"Propel Hidden Valley to new levels of excellence while preserving the welcoming culture our members value." That's the line the club's own board president used in December to describe what comes next at Hidden Valley Country Club. It's a fair description of what changed. It's also a good reminder of what didn't, because the same 480 acres that hold the club also hold a dog park named after the man who helped start it, and that dog park answers to nobody at the club at all.
If you live in Hidden Valley, you've probably driven past both without connecting them. The club sits at 3575 East Hidden Valley Drive behind its gates and hedges. The Link Piazzo Dog Park sits a short walk away inside Hidden Valley Regional Park, open to anyone with a leash and a car in the lot on Parkway Drive. One just changed hands. The other hasn't changed at all, and under the current setup, it can't, because the two run on completely separate tracks even though they share a name and a founder.
The Man Behind Both Names
Hidden Valley Country Club was founded in 1956 by four World War II veterans. One of them was Link Piazzo, a B-25 pilot with the Army Air Corps who went on to spend much of his later life on local philanthropy, including support for the Nevada Humane Society and for Hidden Valley Park itself. Piazzo lived in Hidden Valley until his death in 2014 at 95, and the county named the regional park's off-leash dog area after him.
That's the piece most residents don't know: the same person who helped start the private golf club that anchors the neighborhood's identity is the namesake of the public dog park most people actually use every week. One institution stayed private and exclusive. The other became public and free. Both trace back to Piazzo, and both still sit on land within a few hundred yards of each other.
What Troon Actually Takes Over
The club side is where the real news sits. On December 1, 2025, Troon announced it had been selected to manage Hidden Valley Country Club, with its private club division, Troon Privé, overseeing club operations, agronomy, food and beverage, and membership sales and marketing. Troon is the largest golf and club management company in the world, running services at more than 950 locations across 45-plus states, so this isn't a small local hire. It's an established outside operator stepping into a club that had, until now, run itself.
The timing matters. Troon's arrival follows directly on the heels of a 2024 renovation led by architect Gary Brawley that reworked the course's irrigation system, rebuilt the bunkers, and reshaped ten of the eighteen greens. The course itself, originally laid out by William Bell Jr., now stretches close to 7,400 yards from the back tees with five sets of tees for different skill levels. Put those two facts together and the picture is a club that spent 2024 rebuilding its physical product, then spent late 2025 handing daily operations to a company built for exactly that kind of scale.
One more detail worth holding onto: Hidden Valley Country Club operates as a nonprofit, which means the club reinvests its surplus back into facilities and programs rather than paying it out to owners. That structure predates Troon and doesn't change with the new management contract. What changes is who runs the day to day. What stays the same is where the money goes.
Where the Line Actually Falls
Here's the split, laid out plainly:
| What | Who runs it | Did it change in December 2025? |
|---|---|---|
| Golf operations and agronomy | Troon Privé | Yes |
| Food & beverage, membership marketing | Troon Privé | Yes |
| Club pool, tennis, pickleball, fitness center | Troon Privé | Yes |
| Link Piazzo Dog Park | Washoe County Parks | No |
| Clarence K. Bath Memorial Horse Arena | Washoe County Parks | No |
| Regional park trails, playgrounds, picnic pavilions | Washoe County Parks | No |
Everything in the top half sits behind the club's gates and answers to Troon now. Everything in the bottom half sits in the public regional park and answers to Washoe County, the same as it did last year and the year before that.
The 480 Acres Nobody Renegotiated
Hidden Valley Regional Park itself covers 480 acres, with about 65 of those developed for active use. Beyond the dog park, the park holds the Clarence K. Bath Memorial Horse Arena, named for a horseman who came to Reno in 1922 and later helped found the Nevada White Hats, along with tennis and pickleball courts, a volleyball court, two children's playground areas, and a network of multi-use trails that residents use for walking, running, and riding.
None of that sits inside the club's management contract. Washoe County Parks controls the regional park's facilities directly, sets its own hours, and answers to its own commission, not to the club's board or to Troon. A management change at the country club has no mechanism to touch a horse arena or a dog park a few hundred yards away, because the two were never governed by the same body to begin with. If you're a horse owner who uses the Bath Arena or a dog owner who takes the Piazzo park's Sunday morning quiet hours, the club's new operator has no say in your Tuesday.
What This Means If You Walk Past Both
The practical read for anyone in the neighborhood is straightforward. If you're a club member, expect the visible changes: a management team with national reach, likely tweaks to dining hours and event calendars, and continued work on a course that already went through a full renovation cycle last year. If you're not a member and your relationship to this stretch of southeast Reno runs through the dog park, the horse arena, or the trails that wind past both, nothing about your routine changed in December, and nothing about the county's side of that 480 acres is up for renegotiation because a private club hired a new operator.
It's a small distinction, but it's the kind that matters if you've ever wondered why a neighborhood can have a headline-worthy business change at one address and total stability a quarter mile away. Hidden Valley has both a private institution answering to a national management company and a public one answering to county commissioners, and the fact that Link Piazzo's name sits on both doesn't mean either one answers to the other.
If you ever want a longer conversation about how Hidden Valley's mix of private amenities and public land shapes daily life here, or about anything else happening in this pocket of southeast Reno, The Mike Wood Team is always glad to talk it through. Make Your Next Move With Confidence.
