The historic Georgia property nearly saw the recession write its final chapter, but has since been revived by new ownership and a renewed sense of purpose.
In 2004, President George W. Bush brought world leaders to southeastern Georgia’s Sea Island Resort for the 30th annual G8 (Group of Eight) Summit. Once again, an international spotlight was shined on the oceanfront property that immediately became a favored playground and retreat after automotive executive Howard Coffin and his cousin, A.W. Jones, opened it in 1928 around The Cloister, the grand, Addison Mizner-designed hotel.
In keeping with a tradition started by President Calvin Coolidge when Sea Island opened, and then carried on by many other visiting dignitaries and royalty through the years, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair planted live oaks on The Cloister’s grounds during the Summit. The Summit Board Room was also created as a permanent addition within The Cloister to house mementos from the event, including the table that was handcrafted from native woods for the meeting (see photo, pg. 16). President Bush praised the Sea Island property as “the right choice” for the Summit, noting that “the Southern hospitality was strong” and “the people were just spectacular.” He also made special note of the fact that even a guest with such a discerning palate as French President Jacques Chirac thought “the food was great.”
Times of Crisis
As the next decade began, however, Sea Island was the focus of another summit—between two competing investor groups that had been fighting over the right to buy the resort. Sea Island had entered into bankruptcy in August 2010, claiming more than $1 billion in debt stemming from the unfortunate timing of major capital investments that the Jones family, which had retained ownership for more than 80 years, had made just before the recession, both to upgrade The Cloister and other parts of the property, and also to develop real estate around it.
When bankruptcy was declared, the Jones family had an agreement in place to be sold to Los Angeles-based Oaktree Capital Management and Avenue Capital Group of New York, which both specialize in distressed properties. But an auction was required by bankruptcy law, and that led to the emergence of another group of bidders with hospitality ties: Starwood Capital, whose CEO, Barry Sternlich, founded Starwood Hotels & Resorts, and Anschutz Corp., which in 2011 would buy The Broadmoor hotel and resort in Colorado Springs, Colo.
After first going to battle against each other in the auction, the two competing groups huddled and emerged as a coalition that made a joint bid of $212.4 million. The Jones family accepted, ending a traumatic period of uncertainty—not only for the resort’s 1,400 employees, guests whose families had been coming for generations, and those who had invested in Sea Island property and membership, but also for local residents who knew how much of an economic driver the resort had become for a region that had been especially hard hit by the recession.
“We understand how important Sea Island is to the community and to its various stakeholders,” Bruce Karsh, President of Oaktree, said at the time. “We are confident that financially strong and well-capitalized owners will establish a new beginning.”
Rolling Along
Brannen Veal has seen a lot of beginnings at Sea Island. He first came to the property in 1996, and after holding several roles as a golf professional and manager, was named Director of Golf in 2011 for the parent Sea Island Co., with responsibilities that include golf operations and maintenance for the three resort courses (Seaside, Plantation and Retreat) as well as the private, members-only Ocean Forest Golf Club. Since 2010, Veal and the Sea Island golf staff have also hosted the PGA Tour’s McGladrey Classic, held on the Seaside course each fall (this year’s dates are November 16-22).
While Veal has certainly stayed keenly aware during his nearly 20 years at Sea Island of the challenges that have emerged for both the property and the golf business, he’s always remained confident that his type of operation can present itself as a successful business model. “While golf rounds might be down overall [for the industry],” he says, “there’s no question that there’s a certain core level where people are still hungry to play.”
When Sea Island built its second showcase structure, The Lodge, to complement The Cloister in 2001, the property made a simultaneous decision “to be at the forefront of golf,” Veal says. In addition to positioning The Lodge and The Inn (which opened in 2014) as facilities with special appeal to golf groups and resort play, that mission was also pursued by continuing to build on Sea Island’s leadership in developing and providing top-end on-site instructional facilities and services. Sea Island’s Golf Learning Center, which opened in the 1980s as the first permanent golf instruction site in the U.S., was rebranded in 2014 as the Golf Performance Center, to highlight efforts made to “place even greater emphasis on a golfer’s performance on the course, no matter what their handicap,” Veal notes.
The Sea Island golf staff has also sought to expand the number of golfers on the property through new programs such as “speed-slot golf,” which reserves weekday morning times for singles and twosomes and guarantees rounds of less than three hours; nine-hole options; family clinics and the introduction of family tees on the Plantation and Retreat courses (players under 19 are also exempt from greens fees); and play-with-a-Sea Island-pro opportunities. “We’re not back yet to the high point of [over 80,000] rounds we saw [in 2005] when member play is included,” Veal says. “But we are getting to high points again for resort guests.”
Following the Leader
With Sea Island’s consistently high golf profile now gaining increased visibility for the property each year through the McGladrey Classic, momentum has also been fueled to help spread the word that the resort has fully rebounded, and to highlight the many other amenities and attractions it has to offer. Kathryn Hearn, in the newly created position of Social Media and Web Communications Manager, reports that her digital and electronic efforts have all been built around the singular focus of “generating organic growth by always being a [Sea Island] brand advocate.” And that brand, she adds, is being positioned as a place that “spans the board” of recreational and social/leisure offerings.
Managers within the many other Sea Island departments and areas of operation—some of whom have been with the resort through its transitions, while others were recently brought in and reflect the influence of the Starwood/Anschutz side of the new ownership—are all quick to note this renewed sense of unified purpose and direction. It has helped the property get beyond a real estate-oriented emphasis that was felt to have inhibited effective management of the resort’s activities in the past, many say, and has also generated new enthusiasm among the staff.
That energy will be needed, it’s noted, as more capital continues to be invested to improve and expand the property, at the same time that guest activity stretches out and Sea Island becomes far less seasonal, through its stepped-up promotion of all of the year-round attractions that it can provide.
“Unified purpose and direction” is also being reflected in more combined and cooperative efforts across departments. A key focus of the Golf Performance Center, for example, is now on identifying and helping to remedy physical limitations that inhibit players’ ability on the course. That’s led to the introduction of a “Performance Therapy Center,” through which golf and fitness/spa professionals work together to provide services such as “golf performance massage,” or the (very) cooling effects to be gained from a new cryotherapy machine that provides intensive relief (for those who can make it through three minutes while standing in it in their underwear with clouds of -220º F liquid nitrogen swirling around them) for inflammation and circulation-related problems that can make it hard to swing a golf club properly, or even to get around the course.
Being a resort with such a wide range of activities even helped Sea Island departments work together to solve a nagging problem that emerged at Southern Tide, the resort’s newest restaurant that quickly proved to be one of its most popular, because of its oceanside location at the property’s Beach Club. That popularity attracted grackles, who took to dive-bombing patrons’ plates (sometimes while they were still being carried out by servers) to also try to sample Southern Tide’s tasty fare.
Grackles, though, are themselves tasty fare for falcons—and Sea Island just happens to have those birds on the property, too, as a featured attraction of the Broadfield Sporting Club and Lodge. While it certainly wouldn’t do to have the falcons attack grackles while guests tried to dine at Southern Tide, it did prove to be the perfect solution to have handlers bring them to The Beach Club to just stand there with them during peak meal periods, as a show of force for the pesky birds—and an added show for guests as well. (The handler will even have the falcon take off occasionally to circle the area before coming back to its perch, providing additional entertainment while also proving to the grackles that they’re not being duped by a fake predator.)
Should another G8 Summit ever return to Sea Island, that’s probably a show that even Vladimir Putin would like.
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