Pat Corso told the Carthage Rotary Club that Pinehurst Inc. aims to offer its guests more than a place to stay and a game of golf.

“We want to provide a singular experience,” he told the Rotarians. “We want that to include the area’s distinct culture, people, spirit and geography.”

Corso, president and chief operating officer of Pinehurst Inc., spoke to the club Thursday on the occasion of the celebration of the Rotary Club’s charter. The Carthage club got its charter Jan. 14, 1941. One charter member, Luke Marion, was present Thursday.

Corso, who came to Pinehurst in 1986 as chief operating officer of the resort, said he has remained far longer at a single place than is usual in the hospitality industry. His children go to school here, and Corso is active in a number of community organizations, serving on the boards of the Moore County Educational Foundation and Habitat for Humanity, among others. He is a life member of the PTA.

Bill Collier introduced him to a packed room in the MacDonald Building. “I want to pay him the kind of compliments that would make his mother proud,” Collier said.

Collier told The Pilot that he had not met Corso previously, so he went over to his office a day earlier to introduce himself.

“He was so friendly,” he said. “We had quite a long talk.”

Corso told the Rotarians that, while the resort is a large business in this area, it is not so large in the industry. He said the hotel division is only about one-third of the ClubCorp domain. That it is some sort of monolith, he said, is a misconception.

“We started with city clubs,” he said. The company now has clubs in ranges from reasonably priced family clubs to more exclusive (and correspondingly expensive) clubs.

Corso said the lots created by the former Diamondhead Corp. brought rapid growth to Pinehurst.

“The permanent population used to be only about 1,000,” he said. “It grew to 9,000, almost 10 times its former size.”

Corso said the growth, and the loss of the bridle paths and trails, meant the loss of two dimensions of Pinehurst tradition: equestrian sports and the gun club, which will not be rebuilt.

“If it were there, with all the homes now around that area, complaints might force it to close anyway,” Corso told The Pilot.

He told the Rotarians that the resort intends to increase the percentage of women on its guest list. That has been a principal reason for building the new spa.

“We need more women to come to Pinehurst,” he said. “That alone would increase our ratio from 1.4 to 1.6 guests per room.”

Corso said that would have a significant impact on business done with local stores and restaurants.

He emphasized his company’s dedication to a traditional place, Pinehurst, with a unique history and culture.

“Everything has become too homogenized,” Corso said. “If you put on a blindfold and were set down almost anywhere in America, when you took off that blindfold you would see exactly the same things, no matter where you were. That would not be true in Pinehurst.”

He said some resorts script everything their employees say to guests, but Pinehurst treasures the personal character of people who work there. He said the resort’s employees deal with guests from within the wealth of their own culture and personality.

“One thing we did, for example, was to restore the historic name of the hotel,” Corso said. “It is now, once again, The Carolina.”