In the summer of 2022, construction crews finished a $20 million transformation of The Country Club at Castle Pines. There was a new infinity-edge pool with cabanas perched 400 feet above the 18th green, a putting course cut into the cliff behind the clubhouse, a fitness center where there had only been a pro shop, and a wine room tucked next to an exhibition kitchen nobody had asked for but everybody wanted once they saw it. For a while, walking through the place felt like touring a house someone else had just finished decorating. The rooms were beautiful. Nobody quite knew how to use them yet.
That gap between the physical club and the working club is the part of this story most people who live inside the gates never hear. The building got its makeover in 2022. The operation didn't catch up until roughly three years later, and it took a new leadership team to close the distance.
A Building Members Approved Twice
The renovation that reshaped the club almost didn't happen the way it did. In 2018, members rejected a $29 million package that would have added a ballroom and an indoor spa. Two years later, in January 2020, they approved a leaner $17.1 million plan that dropped the ballroom and spa in favor of family-facing amenities: an aquatics complex, a fitness center, paddle tennis and pickleball courts, and an indoor-outdoor golf performance center with hitting bays and a simulator. By the time construction wrapped, the price tag had grown past $20 million, but the priorities members had actually voted for stayed intact.
What went in is worth naming, because it changed what a day at the club looks like now:
- An infinity-edge pool with a hot tub, fire pits, and cabanas overlooking Pikes Peak, Devil's Head, and the Front Range
- The Crags, a one-acre, 18-hole putting course built into the cliff face behind the clubhouse
- Chef's Corner, an exhibition-style kitchen inside a reworked dining room that also added an intimate fine-dining space with its own wine program
- A multi-sport racquet complex with heated winter paddle tennis, summer pickleball, and new tennis courts
- A golf performance center at the edge of the club's existing 20-acre practice facility
None of this touched the golf course itself. The Jack Nicklaus Signature layout, redone greens, and decade-old irrigation system stayed as they were. The money went toward turning a golf club into something members could use every day of the year, not just on the days they played 18.
What the Renovation Didn't Fix
Here is the part that never made it into the ribbon-cutting photos. When Perry Kenney arrived as General Manager and Chief Operating Officer in March 2023, about nine months after construction wrapped, he found a 680-member club running a much bigger operation on a much older set of habits. Dues did not cover the cost of actually operating the new amenities. There was no capital reserve study in place. In some cases, department heads had been reporting straight to the club's board instead of through a general manager, which meant priorities shifted depending on who was in the room.
Kenney had spent more than 21 years at Sawgrass Country Club in Florida, including a stretch overseeing a $25 million clubhouse rebuild there, so he recognized the pattern immediately. A club can finish construction and still be months or years away from actually delivering what it built.
"The programming piece was a big part of why I was brought here," Kenney told Club + Resort Business in a profile published in May 2026. The magazine's reporting laid out what he walked into: a new pool, casual dining, a fitness center, tennis, all of it built but none of it fully staffed or scheduled the way a full-service club would run it.
The People Who Closed the Gap
Fixing that took more than a new title on an org chart. Kenney brought in Chief Financial Officer Crystal Gray, who had previously worked as controller at Cherry Hills Country Club and The Pinery Country Club, to rebuild the club's financial model from the ground up. Her mandate was blunt: dues had to cover operations, not lag behind them. Executive Chef Nathan Gresham took over the kitchen and gave the culinary program the kind of leadership needed to actually use Chef's Corner and the club's expanded outdoor spaces, including on-course food service during member events and outdoor cooking stations tied to the new patio areas. Director of People and Culture William Borre and Food and Beverage Director Mac McNally rounded out a leadership group that, according to the same May 2026 profile, now runs day-to-day decisions through a real reporting structure instead of routing everything through the board.
The club employs close to 80 people to serve those 680 members, a ratio that only makes sense once you count everything the 2022 renovation added: a second full kitchen operation, a fitness staff, racquet sports programming, and pool service that didn't exist five years earlier.
What This Looks Like From Inside the Gates
None of this happens in a vacuum. The Country Club at Castle Pines sits inside The Village at Castle Pines, and it is worth being precise about which club is which, because the two get confused constantly. This is the member-owned club at 6400 Country Club Drive, distinct from Castle Pines Golf Club a short distance down the hill, which is invitation-only and hosted the BMW Championship in 2024 after two decades as home to The International PGA Tour event. Membership at the Country Club is separate from homeownership in the Village, and it draws members from across the south Denver metro area, not just from inside the gates.
But the club is still the building most Village residents pass on a trail walk or see lit up on a Friday evening, and what changed inside it changed the texture of a lot of ordinary weeks. A club built almost entirely around Saturday tee times now runs a seven-day calendar of dining, fitness classes, tennis leagues, and pool programming that has nothing to do with a scorecard. That shift from a golf-first schedule to something closer to a resort's daily rhythm didn't happen the moment the last cabana went up in 2022. It happened over the three years after, as a new leadership team quietly rebuilt the systems that let a beautiful building actually run like one.
If you're weighing what a changing amenity base like this means for property interest inside the Village, or you simply want a clearer read on how a neighborhood centerpiece like this shapes daily life behind the gates, Ford Fountain Team knows this community from the inside. Schedule a Private Consultation and we'll walk you through what we're seeing on the ground.
