July 5, 2004
From blueprint to greens | The once-abandoned Sunday River Golf Club nears completion, thanks to Bath-based Harris Golf
By Mike Woelflein
Jeff Harris stands on the deck of the Sunday River Golf Club clubhouse in Bethel, looking over the practice green toward the Mahoosuc mountain range. The president of Harris Golf stands still, for just a moment. Behind him, workers finish the bar and grill area. Outside, people and machinery scramble over the course, preparing for its opening later this summer.
Soon, he'll head out to check on the driving range and the bulldozer work at the 12th hole. But, during this pause, he's thinking about the significance of his Bath-based firm building a world-class resort golf course. "Is this big and great and is it a dream?" he asks. "Absolutely, when you find time to think about it. When you do sit back and look at it, from here, it's simply amazing. But we're just here, doing it, seven days a week. And this is not the peak of Harris Golf. We're going to keep on going."
With that, the 39-year-old Portland native starts moving again, leading a group of people on a quick tour, stopping first at the immaculate ninth green. From there, the view opens down a short par four with a pair of ravines across the fairway, and across the valley to Old Speck, the 4,000-footer that dominates the mountain range.
The course has come a long way in a little over a year, as has the company in its decade of existence. Harris Golf has grown from a father-son team who worked their way into golf retail and then small course development to a firm of 100 employees running three courses and a large retail store. What's more, Harris Golf stepped up to become the company that built Sunday River Golf Club when the Newry resort's owners, the financially troubled American Skiing Company, could not: Sunday River Golf Club, a joint venture with the resort and ASC, is 95% owned by Harris Golf.
Resurrecting the course
Sunday River Resort and ASC started planning a golf course in the mid-1990s. Executives brought in renowned course architect Robert Trent Jones Jr., who had designed the course at Sugarloaf ˆ another ASC resort ˆ as well as such Meccas for golfers as The Links at Spanish Bay in Pebble Beach, Calif., and the Prince Course in Kauai, Hawaii. In Bethel, Trent Jones and the Sunday River team selected a site, and Trent Jones designed a course that fits naturally into the mountainous terrain, featuring ever-changing views of the surrounding peaks. State Department of Environmental Protection permits were obtained, and the project was ready to go in 1998.
Then it languished, first as ASC put more money into its western resorts, then as the company struggled with a vast amount of debt and saw its stock price plummet. By 2000, according to Matt Dieterich, ASC's director of asset management and the point man on the deal with Harris, the concept of building a course at Sunday River ˆ once a strategy to cement the resort as a four-season destination ˆ was essentially abandoned.
But when management from the two Maine resorts was consolidated in 2002, the course again became a priority under the direction of John Diller, who runs both mountains. Sunday River sees it as a way to fill hotel rooms in the summer and, over the longer term, to add value to the company's real estate holdings and pave the way for more development. There was just one problem: Sunday River still didn't have the funds to build it.
"That's certainly part of why we needed a partner," Diller says. "We had the real estate and most of the permitting. But we needed a partner to get it going right away."
Local, regional and national firms across the spectrum from golf course operators to real estate developers were interested in the project, but the deal ultimately went to Harris Golf, a Bath-based firm run by Jeff Harris, his brother Jason and their father, Richard. "My father got a call asking if we'd be interested, and he called me," says Jeff Harris. "I couldn't believe it at first. Then I was so excited for a project of this scope. We came over, and as soon as I saw the site and the dirt, I knew right away there was no ledge under the soil, which meant it wouldn't be prohibitively expensive to carve a golf course out of the mountains."
Over the course of just three months, the parties moved from an initial agreement to the deal's March 2003 closing. Essentially, ASC turned 380 acres over to Harris Golf in return for its ability to build the course quickly, run it and help market it, all to a set of performance guarantees. ASC took a five percent stake in the club; the deal also calls for ASC to help market the course; after ski season, for example, the Sunday River homepage opens with photos and details on the course. Meanwhile, Sunday River's accommodations and conference facilties will drive golfers to the course, and resort guests will get tee times and discounts.
