The Cottesloe Surf Life Saving Club is examining redevelopment options for its clubhouse, located atop Mudurup Rocks at the southern end of Cottesloe Beach.
The Cottesloe Surf Life Saving Club is examining redevelopment options for its clubhouse, located atop Mudurup Rocks at the southern end of Cottesloe Beach.
With rights in perpetuity to the land from the state government, the club is considering either a significant or total redevelopment next year.
To that end, it has engaged the services of an advisory board as part of the process to ensure its future viability.
The club’s advisory board, made up of nine members and including board chairman and former WA Liberal leader Barry MacKinnon, Pilbara Iron managing director David Smith, Moss Wood winery co-owner Keith Mugford and former Channel Nine general manager Paul Bowen, will consult with the Town of Cottesloe on a master plan for the foreshore in November before taking its project design to members for final approval next August.
CSLSC president John Barrington said the club needed a guaranteed annual income and was contemplating a host of hospitality and recreational uses for its site, including a restaurant, cafe/bar, gym, or a combination of these options.
Mr Barrington said the best fit would be for the club to partner with a developer who could provide capital for the project, expected to cost up to $15 million, as well as negotiate a long-term lease for the site.
“Our turnover last year was about $400,000, mainly from hiring out the hall for weddings and parties,” he told WA Business News.
“It costs us $370,000 a year to run the club, so we’re just ticking over. We really need to lock in a guaranteed annual income if we want to maintain and extend our core services into the future.”
Last November, the club met with New York-based futurist Gideon Malherbe, Department of Sport and Recreation director general Ron Alexander, and Lotterywest chief executive Jan Stewart, among others, to discuss how the club could be self-sustaining while remaining a relevant part of society for the next 50 years.
A key concern among participants was the difficulty the club faced in meeting its members’ lifesaving, educational, sporting and social needs.
Mr Barrington said club members, like those of all surf clubs, expected a greater level of amenity and social activities for their fees, and a failure to immediately address these demands would make recruiting beyond its current membership base of 720 a difficult task.
With the addition of eight new surf life saving clubs on the WA coast in the past four years, competition for members is heating up.
Clubs are now expected to provide increasing levels of amenity to attract members.
Surf Life Saving WA chief executive Paul Andrew said clubs needed to be self-sustaining in order to provide this amenity and must look at new ways to value-add with income streams from commercial operations.
CSLSC’s nearest neighbour, North Cottesloe SLSC, had already utilised its resources to great success by leasing part of its premises to the Blue Duck restaurant, he said.
Clubs at Geraldton, Binningup, Dalyellup, Albany, and Esperance, are also believed to be considering refurbishments, additions and commercial partnerships.
Mr Barrington said any development the club pursued would be sympathetic to the town’s vision for the foreshore, which council may decide on in the New Year. He said it was hoped the new premises would be ready in time to celebrate the club’s centenary in 2009.
