Recurring bookings completed, one-time events booked through October under revamped process

By Ann Peterson

Editor-in-chief

 

Friday, January 24 (2:30 p.m.): Booking 9,000 room reservations is a challenge under normal circumstances. The Recreation Department has now done it for 2025 with a few extra hurdles, including staffing shortages due to illness, the early-December creation of no-fee, no-service rooms and assessing space needs to ensure all clubs have access to rooms.

Originally, the Recreation Department planned to complete historical bookings by the end of December. (Historical bookings are reservations for the same dates the club had in 2024 and comprise recurring events, such as board and general meetings that happen on a weekly or monthly basis, and one-off events, such as fundraisers, holiday parties and non-regular events.)

Those bookings were derailed midway when illness sidelined two of the three regular reservations coordinators, forcing other staff to step in. By year’s end, Recreation had completed recurring bookings for the full year and one-off reservations through February. And as of Jan. 13, staff had finished booking one-off historical events through October for all clubhouses except the Event Center, said Kelsey Clyma, senior manager of resident services, who expects to finish the remaining historical reservations by Jan. 31. As of press time, the Event Center was only booked through March because rehearsals need to be scheduled for the many performances held at the venue.

“Really, staff did such an incredible job getting so much done with a bouncing ball of people out for two weeks at a time,” said Community Services Director Ann Mottola.

The staffing shortage also came as Recreation was streamlining reservations to address an internal audit that found a strain on resources, including too few rooms available for new and small clubs and not enough custodians to service the rooms and audio/ video (AV) requests. Proposed changes included charging fees to clubs for room use, which prompted considerable pushback, especially from clubs that needed space for small meetings that required no room setup.

That spurred the creation of no-reservation community spaces and the designation of many small, reserved rooms as no-fee, no-service rooms. “No fee, no service ended up being a universal issue among the clubs,” Mottola said.

The GRF Board approved the no-fee, no-service rooms on Dec. 6 – more than three months after Recreation had begun the historical bookings.

“Understandably, if clubs were having a small board meeting, they’d rather have the no-fee, no-service room,” Clyma said. “So for three weeks, we were jumping to make sure those contracts were accurate.”

The department also needed to make room for new and small clubs that in the past could only book one or two rooms a week – or sometimes none at all – because of space limitations. To address this, each club is now limited to four recurring reservations per week.

“That doesn’t mean the clubs can’t have one-offs,” Clyma added. “They can still have their holiday parties and their big events. They are just limited to four recurring bookings each week.”

Of the almost 200 clubs in Rossmoor, 11 of them had between five and 12 uses each week, while the majority of the other clubs averaged four recurring dates.

“The requests and the need exceed the amount of space that we have,” Clyma explained. “We had some clubs that had nowhere to go.”

One solution involved making the Oak Room a shared space for the clubs with table games. Initially, some residents balked out of concern for how different clubs would coexist, which led to the room being designated a quiet space. “All of the clubs were requesting this,” Mottola said. “So, this is something we’re navigating through.”

Staff also is trying to relocate clubs that were previously in rooms now assigned as reservation- free community spaces, such as the Echo Room at the Event Center.

“That’s what is slowing us down a little,” Clyma said. “It’s like (the puzzle video game) Tetris. We’re trying to find a way to fit everyone in.”

Part of the maneuvering has involved relocating small groups from large rooms, such as the Fairway at Creekside, into a more space-appropriate room so that larger groups can be accommodated. Staff is also consolidating bookings so that meetings are held back-to-back rather than transitioning from meeting to dance to meeting again, which requires more turnover by the custodial team.

“We’re trying to be mindful of how our spaces are being used and to be more efficient with our staff’s time,” Clyma said.

Because historical bookings are the priority, Clyma said staff has not yet entertained requests for new events. She tapped a thick folder on her conference table that contained those new requests.

“We need to take care of history first,” she said, “and that includes figuring out what history should be for the new clubs who started last year when we didn’t have adequate space for them.”

Also slowing down the process are clubs that request a different date or time for a historical event. Many of these requests conflict with another club’s historical booking.

“We have to explain that your history isn’t the event itself; it’s that date for that event,” Clyma said. “It’s difficult and time-consuming to have that conversation over and over again.”

Religious events such as High Holy Days, which do not have fixed dates, are an exception. Under the reservations policy, those dates are reserved first, with second priority given to relocating the clubs that had the historical booking in that venue. Mutual meetings also have priority status.

And as the reservation process proceeds, staff continue to better educate residents about the changes.

Among those changes is the creation of plug-and-play setups for clubs in fee-based rooms. If clubs supply their own laptops and require no additional AV assistance, the AV fee can be waived, Clyma said.

Staff also is enforcing a change tied to better securing the front gate. Clubs now must provide their guest list to Recreation with the names of every non-resident guest coming through the gate. Drivers will have their licenses checked, and their passengers will be checked against the list given to Recreation.

Non-resident members can be added to the list for the full year of events. And non-resident guests who provide their phone number or email can have a gate pass sent to them, enabling them to go through the gate faster.

More changes might be on tap as the GRF Policy Committee is set to begin discussing club memberships, guests and more at its Feb. 10 meeting.