"We thought Harris was the best fit," Dieterich says. "They operate two courses in the state. They've done design and construction. They have a large retail operation and a lot of contacts. We knew they could bring in the right people and do this right."
Building the Harris brand
Richard Harris, an Eastport native who spent much of his life in the Portland area, is a golf devotee ˆ he started caddying and playing at Portland Country Club at the age of eight ˆ who spent years as the head golf pro at several southern Maine golf courses. He opened a retail shop in the early 1980s; the Harrises have since sold it, opened another and sold that, and, finally, opened their current store, Harris Golf in South Portland in 2000. The family leased a small course in Scarborough, bought and sold a small course in Westbrook, and slowly became a big player in the growing Maine golf industry. Profits from sales of the golf shop, the smaller courses and some apartment buildings the Harrises owned in Portland helped build the balance sheet to the point where the company could move up to bigger projects.
"Someone once said that an overnight success takes 20 years," Jeff Harris says. "That's true of our company."
Harris Golf, with Richard and sons Jeff and Jason at the helm, essentially began when Richard and Jeff bought Boothbay, a 1920s nine-hole course, in 1994. The Harrises designed and built 15 new holes on the property, and today it's a respected 18-hole course. In 1995, they bought Bath Country Club from the city for $1.6 million, and that course has been in a constant state of improvement ever since. There's a Harris Golf Shop there, as well as an indoor facility for off-season play.
Today, Harris Golf has about 100 employees, including nearly 50 involved in construction or operations at Sunday River, working from 45 to 80 hours a week. The store has just five full-time employees, because so much of its operations ˆ shipping, marketing, warehousing ˆ are handled at Harris headquarters in Bath, where 30-35 workers run the club and the company. Jeff is president, Jason runs Boothbay and will oversee future real estate development there, and Richard oversees the retail operation in Portland. But all three, according to Jeff, have input on major decisions.
One of their hallmarks has been an insistence on synergy ˆ an overused buzzword, but a concept the Harrises are making work. Memberships and greens fees are low, to get people on the course. (For example, $600 buys a single, yearly membership for Bath and Boothbay, while nearby Brunswick Golf Club runs $1,200 a year.) Good course conditions, aggressive marketing and intertwining revenue streams helped the company's revenues grow 18% last year, in what was a tough year, due to weather, for much of the industry in New England. Jeff Harris says the company has grown "in that neighborhood" for many years, though he declines to disclose specific revenue figures.
"The other guys have not figured out how to do the same formula and make it work," says Peter Webber, executive director of the Golf Maine Association. "[The Harrises] have more people on their courses, they spend more money to get people there, they charge less than a lot of their competitors and they keep flooding the market. And they're making more money."
A key part of the Harris' strategy rests upon the notion that, as Jeff Harris says, "Tee times are perishable. They're like food. You need to sell them, get them out the door, or they're worth nothing. If you fill the tee time," he adds, "you've got cart revenues, food and beverage revenues, a sleeve of golf balls. And if more people are playing golf, more people are buying golf equipment."
Owning courses as well as the retail shops gives the Harrises a big edge in equipment sales. Manufacturers in the golf industry don't allow their products to be sold below certain prices. So, generally speaking, equipment costs the same at Harris Golf Shop as it does at Dick's Sporting Goods, at pro shops, even online. But Harris can toss those perishable tee times in with purchases. This year they'll give away rounds at Bath, Boothbay and even Sugarloaf, and soon they'll add incentives ˆ yet to be determined, but likely to include tee times, which will be hard to come by for the general public, discounts and even free rounds with major purchases ˆ for Sunday River.
"All my competitors can do is price things the same as I do," Jeff Harris says with a knowing grin. "But I can give away golf."
