MikeKardec
One Too Many
- Messages
- 1,157
- Location
- Los Angeles
My grandfather was a real estate developer in Southern California from the 1920s to the 1940s. His basic design for a resort was common for the period. He would build a "club house" that included a dining room, meeting rooms, a bar, a swimming pool, tennis, bad mitten and other courts. Then, in the area surrounding it, he would build vacation cabins and sell lots. If you bought one of these you got a club membership. You got a remote seeming vacation spot and a local social life in one move.
His first resort was the development surrounding the Peter Pan Woodland Club on Big Bear Lake. This is in the San Bernardino Mountains. It took it's name from the nearby Pan hot springs and for a long time was considered the swankiest spot in the mountains.
A decade or so later he moved down to the Coachella Valley and started the same process at La Quinta Cove. A subdivision was created, a number of small adobe houses were built, and a club founded. Members of The Desert Club and the Peter Pan Woodland Club had reciprocal benefits. If you owned a home in each place (and though they were exquisite architecturally they were modest in size and price) you had the perfect get away from Los Angeles and San Diego for both the winter and the summer.
Here's another of The Desert Club:
There was even a spin-off, Club San Moritz, in Crestline, not too far from Big Bear ... that one was owned by my great aunt, who at one time worked for my grandad. It was more modest and, probably because of that, it lasted into the 1970s and the clubhouse still exists today.
I used to think that this club-cabin model was something my grandad invented, just because I had not been paying attention. Since then I've run across quite a few developments, all having started in that same period, all attempting the same thing. It seems it was a standard way of doing business.
Does anyone know about this particular business model and where it started? The more I think about it I'm guessing it dates back to the late 19th century but that is only speculation.
His first resort was the development surrounding the Peter Pan Woodland Club on Big Bear Lake. This is in the San Bernardino Mountains. It took it's name from the nearby Pan hot springs and for a long time was considered the swankiest spot in the mountains.
A decade or so later he moved down to the Coachella Valley and started the same process at La Quinta Cove. A subdivision was created, a number of small adobe houses were built, and a club founded. Members of The Desert Club and the Peter Pan Woodland Club had reciprocal benefits. If you owned a home in each place (and though they were exquisite architecturally they were modest in size and price) you had the perfect get away from Los Angeles and San Diego for both the winter and the summer.
Here's another of The Desert Club:
There was even a spin-off, Club San Moritz, in Crestline, not too far from Big Bear ... that one was owned by my great aunt, who at one time worked for my grandad. It was more modest and, probably because of that, it lasted into the 1970s and the clubhouse still exists today.
I used to think that this club-cabin model was something my grandad invented, just because I had not been paying attention. Since then I've run across quite a few developments, all having started in that same period, all attempting the same thing. It seems it was a standard way of doing business.
Does anyone know about this particular business model and where it started? The more I think about it I'm guessing it dates back to the late 19th century but that is only speculation.
