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| According to Fodor’s, The Lodge serves as the clubhouse for the Sea Island Golf Club. Some clubhouse. The 40-room, five-star resort cost $50 million to build, and guests have four restaurants from which to choose. |
President Bush was intent on holding the G-8 summit at a resort where security and amenities would both be first class. Knowing his parents had fond memories of their 1940s honeymoon hideaway, Sea Island got the nod.
BY STEVE EUBANKS (M ‘84)
om Wolfe could not have created a better scene. There they were, two of the most powerful men in America: one a six-term congressman from Ohio, member of the ways and means and budget committees, the other the deputy chief of staff for the president of the United States, both slathered in insect repellant and traipsing through brooms edge in boots and britches, dogs by their sides, shotguns at the ready. The trip had been planned for weeks, but despite their head-table status at most Washington functions, this excursion into the brush wasn’t part of a summit, or a policy retreat. It was purely recreational. They, like so many other Men in Full, had come to South Georgia on a quail hunting junket at a private plantation reserved solely for that purpose.
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How badly did the G-8 committee want Sea Island? When they learned The Cloister’s main building was being leveled, they asked if the Plantation Center was available. When Bill Jones said it was coming down, too, they said O.K., we’ll come anyway.
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| Built in 1928, The Cloister lost its five-star Mobil rating in 1996. The main building has been leveled as part of a $350 million redevelopment plan. A newer, grander Cloister Hotel will rise in its place. |
The place is known as Broadfield Plantation: moss hanging from oaks; pine scent wafting through the muggy morning air; cicadas and katydids trumpeting the arrival of men who hunt with kennel carts and staff. It’s a place where Washington and New York power brokers can shed their political yokes, breath clean air, and banter about the big ideas of the day. One such idea came up as a part of this trip. As Alfred W. “Bill” Jones III, owner of Broadfield Plantation and chairman of the Sea Island Company, explains it:
“Rob Portman [Republican congressman from the second district of Ohio, and chairman of the Republican leadership in the House, as well as Bill Jones’s cousin], and his good friend Joe Hagin [White House deputy chief of staff] both vacationed on Sea Island for years. When they were down shooting quail, I mentioned to them that, while they were in these positions, if there was anything we could do with the government that would be great. I was thinking maybe a Republican senate retreat or something along those lines.”
Portman was thinking much bigger, as one is prone to do between coveys. “Well,” he said, “The G-8 is coming up.”
Jones (M ’78), the third-generation landlord of coastal Georgia’s premier retreat for the well heeled, never considered something of that scale. But he understood the value of hosting the leaders of Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Japan, Canada, and the United States, along with all their respective support staff, worldwide media, and the inevitable supporters and protesters who glom on to events like the G-8.
“I knew it was bigger than anything we’d done before,” says Jones. “But that was how it started.”
That was not, however, how it ended. Sea Island wasn’t the only G-8 site considered, and politics played a key role in the decision. The summit location rotates among the member nations, which means it comes to America every eight years. The president makes the final call on the U.S. site, but accommodations, accessibility, transportation—and security—are critical components. Portman and Hagin lobbied hard for the Golden Isles, and they found an ally in director of the Secret Service Ralph Bashem, who once headed the Federal Law Enforcement training facility in Glynn County. Bashem loved Sea Island, not just for the fried lobster and corn muffins, but because an island with only one bridge was reasonably easy to secure. With Sea Island bracketed by Fort Stewart to the north and Jacksonville Naval Air Station to the south, it’s easy to see why the security guys gave it the nod.
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Jones, an emeritus trustee of the UGA Foundation, has revitalized the family business. Hoping to raise $50 million in pre-sales for Sea Island’s new Frederica Club, he brought in $100 million. |
Thus, no one should have been surprised when current president Bush gave Sea Island the nod. The private club, real estate, and resort components of the Sea Island Company have thrived on this kind of marketing for decades.
“We’ve always enjoyed such great word-of-mouth business that we’ve done very little advertising,” says Jones. “There aren’t a lot of people who know we’re here.”
One of those who had no idea was golfing great Gary Player, who, upon captaining the first UBS Cup at the Sea Island Golf Club, said, “This place is unbelievable. I had no idea this was here.” Jones just smiles at stories like this. “We aren’t standoffish,” he insists. “We welcome anybody. But we’re not going to lower our standards. If you want that, great. If you don’t, there are other places to go.”
