Bent Pine Golf Club has joined Vero’s post-pandemic country club renaissance with a flourish, unveiling a multimillion-dollar clubhouse renovation last month, along with a new, high-tech irrigation system for its renowned Tom Lee golf course.
Beyond that, the club – which was founded by a group of John’s Island members as “a golf refuge” in the 1970s – is in the early planning stages for further upgrades and expansion that could bring a resort-style swimming pool, lawn games, pickleball and an indoor golf practice facility later in the decade.
Pandemic refugees fleeing big cities in search of small, charming towns like Vero Beach with lots of outdoor activities powered a nationwide surge in club memberships, golf rounds played, and capital improvements undertaken to attract new members in a competitive marketplace.
Here in Vero, clubs have spent or budgeted more $100 million on improvements in the past five years, adding swimming pools, racquet centers and lawn games, upgrading dining venues, refurbishing golf courses, and spiffing up clubhouses, winning exuberant reviews from new and existing members alike.
“It actually boggles my mind how beautiful it turned out,” says Bent Pine member Jennifer Vail of her club’s eight-month renovation project. “It feels bright and happy, now, with a very welcoming ambiance.”
The club’s long-range planning committee began contemplating improvements in 2022, settling on two first-stage projects – renovating its sprawling, 41-year-old clubhouse and redoing the antiquated irrigation system on its impeccably kept golf course.
Work on both projects got underway early this year, with the golf course rehab wrapping up in October and the clubhouse completed in November.
The two-level clubhouse is mostly unchanged structurally but has been transformed inside.
“We were fortunate that we didn’t have to bulldoze what we had and start over,” says club member Sam Stryker, a retired marketing company owner who led the clubhouse renovation effort.
The remodel included repainting from top to bottom, along with all new carpeting and furniture, new woodwork, new locker rooms and kitchen equipment.
Structural changes included installing a new ceiling and removing a couple of small walls to open up the bar area, creating a casual dining venue where members can come straight in from the golf course for a drink and dinner, without having to change for the formal dining room.
It is a measure of how in sync the club is with its members that a grassroots Friday Night Social has already come together to utilize the refurbished space.
“There’s a group of us who are members of a club up in New England as well as down here,” says Ed O’Mara, a retired healthcare CEO who managed the golf course project. “We have already decided that on Friday nights, we are coming over and sitting at the bar, even if we aren’t playing golf that day,” hosting regular gatherings to take advantage of the new, more sociable setting.
Bent Pine members Donna DeLuca, president of Design Environments, in Kennesaw, Ga., and John Cowger, owner of Designer Concrete Creations in Vero Beach, “provided strategic counsel, project management and operational support for the renovation,” says club member Jackie Morey, who is helping market the club’s new look.
Youngner Architecture & Design of St. Simons, GA, collaborated with DeLuca, Cowger and Stryker on the design.
“The vision for this renovation was to present a sophisticated, comfortable and energic setting, without falling into trends that are not long-lasting and easily become cliched,” says DeLuca.
Vail, an avid golfer and retired public-school principal from upstate New York who is on the membership committee, says recent prospective members “have been wowed” by the remodeled clubhouse. “Everyone has been very, very impressed.”
Likewise with the new irrigation system, which was installed with minimal disruption for players at this club where golf is the central focus and organizing principle, akin to a secular religion.
“They worked on a couple of holes at time so people could still play, and all the returning members are amazed that you can’t tell work has been done,” says Morey.
“We didn’t just interview the installation companies in a board meeting,” says O’Mara. “We went and saw their work. We traveled to installations they had underway and looked at what they were doing and how they were doing it.”
The club ended up going with a sophisticated irrigation system with updatable software manufactured by Toro, which senses the condition of the course and can be controlled remotely by a smartphone to irrigate only the holes that need irrigation, saving water and benefiting the environment.
“We were very conscious of water management as we planned the project,” says O’Mara. “Water conservation is a big issue here in Florida and we wanted to make sure we’re only using the amount of water we need to maintain the golf course at the condition it should be at.”
Installation was done by GTI irrigation, a nationwide provider of golf course irrigation solutions.
O’Mara and his associate researched the company thoroughly, right down to identifying the specific supervisor and crew they wanted.
Bent Pine Golf Club sits on 148 acres purchased by John’s Island golfers in the 1970s. It was the first course built on the sand ridge north of Vero Beach where there now are a total of five courses – John’s Island’s mainland course, Redstick, Hawk’s Nest, and the county’s public Sandridge course, along with Bent Pine.
The ridge provides elevation and contours that make courses more aesthetically appealing and fun to play. It also provides excellent drainage, helping keep fairways dry and playable.
Members say more U.S. Open qualifiers and regional and state championships have been played on the course than on any other course in town, and up till now, golf has been the only sporting amenity at the club.
But that may change.
Besides the acreage occupied by the clubhouse and golf course, the club owns an adjacent 109 acres that give it plenty of room to expand, and it has hired two land planning companies to provide advice about the best locations for possible new club facilities, such as a swimming pool or racquet complex.
At the same time, focus groups are meeting to give club leaders a clearer sense of what kind of future the members want for the club. The goal is to maintain the club’s historic elite level of golf while also creating a more full-featured country club to attract younger members.
Half of the members in this 349-member club are 32963 residents “from 29 different neighborhoods on the island,” according to Morey. “We have Orchid people, Windsor people, JI people and members from The Moorings.”
Social, associate and full golf memberships are available. Membership director Stephanie Nunes is the contact person.
Photos by Joshua Kodis
