A Golf Club Where Business Is Par for the Course

For now, the Presidential will target Northern Virginia employers, particularly those in the nearby Dulles tech corridor. Soon, it plans to offer a golf clinic for women executives picking up the game. The club includes a Jack Nicklaus Academy of Golf.

A corporate focus wasn't always the plan.

In 1999, Lerner Enterprises pitched the idea for a standard golf club along Waxpool Road, adjacent to its Dulles 28 Centre shopping center. Wells, who had collaborated with Lerner on several developments in the past, signed onto the Dulles project.

In 2000, Wells left the project, entrusting its completion to his partner. But planning and financing never got off the ground.

Wells returned and rewrote the lease with Lerner in 2005, proposing a corporate-only membership structure and facility redesign. He added a golf academy and enlarged meeting rooms equipped with WiFi and video-conferencing.

"We tried to make the overall facilities more professional and functional," said Wells, who is now president and a partner of the Presidential.

Around the same time, DullesWest Properties purchased land on the eastern border of the golf course, a portion of the old WorldCom campus. That land will eventually include an office park and high-end hotel tied to the Presidential, Wells said.

Wells funded the Presidential by enlisting local business people as investors. Of the 14 partners, five make up the core executive committee, which makes the day-to-day decisions. Each partner owns a percentage of the club, which varies depending on the size of his individual endowment. Wells owns the largest stake.

The corporate-only business model is unusual. Nearly all country clubs offer a form of company membership, but corporate-only membership is more popular in Asia, said Joe Rice, chief marketing officer of the National Golf Course Owners Association.

The Presidential modeled itself after Fiddler's Elbow Country Club in New Jersey -- the elite destination for Manhattan's financiers -- but it is pricier and even more exclusive. A Fiddler's Elbow membership for four company designees cost $33,000 a year, with no membership cap. At the Presidential, an equivalent membership costs $60,000 each year, and the club limits the number companies that can join.

Soon the two clubs will have reciprocal membership, Wells said.

Robert Sweeney, president of the Greater Washington Sports Alliance, has been playing the course's six finished holes, despite the construction and winter weather. "You can call me an extreme golfer," said Sweeney, who is also a partner.

For the past month, he's also been taking out clients twice a week for double rounds on the truncated course. "It's your way to capture a client for four hours," he said. "If you can't close them in four hours, you're not going to close them."