That’s exactly what Jones told the G-8 site committee when they learned that the main building of The Cloister, the centerpiece of the Sea Island Company’s resort operations for 75 years, was in the process of being leveled as part of a $350 million master development plan. “They said, ‘You really need to delay that project,’ ” Jones recalls. “I told them we just couldn’t delay that project. If [the Summit] didn’t come as a result of that, then it didn’t come. A delay could cause a lot of disruption to our plan. Next thing I hear, the list had gotten smaller, and we were still on it. Then I got a call from them saying, ‘We really need your Plantation Center [a conference facility adjacent to The Cloister].’ I told them, ‘Well, that’s coming down with the rest of the building.’ They said, ‘O.K.’ The next thing I know, we’re being announced as the site.”
If you want to come, fine . . . if you don’t, that’s fine, too. Those aren’t the exact words of the Sea Island Company mission statement—its printed objective is to be the finest resort and resort community in the world—but you don’t have to look far to find that come-if-you-like attitude. Jones, who dropped into the University of Georgia for a few Milledge Avenue keg parties on his way from Clemson to Valdosta State (“Somehow I was never able to make it to a spring quarter” is how he remembers his UGA days) has surrounded himself with a high-powered team of Georgia alums.
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| Bulldogs keep The Sea Island Company humming: [top left] Kirby Yawn (BBA ’01), room service manager; Kyle Tibbs Jones (ABJ ’85), marketing and media director; and Yates Anderson (BLA ’03), associate landscape architect. [middle] Merry Tyler Tipton (ABJ ’71), vice president of corporate communications. [ right] Al Brown (JD ’72), director of sales; and David Everett (M ’72), president/COO, who gave up his own development company on Hilton Head to join the Sea Island team. | ||
The current president and COO of the Sea Island Company was a standout on one of Georgia’s best golf teams. David Everett (M ’72) roomed with future PGA Tour player Tommy Valentine (BBA ’72) and national amateur champion Danny Yates (BBA ’73). Other greats on Everett’s team included former PGA tour player and current ESPN commentator Bill Kratzert (BBA ’74), and Pete Davison (M ’69), who is now a senior vice president with the PGA Tour and COO of the Tournament Players Clubs. Everett founded Everett and Associates, moved to Hilton Head, and developed Colleton River Plantation and Belfair Plantation. Like the Bushs, he, too, had a familial connection with Sea Island. Having vacationed there with his parents every summer growing up, Everett and his wife continued the tradition by taking their kids to Sea Island during spring and summer breaks.
“When I got in the development business on Hilton Head, we never competed with Sea Island,” says Everett. “Nobody on Hilton Head could. No other place had the tradition, the character, and the persona. But you always strove to try to do something this nice.” The striving got a little easier in the early nineties as a little of the luster dimmed on the Sea Island legacy. That fact became clear to Everett from another family member. “My son and I were playing golf at the old Marshside one day during our vacation, and he said to me, ‘Dad, this isn’t really a very good golf club, is it?’ I had never really thought about it like that, because the place had always been so special for us—but he was right. The golf clubs, in particular, had fallen into disrepair. They had gone down while Colleton Rivers and the Belfairs and the Honor’s Clubs had gone up —so the disparity was huge.”
Golf wasn’t the only aspect of Sea Island being lapped by the competition. In 1996, Mobil sent a letter to the Sea Island Company congratulating The Cloister Hotel on its four-star rating, a great honor with one noteworthy caveat: The Cloister had been a five-star property for a quarter of a century.
“I knew it was coming,” says Jones. “I didn’t feel like we were worthy of the [five-star] award at that time, simply from a physical standpoint. I really felt like we were resting on our laurels. It was a great wakeup call for our company. It was the first step in saying: We’re not going to be left behind. We’re going to focus on our mission to be the finest resort in the world and we’re going to do whatever we can to do that. There were a lot of tears shed around that time, but I was glad we had the impetus to seek excellence.”
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Avenue of the Oaks, which graces the entrance to The Lodge, is but one example of the natural beauty that attracts visitors and residents alike to coastal Georgia. These live oaks and were planted in the 1840s by Anna Paige King, heir to the land. |
Jones’ cadre of UGA alums also includes: Al Brown (JD ’72), director of sales; Merry Tyler Tipton, (ABJ ’71), vice president of corporate communications; and Kyle Tibbs Jones (ABJ ’85), marketing and media director. The team was charged with doing more than giving an aging property a facelift: they had to remake the Sea Island Company, expanding it beyond the geographic confines of Sea Island, and creating a lifestyle brand that dripped with everything sweet and fine in the South. Although contemporaries, Everett, Brown, and Tipton never knew each other at school—and none of them knew Bill Jones III, which was understandable. Jones had been a drifter through his school years, working in maintenance and construction at The Cloister and toying with the idea of moving out west to become a hunting guide. That was before adulthood kicked in and he assumed the helm of the family business. When he did take over, he shook the rafters.
