On the Town: Relaxin’ at the Halifax

By Patricia Baldwin

Daytona Beach city club reflects resort community’s leisure lifestyle.

The Halifax Club is the only place within miles of Florida’s famed Daytona Beach boardwalk where you’ll encounter a dress code. Members like it like that. Then again, on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday nights, you can pull off your tie and take off your coat and still enjoy the a la carte dinner menu in the club’s grill area (or in the main dining room on Thursday nights). And, of course, all fashion restrictions are cast to the wind during the annual Bike Week (more on that later). Members like that too.

In fact, there’s a style for just about everyone on the top floor of the 10-story First Union Bank Building. Members here know that sometimes you just have to go with the flow and join  the fun — because something fun always is happening in this coastal town about 30 minutes north of Orlando.

ONE OF A KIND
Don’t even hint to Halifax members that they belong to a typical city club. After all, they don’t live in a typical “city” — Daytona is comprised of nine splinter communities that stretch and sprawl along the northern Florida coast on both sides of the Halifax River. “Downtown” is on mainland, across the river from the club, which overlooks an area on the “peninsula” that used to be known as Seabreeze.

Close by is the central core of the most popular beach areas, and the boardwalk is just a half-mile south. Not far down the highway is perhaps the region’s top draw, the Daytona International Speedway, where the Daytona 500 — the Super Bowl of racing — attracts 180,000 fans.

Club members are proud to claim  NASCAR founder and Speedway owner Bill France among their own. They also have bragging rights to Jim Ritts, commissioner of the Ladies Professional Golf Association, whose headquarters anchor a burgeoning resort and residential community in Daytona west of Interstate 95.

The strong sense of pride in belonging encompasses all 1,000 members of the eclectic club roster that includes winter “snowbirds,” summer travelers, beach homeowners, retirees, and business entrepreneurs, many of whom rely on the area’s strong tourist industry.

BEHIND CLUB DOORS
The range of interests of the active membership has created a variety of “clubs within a club,” club manager John Vest says. There’s a social committee, a bridge committee, a vintners group, and a food- tasting committee, just to name a few of the special interests. The food-tasting committee in particular has no lack of volunteers, especially since executive chef Robert Weil joined the staff more than a year ago. He regularly welcomes new members to his kitchen as part of their orientation tour.

Although the chef introduces a new menu each quarter, the casual inventiveness of the club lends itself to continual experimentation and discovery. If you don’t see what you want on the menu, “just ask for it,” Vest says.

ON THE LINKS
One of the most active clubs within the club is the golf group that has formed affiliations with several area courses to provide Halifax members special golf privileges. Of course, this effort has been given quite a boost by the fact that founding member and current Board of Governors chairman Ray Eddy owns the semi-private River Bend Golf Club in Ormond Beach. The club also has ties with The Golf Club at Cypress Head in Port Orange and four courses in Palm Coast. Other alliances are evolving. So much so that membership director Lorraine Vosmik positions Halifax as a country club in a city club setting.

FAMILY TIES
“We are very much like an extended family,” Vosmik says. And, as it is with many ancestral families, some members of this club like to gather for breakfast each morning around a large communal table. But it’s more than hotcakes from the griddle for the group of 15 (give-or-take) regulars. 

“It’s the happy hour and the brain trust,” Vest describes the group with a laugh. In other words, there’s plenty of socializing, but these members gather with a serious purpose. They comprise an investment club (and they’re doing quite nicely, thank you).

GLAD YOU ASKED
Vest, like all good managers, thinks his club is among the best of the best of Associate Clubs. (Yes, he’s got quite a competitive spirit.) So we asked him some tough questions, like “Why?” Here are some choice excerpts from his answers that include some “little known facts” about the Halifax Club:
• Loyalty is a hallmark of the club. Of the 104 charter members, 92 are current members.
• Every member has a story. For instance, Board of Governors chairman Ray Eddy was once a farmer in North Dakota. Homebound during his 77th blizzard, Eddy picked up a magazine that featured a story about Daytona Beach, and decided then and there he was going to move to Florida. He then bought three McDonald’s franchises in 1969. About as many years and franchise stores later, there’s no going back to the snow for this transplant. By the way, Eddy is only the third board chairman in the Halifax Club’s 24-year history.
• The club’s setting is distinctive. The 10-story First Union Bank Building happens to be the tallest building in Daytona Beach. For a city with no skyline, that’s pretty tall. Seems the sandy soil of the Florida beach property makes high-rise buildings costly to build. And when you’ve got the Atlantic Ocean to look at, who needs a skyline view?
• The annual Bike Week keeps things hopping at the Halifax Club. Each year, a quarter million bikers and their motorcycles from all over the country converge on Daytona Beach, bringing in an estimated $225 million to the community (almost equal to the $240 million the Daytona 500 brings in each year). During Bike Week, the club extends temporary privileges to members of the VQ Bikers, a group of yachtsmen from Fort Lauderdale. Bike Week also finds member bike enthusiasts Dick Brown, Don Holton, and Dr. Rick Acquaro donning their leather duds.
• Speaking of leather, Halifax life member Bruce Rossmeyer can fix you up at his Harley Davidson store, a definite shopping stop while in Daytona.
• Every other year for two weeks, The London Symphony Orchestra performs in Daytona (the next scheduled visit will be in 1999).
• The club’s signature “Citrus Coffee” won top honors as “gourmet tableside presentation” at the recent “Puttin’ on the Ritz” taste-of-the-town competition. To prepare it, take a citrus zester (your club bartender has this cutting tool that has tiny holes to create threadlike strips) and systematically remove the peel and rind from an orange. You’ll have something akin to a shoestring. Suspend it above an Irish coffee cup, and drip Grand Marnier, Kahlúa, and rum down the peel. Light for some blazing glory. (On second thought, don’t try this one at home.)

All good reasons why members “like it like that” at the Halifax Club.

Halifax Club, Daytona Beach
Address: 10th floor, First Union Bank Building, 444 Seabreeze Blvd., Daytona Beach, Florida.
Associate Club privileges: Two-way
Manager: John Vest
Membership: Lorraine Vosmik
Facilities: Main dining room, four private dining rooms, and cocktail lounge.
Dining: Breakfast, Monday-Friday, 7:30 a.m.-9:30 a.m. Lunch, Monday-Friday, 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Dinner, Wednesday-Saturday, 5:30-9:00 p.m. Social hour, Wednesday-Saturday, 5 p.m.-7 p.m. Closed Sunday.