Clubhouse: Hybrid Club
California’s Mayacama golf and wine club adds private residences to the mix.
June 1, 2008
Mayacama members have been known to use the emergency phones on the northern California club’s 18-hole Jack Nicklaus golf course in moments of dubious urgency. Calls for help have included such phrases as "I’m on the eighth hole and short three margaritas," says Mayacama managing partner Jonathan Wilhelm. But the occasional cocktail seems not to diminish the decorum members observe while playing the traditional walking course that, along with a 40,000-square-foot clubhouse, is the hub of the seven-year-old private club’s new fractional residences, which began selling last August.The Lodging Club residences and Hillside Homes—set near the course and clubhouse, amid wooded hills in Santa Rosa, California—offer owners a turnkey experience in Sonoma wine country. "We provide the gift of time, versus the other things the residents would have to do if they were running their own second home," says Wilhelm. The homes occupy about 75 of the club’s 675 acres. Mayacama owner David Wilhelm (Jonathan’s father), who also created Colorado’s Roaring Fork and Valley golf clubs, bought the land in the 1990s from partners Marv Soiland and the late Peanuts cartoonist and longtime Santa Rosa resident, Charles M. Schulz.
The Lodging Club will comprise 11 casitas and 19 larger, 2,700-square-foot villas (three villas are complete and two more will be finished this summer), all with Tuscan-style decor. One-fifth interests start at $650,000 and guarantee members 70 nights of use annually. Two of the 10 Hillside Homes—3,000-square-foot Mediterranean-style residences with three or four bedrooms, outdoor kitchens and living areas, wine cellars, pools, and two-car garages—are already complete and are available in one-fourth shares priced from $1.5 million. Both ownership types require the homeowners to purchase a golf membership (the club has 450 members across three tiers and will reach capacity at 650), which affords full access to the club’s amenities.
Chief among these attractions is the club’s vintner program.
Thirty-one Napa and Sonoma vintners—including Cakebread Cellars, Harlan Estate,
and Armida Winery—supply approximately one barrel of their best vintage yearly,
bottles of which are dispatched to members’ wine lockers in Mayacama’s
3,000-square-foot subterranean wine grotto. The vintners also host events at the
clubhouse or at their wineries that are exclusive to
Mayacama members.
Members at Mayacama may soon have access to a reciprocal
experience as well. "We also have Roaring Fork in Colorado, and we are in the
process of developing lodges in Aspen/Snowmass and Cabo San Lucas," says
Wilhelm. Members’ benefits will include access to the golf courses at each club
and 100 days of lodging anywhere within
the system.