Today, Jones is affable, old school, and reserved, much like the property his family has operated since the 1920s. Rarely will he go an afternoon without a cigar (“When we designed our new offices, I told them I had to have a corner with a window that I could open”), but he’s never intrusive. The manners of the man, like the place, are pleasingly formal, but never stiff. All of his guests are made comfortable, whether in his office, his home, or at any of the Sea Island Company’s amenities.
ill Jones is a visionary in the mold of his distant cousin, automotive pioneer Howard Coffin, who built The Cloister Hotel in an era when the Astors, Vanderbilts, and Rockefellers came to the “salts” of coastal Georgia to escape the harsh northern winters. In 1928, Coffin called his island “a place to charm the mind while nature mends nerves worn thin by living too fast and too hard.”
Coffin built his luxury resort in 1928 and turned over operations to his younger cousin, Alfred Jones, Sr., who ran the Sea Island Company for more than 50 years. Bill Jones Jr. (BSA ’52) took over the reins from his father, added a third nine holes to the original 18-hole course, and built what was then known as the St. Simons Island Club, a member-friendly golf course in the residential area of St. Simons near the Sea Island Golf Club. But it was Bill III who took the bold step of razing The Cloister’s main building, which Coffin had built, and expanding the company to include some of the finest golf clubs and resort amenities in the world.
“I knew my grandfather well,” says Jones. “And he would have been the first person to do whatever was needed to move the business forward. I’ve had a lot of people say, ‘Oh, but your grandfather built this!’ Well, if he didn’t have an immediate use for something, he threw it away. A lot of the historical photographs and archival things we have around here we got out of the trash after he’d thrown them away. He was always looking forward. If he were around today, he would be cheering the decisions we’ve made.”
The new Cloister is a couple of years away from opening its doors, but the resort continues to operate and no one visiting for the first time would ever know that anything was missing. Ocean Forest, opened in 1994 and the youngest private club ever to host the Walker Cup matches, set the standard. It was followed by The Lodge at Sea Island, a 40-room, $50 million, five-star hotel—actually located on St. Simons—that would make Donald Trump blink. Then came the redesigns to the golf courses, which now include three distinct eighteens with a fourth under construction on the north end of St. Simons at the 3,000-plus-acre Frederica Club.
“I was convinced I would never have the opportunity to do anything of his quality and magnitude on my own,” says Everett of his decision to forgo his own company. “We did some pretty good stuff, but we had to borrow $20-$30 million dollars, and we were always making decisions based on our debt. Now I have a chance to perpetuate a vision. You don’t have that kind of opportunity very often in your career.”
Nor are there many opportunities to follow the lead of someone like Bill Jones, who has weathered assaults from all sides in implementing his plan for the Sea Island Company. So far, he has come out looking like a genius.
“Every time we changed anything we’ve been criticized,” says Al Brown. “When we announced we were going to re-do Seaside [golf course], Davis Love said he was going to lay down in front of the bulldozers and Sir Michael Bonallack [former secretary of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club at St. Andrews] told Bill that if he ruined that golf course he would never speak to him again. I don’t guess we’ll ever overcome the resistance to change.”
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For security reasons, the Secret Servuce won’t provide details as to where the G-8 leaders will be headquartered. But one thing is certain. When they convene their high-level meetings, they will be seated at a handmade, heart of pine conference table that was custom built by Sea Island obstetrician Carl Dohn, who also has a knack for bringing new furniture into the world. |
But they’re coming close. Resistance from members to the demolition of a landmark like The Cloister was minimal. To jump-start Frederica Township—a community that includes wooded homesites, a 200-acre lake, and a Tom Fazio golf course—Jones sent out a letters and made some calls in the hopes of raising $50 million in pre-sales. In the worst economic times in a decade, he raised $100 million.
“We have a 75-year history of doing the right thing,” says Jones. “I think [the lack of any protests about The Cloister, and those pre-sale numbers] are a testament to that.”
So was landing the G-8 at a time when the main building of The Cloister would be little more than dirt and pilings. But as Brown puts it, people don’t visit Sea Island for a building: “It goes beyond the natural beauty of the area. You can go a lot of places around the world and find the same level of natural beauty. And it’s beyond the people. You meet nice people here, but there are nice people a lot of places. You’ve got great facilities a lot of places as well. It’s more than that.”
What is it? According to Brown, who raised his children on Sea Island and plans to retire there: “This is a place where you honeymoon, where your children learn manners, where people put on their Sunday clothes on a weeknight to go play bingo, where your family comes together, maybe for one of the few times of the year. It’s a place where dads dance with their daughters. You can’t replicate that.”
No word on whether Vladimir Putin and Jacques Chirac plan to dance with their daughters during the G-8 summit. But there’s no question that they will be treated to a unique experience that is the best Georgia has to offer.
©2004 by the University of Georgia.