Leading the field
But the Harrises aren't just looking at pricing; they've also determined which amenities and course conditions are crucial to the satisfaction of their customers. For example, the cart paths at all Harris facilities are paved, which Jeff Harris believe sets his facilities apart in their price range. That helps golfers extend their season, and allows older golfer to play later in life. It also creates an extra 45-60 days of revenues for the company each year. "It's a short season in Maine, with long winters," Harris says. "You have to squeeze every nickel out of your operation to be successful."
Sunday River, he hopes, will represent one more Harris success in the Maine golf world. The Harris' crew ˆ a combination of Harris employees and subcontractors ˆ broke ground on the course, complete to Trent Jones' specifications, in April 2003. The company hopes to have a soft opening of the front nine in early August, with the rest of the course slated to open in May or June 2005, when the Harrises will schedule their official grand opening.
By late June, the clubhouse was almost done, and the shop was nearly ready to start weekend merchandise sales. Early revenues include initiation fees for new members, which jumped from $5,000 to $7,500 this spring. Dues for this season will be prorated down from $1,200 per single and $1,800 per couple. Harris doesn't want to disclose membership numbers, but does say they're running 60% out-of-state. He also says peak-season, 18-hole greens fees will be "well over $100."
That puts Sunday River, Harris hopes, among the ranks of Sugarloaf, Belgrade Lakes and Samoset as the world-class public courses in the state, capable of drawing people from Boston and beyond for multiple-day trips that can help other Maine businesses. "It's Maine versus Cape Cod, not Nonesuch [River Golf Club in Scarborough] versus Sable Oaks [Golf Club in South Portland]," says Webber. "Sunday River is good for Maine golf, and that's good for Maine's economy."
But, according to Jeff Harris, Sunday River will not be the pinnacle for the company. Harris sees the retirement of the baby boomer generation ˆ younger, healthier and wealthier than generations past ˆ as tremendous news for golf and the second-home market in Maine. He envisions throngs of active boomers moving to the state, spreading their influence well away from southern Maine and the coast, filling up tees, greens and golf carts. And those retirees may be interested in one of Harris Golf's 90 homes that will go along with a new clubhouse at Boothbay, or their 58 house lots along four holes at Sunday River, available for $150,000 to $300,000 apiece.
Within the next year, the company plans to announce another world-class, Trent Jones course in northern New England (though not in Maine). Harris Golf also is developing a retail website, www.harrisgolfshop.com, and expects to have it up by the fall. In addition, the Harrises are planning an "affinity" card, which will allow customers to earn points on purchases ˆ good for discounts, free golf and equipment ˆ at all four facilities.
"This course is big," Harris says of Sunday River. "Big for Maine. Bigger than us, really. But we're not stopping here. We're just entering the development phase for this company."
Soon, he'll head out to check on the driving range and the bulldozer work at the 12th hole. But, during this pause, he's thinking about the significance of his Bath-based firm building a world-class resort golf course. "Is this big and great and is it a dream?" he asks. "Absolutely, when you find time to think about it. When you do sit back and look at it, from here, it's simply amazing. But we're just here, doing it, seven days a week. And this is not the peak of Harris Golf. We're going to keep on going."
With that, the 39-year-old Portland native starts moving again, leading a group of people on a quick tour, stopping first at the immaculate ninth green. From there, the view opens down a short par four with a pair of ravines across the fairway, and across the valley to Old Speck, the 4,000-footer that dominates the mountain range.
The course has come a long way in a little over a year, as has the company in its decade of existence. Harris Golf has grown from a father-son team who worked their way into golf retail and then small course development to a firm of 100 employees running three courses and a large retail store. What's more, Harris Golf stepped up to become the company that built Sunday River Golf Club when the Newry resort's owners, the financially troubled American Skiing Company, could not: Sunday River Golf Club, a joint venture with the resort and ASC, is 95% owned by Harris Golf.
