Amenity-focused advisory group has number of ideas for yacht and beach clubs

By Greg Ellison
Staff Writer

(Jan. 2, 2020) With another year just beginning, Ocean Pines Association Clubs Committee Chairman Gary Miller outlined a number of objectives the group plans to tackle during 2020.
Miller said the clubs committee, which focuses on association amenities, is looking at additional tweaks for work undertaken during 2019.
“This year, we helped to formulate a designated smoking area at the yacht club and beach club,” he said.
Miller said despite those improvements, work remains to develop an overall smoking policy for OPA facilities that would curtail instances of patrons passing through clouds of smoke when entering buildings.
“It’s already established at the yacht club and beach club, although we have noticed that it needs to be enforced a little bit more,” he said.
Other open air topics on tap for the clubs committee during 2020 include installing additional outside seating areas at the yacht club.
The committee is hoping to create a more isolated lounge area on the waterside of the tiki bar, featuring couch-type furniture.
“So people can sit out on the deck of the yacht club in a communal, comfortable area,” he said. “We also talked about some sun umbrellas around the deck of the yacht club and especially along the bar rail that’s on the water side behind the tiki bar.”
Easing the ability for the mobility challenged to enter the yacht club is also under discussion, Miller said.
“If people are in wheelchairs, or on crutches, when they come up to the door, if there isn’t anybody there to open the door for them they have difficulty,” he said.
Miller said the clubs committee included updating handicapped accessibility to the yacht club among numerous topics mentioned in its annual report to the

Ocean Pines Association Clubs Committee Chairman Gary Miller said among other objectives for 2020 are improvements at the yacht club, including potentially expanding bar capacity to serve the near capacity crowds present during weekend nights last summe20

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“If they could set up some automated door openers so that people … could push the button and the door opens
and possibly something similar to that in the bathrooms to make it easier accessibility,” he said. “They’ve kind of straightened out where the handicapped parking is [and] that’s gotten better.”
Acoustic challenges will be another point of focus at the yacht club during 2020, Miller said.
“We are still working on the acoustics issue,” he said. “There is a working group now that’s approved by [General Manager] John Viola to work on some ideas to improve the acoustics upstairs and downstairs at the yacht club.”
Shifting to overall façade issues, Miller said the clubs committee is hoping to foster a more proactive and less reactive approach for building maintenance needs at both the yacht club and beach club.
“We’re going to try to push for that a little bit more [and]
make sure that the yacht club and beach club are kept up to the level that they should be,” he said.
To avoid becoming a victim of its own success, the committee will examine reducing the often lengthy lines due to capacity crowds at the yacht club during weekend nights in the summer.
“There’s long lines at all of the bars,” he said. “We might try to figure out a way of adding another drink location for people on busy nights.”