In 1926, Coffin,
for the grand sum of $349,485.17, bought all five miles of Sea Island, exclusive
of some lots that had already been sold, from a group of Brunswick developers
who had given up on it. It was his largest single investment to date. As Jones
tells the story: “They recognized they were buying this real estate that
eventually they were going to develop and sell. They realized they needed a
place where people could stay if they were going to look at it.” That was how
the idea for a hotel came to be.By then, Coffin was working with his cousin
Bill Jones, who was 30 years his junior, called him Uncle Howard, and had long
been kind of a business protégé. The first Bill Jones had been a frail child.
His health had mended enough by his college years that he was able to immerse
himself in Detroit debutante parties, but in the winter of 1923, when he was 21
and studying business at the Wharton School, he developed tuberculosis. His
doctors advised a warm climate, so he boarded a train for Georgia. In This Happy
Isle, a book about the company and the dynasty, commissioned and published by
the Sea Island Co. in 1978, author Harold H. Martin says that Coffin dreamed big
dreams and had his head in the clouds, while Jones functioned as the detail man
who paid attention to the costs and potential payoffs of their ventures. Because
the first Bill Jones developed cold feet—fortuitously, it turned out—about the
original plans to make the hotel an eight-story affair patterned after the
famous Breakers in Palm Beach, the company opted for a more modest 46-room
Mediterranean-style villa, designed by the famous architect Addison Mizner. The
structure, which cost $440,000 to build and furnish in 1927, was meant to be
temporary. The first real renovation is going on right now. It will not be
completed until 2007, but is taking place in phases so that it will not
interfere with the summit or other day-to-day business.  | | SEA ISLAND'S verdant wetlands await the expected 7,000 delegates who will attend the G8 Summit in June. |
Fiscal Conservatives
The loss of the Cloister’s Mobil Five-Star ranking in
1998 was a blow to business (the Lodge, which features a personal butler for
each guest, continues to earn five stars). There were some layoffs and a
management team shakeup in 1999, according to an account in the local newspaper,
the Brunswick News. But Jones learned from his grandfather’s legacy that the
company can weather hard times if it keeps a close eye on spending. He says the
$200-million renovation can be financed inexpensively in the current low-rate
debt market.
|