Resurrecting the course
Sunday River Resort and ASC started planning a golf course in the mid-1990s. Executives brought in renowned course architect Robert Trent Jones Jr., who had designed the course at Sugarloaf ˆ another ASC resort ˆ as well as such Meccas for golfers as The Links at Spanish Bay in Pebble Beach, Calif., and the Prince Course in Kauai, Hawaii. In Bethel, Trent Jones and the Sunday River team selected a site, and Trent Jones designed a course that fits naturally into the mountainous terrain, featuring ever-changing views of the surrounding peaks. State Department of Environmental Protection permits were obtained, and the project was ready to go in 1998.
Then it languished, first as ASC put more money into its western resorts, then as the company struggled with a vast amount of debt and saw its stock price plummet. By 2000, according to Matt Dieterich, ASC's director of asset management and the point man on the deal with Harris, the concept of building a course at Sunday River ˆ once a strategy to cement the resort as a four-season destination ˆ was essentially abandoned.
But when management from the two Maine resorts was consolidated in 2002, the course again became a priority under the direction of John Diller, who runs both mountains. Sunday River sees it as a way to fill hotel rooms in the summer and, over the longer term, to add value to the company's real estate holdings and pave the way for more development. There was just one problem: Sunday River still didn't have the funds to build it.
"That's certainly part of why we needed a partner," Diller says. "We had the real estate and most of the permitting. But we needed a partner to get it going right away."
Local, regional and national firms across the spectrum from golf course operators to real estate developers were interested in the project, but the deal ultimately went to Harris Golf, a Bath-based firm run by Jeff Harris, his brother Jason and their father, Richard. "My father got a call asking if we'd be interested, and he called me," says Jeff Harris. "I couldn't believe it at first. Then I was so excited for a project of this scope. We came over, and as soon as I saw the site and the dirt, I knew right away there was no ledge under the soil, which meant it wouldn't be prohibitively expensive to carve a golf course out of the mountains."
Over the course of just three months, the parties moved from an initial agreement to the deal's March 2003 closing. Essentially, ASC turned 380 acres over to Harris Golf in return for its ability to build the course quickly, run it and help market it, all to a set of performance guarantees. ASC took a five percent stake in the club; the deal also calls for ASC to help market the course; after ski season, for example, the Sunday River homepage opens with photos and details on the course. Meanwhile, Sunday River's accommodations and conference facilties will drive golfers to the course, and resort guests will get tee times and discounts.
"We thought Harris was the best fit," Dieterich says. "They operate two courses in the state. They've done design and construction. They have a large retail operation and a lot of contacts. We knew they could bring in the right people and do this right."
Building the Harris brand
Richard Harris, an Eastport native who spent much of his life in the Portland area, is a golf devotee ˆ he started caddying and playing at Portland Country Club at the age of eight ˆ who spent years as the head golf pro at several southern Maine golf courses. He opened a retail shop in the early 1980s; the Harrises have since sold it, opened another and sold that, and, finally, opened their current store, Harris Golf in South Portland in 2000. The family leased a small course in Scarborough, bought and sold a small course in Westbrook, and slowly became a big player in the growing Maine golf industry. Profits from sales of the golf shop, the smaller courses and some apartment buildings the Harrises owned in Portland helped build the balance sheet to the point where the company could move up to bigger projects.
"Someone once said that an overnight success takes 20 years," Jeff Harris says. "That's true of our company."
Harris Golf, with Richard and sons Jeff and Jason at the helm, essentially began when Richard and Jeff bought Boothbay, a 1920s nine-hole course, in 1994. The Harrises designed and built 15 new holes on the property, and today it's a respected 18-hole course. In 1995, they bought Bath Country Club from the city for $1.6 million, and that course has been in a constant state of improvement ever since. There's a Harris Golf Shop there, as well as an indoor facility for off-season play.
Today, Harris Golf has about 100 employees, including nearly 50 involved in construction or operations at Sunday River, working from 45 to 80 hours a week. The store has just five full-time employees, because so much of its operations ˆ shipping, marketing, warehousing ˆ are handled at Harris headquarters in Bath, where 30-35 workers run the club and the company. Jeff is president, Jason runs Boothbay and will oversee future real estate development there, and Richard oversees the retail operation in Portland. But all three, according to Jeff, have input on major decisions.
