award, Paul Von Tersch.

This energetic group talked over the issues of sizing, type of kitchen, and how we should handle the steward's quarters. Pam Calderwood had a succint comment on sizing - "we should build a facility that meets the needs of the membership events". Jeff Pence added that this means a dining facility that would accomodate the President's party, the Christmas party, the annual meeting and the wild game feed. Paul Von Tersch and Jay tossed around the idea of seating somewhere between 1 and 1.5 times the membership (75-110). Tom Swiler spoke up for the need to seat potentially all the members and their spouses or 150. Ron and Sheryl Lee echoed the idea of building to fit our club party needs. Their view was that we need not build to accomodate large parties as many other facilities now exist to meet these needs.

The consensus on the kitchen was that we need to talk to caterers and find out what type of facility would meet their needs. There was no support for having a kitchen capable of preparing onsite meals. Charlie pointed out that he caters company parties at his farm for 150. Paul said that caterers prepare meals offsite and only need lots of electrical outlets at the facility. Lynn said we shouldn't overbuild the kitchen. He pointed out that restaurants are among the hardest hit business in any economic downturn and there should be plenty of good used equipment available.

The high point of the meeting was Jay Johnson volunteering to design the kitchen! This offer was immediately accepted.

The final discussion item was the need to build steward quarters. Altho there were calls at the annual meeting for immediately getting the steward housed on site for security reasons, those in attendance questioned whether this is really this really represents the majority view. I'll post a summary of the factors and solicit your input in a separate post.

Next meeting is 7PM at the Center for Business, room 111, 610 N 4th on Tuesday March 9. Hope to see you there.