Long Reef Golf Club, one of NSW’s busiest golf courses with 70,000 rounds of golf a year, has submitted a development application to Northern Beaches Council to invest almost $22 million to refurbish its 60-year-old clubhouse.
While the golf course was established in 1921 as a nine-hole course before shortly increasing to the full 18-holes it is today, the clubhouse was built in 1965 and over the years has been added to bit by bit.
We sat down with Club General Manager Ben Russell and President Keith Warren, to discuss the plans.
“At the moment, it’s like a rabbit warren to get into the clubhouse and you sign in through a very unwelcoming ‘cop shop’ style window, and everyone is crossing over to each other’s areas to get to where they need to be,” the GM said.
“We are trying to create a space where our golf members can come into the clubhouse and feel like it’s their club, while giving visiting community members their own space, whether they’re here for an event or to enjoy our café.”
Keith Warren, the Club’s President, said they were keen to create better defined and better separated spaces.
“We pride ourselves on the fact that we have a significant customer base that comes from our local community in our local area,” Keith said.
“We want to be engaged with our community. One of the big parts of the plans is we would like to put a coffee kiosk in, so walkers and community members don’t have to come in to get a coffee or bacon and egg roll. The plans are all about being more inclusive.”
The refurbishment also has to do with the clubhouse generating enough income to keep member fees down, he said.
Currently, the one-storey clubhouse has one meeting room, one event space, a café/lounge with outdoor seating and a members’ area.
The new clubhouse will be two-storeys, although its footprint will remain similar.
On the ground level, there will be three member and community multi-use rooms for hire, indoor dining, a garden terrace to accommodate 96 patrons, a covered outdoor terrace to accommodate 50 patrons, a members lounge and a members terrace to accommodate 30 member patrons.
On the upper level, there are additional member and community multi-use rooms for hire, two terraces to accommodate a total of 170 patrons, and a members terrace to accommodate 30 member patrons.
“The cost of maintaining the golf course has continued to significantly increase with environmental obligations and maintenance practices,” Ben said.
“Some golf clubs have their member fees subsidise the golf clubhouse, as they feel the clubhouse is just for golfers, so it runs at a loss.
“Whereas we see the refurbishment as an opportunity to increase revenue within the clubhouse that goes back into improving the golf course, that makes member fees affordable, public green fees affordable and that we remain accessible.”
The designs are aimed at keeping the current feel of the clubhouse and to blend in with the streetscape of the Collaroy Basin and the Northern Beaches.
Ben explained the club is still taking event bookings for 2027, so we should not expect construction any time soon. Once all the plans are approved, they will determine the best way to minimise disruption for members and the community during construction.
“One option is to have the Pro Shop, which we’ve recently taken ownership of, to be a temporary clubhouse, while other options are for a staged construction process,” Ben added.
Either way, construction would take at least 18 months once it starts.
Parking, Pokies and Building on a Sand Dune
With more event areas to hire, and Long Reef Golf Club requesting to extend their opening hours to 8pm on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays and to 10pm on Thursdays to provide a dinner service during the week, the new plans call for more parking.
“Something we have been very attentive to is the parking,” Keith explained.
“The area is very densely utilised; we aren’t the only ones here. There is the off-leash dog park, rugby club, tennis courts, surf club etc. We have been proactively working with Council to figure out solutions.
“The additional need for parking, in terms of us being open for dinners and events, will be outside of the usual need which happens in the mornings.”
Currently, the club has 43 car parking spaces. In the new plans, two of those will be relocated to a new access driveway and will be designated as accessible spaces. The club will also operate an overflow parking area of 24 spaces where the former maintenance area used to be, and an additional 25 staff car parking spaces will be constructed, creating a total of 92 car spaces.
As for the pokie machines and gaming area, they’re not included in the new plans.
“We have 11 pokie machines, and they don’t generate a lot of income for us, so we don’t rely on them,” Ben explained with Keith adding that they don’t want gaming in the new clubhouse.
Ben said there hasn’t been any grumbles from members over the removal of the gaming room. Given issues of gambling harm on the Northern Beaches, it is more likely to be a welcome move.
Finally, isn’t the Club concerned about investing $22 million into a clubhouse that sits so close to the beach, where further up a seawall has been constructed to defend homes from large swell and rising sea levels?
“We are actually quite sheltered in our location at the southern end of Fishermans Beach,” Keith said.
“We don’t have a problem like Collaroy Beach, just because of the wave direction.”
The Club will need to take some preventative measures, though.
As part of the Coastal Engineering Report, some of the recommendations listed are to construct the garden seating area and adjacent terrace out of materials resistant to inundation, such as tiles; for all power points to be above 6.4m or waterproofed below this; the glass door on the northern side to have toughened and laminated glass; and tables and chairs in the garden seating area to be relocated in the event of an extreme wave runup.
“Our coastal engineer has assessed that there will be some extra components in the construction required that in the case of a one in one hundred year storm, we would be able to withstand it,” Ben added.
The exhibition period is yet to open for the Long Reef Golf clubhouse refurbishment while Council gathers the required documents.
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