Works in Progress
The Club’s representative governor talks third-floor dining, maintenance and mapping out the Club’s longer-term future.
After two years at the helm of the Board of Governors, Jesse Green was reelected to the Board and reappointed as the Club’s representative governor at November’s Annual General Meeting.
While the American completed his second term with Member satisfaction at an all-time high, he confesses that the Board didn’t achieve all it set out to do in 2023.
With the Club celebrating its 96th birthday in May, Green discusses this year’s goals and the task of defining the Club’s identity for the years ahead.
How successful was 2023 for the Club?
Green: It was quite successful. The Club’s finances are in some of their best health for a long time, and we have a rainy-day fund for maintenance. Recreation utilization was at an all-time high, and we will continue to build on that. At a macro level, we continued to market the Club’s value proposition, and the Club now has more Members than ever before. While the Board would agree that we are not entirely happy with our progress, we are getting things done that the membership wants us to focus on. On the whole, I would give us a B-plus.
Which areas require more attention this year?
Green: We didn’t complete our work on a flexible working space. There have been a number of Members who have complained about the computers and online meetings all around the Club, and they have asked for better delineation between business and community spaces. Another area where we continue to get complaints is the third floor [dining area]. The fact is Members are paying for access to the third floor, but Vista is not anything grand and CHOP has been closed for the better part of four years. The space being some version of a flexible working space is not jiving for our Members. Secondly, they are saying, “We don’t have a place to entertain formal clients.” So we will open an upmarket, Italian-American restaurant in that space in April. We do need to make some improvements to things like tables and dining ware, but we’re not going to make any holistic change until we’ve proven the concept works. Associated with this is the question of how we make the whole of the third floor more cohesive and usable. But those plans are not fully fledged yet. Another common complaint is that the locker rooms are overrun. We will pay closer attention to that this year.
The Azabudai clubhouse turns 13 this month. How important was the approval of the increased monthly maintenance assessment at the Annual General Meeting?
Green: This is really a budgeting exercise. It could be that the Club continues to perform for another three, four, five, six more years without a lot of the equipment breaking down. It’s also entirely possible that the opposite is true. The intention here was to ensure that we have a sizable pool of money to draw from for the future. The fact is we have to balance value-adding projects like a flexible working space and CHOP with a significant amount of maintenance requirements. For example, last October, the Board approved ¥46 million to replace the AV [audiovisual] system for the [event and meeting spaces]. Remember, without AV, you don’t really have event sales. And that’s just one spend. We could have decided to simply maintain things and not add value to the rest of the Club for the foreseeable future, or—for an additional ¥18,000 a year per family—maintain the Club and continue to make improvements that a lot of our Members would like to see.
It seems that some of that maintenance cost is down to the original, customized design of the Club.
Green: That’s the elephant in the room. A lot of the problems we face today are because the Club’s architects designed the Club in such a way that much of the infrastructure is custom-built. It means getting parts from around the world or retrofitting to more standardized pieces of machinery, which still has a significant cost attached to it. The solution we are aiming for is to limit the amount of customization in the Club and to take a more standardized, cost-efficient and energy-efficient approach to some of the equipment.
The Long Range Strategic Planning Task Force was established last year. What can Members expect from the task force this year?
Green: The task force is reviewing a large amount of feedback from Members with the intention to identify whether we need to update or simply further communicate our mission and vision. It’s been a long time since we really looked at the Club’s mission and vision. It’s about understanding why we were founded nearly 96 years ago, how we evolved to who we are today and, more importantly, who we want to be tomorrow. What I would like to get to this year is a revised or agreed mission and vision and a decision on the business model we would like to aspire towards.
What other developments can Members expect to see this year?
Green: Members will see new coffee around the Club at the end of this month. We will see continued improvements in food quality and consistency and even more exciting and creative events. We expect to see the beginnings of the new club management system later in the year. After six years, we finally got to resolution on replacing the software platform that we have been keeping together with chewing gum and hairpins. It means we can solve many of our operational inefficiencies. So, for example, if you sign up for an event on the website, when it comes to billing, that information has to be uploaded to a different system. The new system will revolutionize the way we manage significant aspects of the Club.
What continues to drive you in your role as representative governor?
Green: Having grown up in the Club, it is quite literally a part of my fabric. So, if I and the Board can be passionate about the things that we are doing, as a Member, I get to enjoy the many fruits of our labors.
Words: Nick Jones
Top Image of Jesse Green: Kayo Yamawaki