One of their hallmarks has been an insistence on synergy ˆ an overused buzzword, but a concept the Harrises are making work. Memberships and greens fees are low, to get people on the course. (For example, $600 buys a single, yearly membership for Bath and Boothbay, while nearby Brunswick Golf Club runs $1,200 a year.) Good course conditions, aggressive marketing and intertwining revenue streams helped the company's revenues grow 18% last year, in what was a tough year, due to weather, for much of the industry in New England. Jeff Harris says the company has grown "in that neighborhood" for many years, though he declines to disclose specific revenue figures.
"The other guys have not figured out how to do the same formula and make it work," says Peter Webber, executive director of the Golf Maine Association. "[The Harrises] have more people on their courses, they spend more money to get people there, they charge less than a lot of their competitors and they keep flooding the market. And they're making more money."
A key part of the Harris' strategy rests upon the notion that, as Jeff Harris says, "Tee times are perishable. They're like food. You need to sell them, get them out the door, or they're worth nothing. If you fill the tee time," he adds, "you've got cart revenues, food and beverage revenues, a sleeve of golf balls. And if more people are playing golf, more people are buying golf equipment."
Owning courses as well as the retail shops gives the Harrises a big edge in equipment sales. Manufacturers in the golf industry don't allow their products to be sold below certain prices. So, generally speaking, equipment costs the same at Harris Golf Shop as it does at Dick's Sporting Goods, at pro shops, even online. But Harris can toss those perishable tee times in with purchases. This year they'll give away rounds at Bath, Boothbay and even Sugarloaf, and soon they'll add incentives ˆ yet to be determined, but likely to include tee times, which will be hard to come by for the general public, discounts and even free rounds with major purchases ˆ for Sunday River.
"All my competitors can do is price things the same as I do," Jeff Harris says with a knowing grin. "But I can give away golf."
Leading the field
But the Harrises aren't just looking at pricing; they've also determined which amenities and course conditions are crucial to the satisfaction of their customers. For example, the cart paths at all Harris facilities are paved, which Jeff Harris believe sets his facilities apart in their price range. That helps golfers extend their season, and allows older golfer to play later in life. It also creates an extra 45-60 days of revenues for the company each year. "It's a short season in Maine, with long winters," Harris says. "You have to squeeze every nickel out of your operation to be successful."
Sunday River, he hopes, will represent one more Harris success in the Maine golf world. The Harris' crew ˆ a combination of Harris employees and subcontractors ˆ broke ground on the course, complete to Trent Jones' specifications, in April 2003. The company hopes to have a soft opening of the front nine in early August, with the rest of the course slated to open in May or June 2005, when the Harrises will schedule their official grand opening.
By late June, the clubhouse was almost done, and the shop was nearly ready to start weekend merchandise sales. Early revenues include initiation fees for new members, which jumped from $5,000 to $7,500 this spring. Dues for this season will be prorated down from $1,200 per single and $1,800 per couple. Harris doesn't want to disclose membership numbers, but does say they're running 60% out-of-state. He also says peak-season, 18-hole greens fees will be "well over $100."
That puts Sunday River, Harris hopes, among the ranks of Sugarloaf, Belgrade Lakes and Samoset as the world-class public courses in the state, capable of drawing people from Boston and beyond for multiple-day trips that can help other Maine businesses. "It's Maine versus Cape Cod, not Nonesuch [River Golf Club in Scarborough] versus Sable Oaks [Golf Club in South Portland]," says Webber. "Sunday River is good for Maine golf, and that's good for Maine's economy."
But, according to Jeff Harris, Sunday River will not be the pinnacle for the company. Harris sees the retirement of the baby boomer generation ˆ younger, healthier and wealthier than generations past ˆ as tremendous news for golf and the second-home market in Maine. He envisions throngs of active boomers moving to the state, spreading their influence well away from southern Maine and the coast, filling up tees, greens and golf carts. And those retirees may be interested in one of Harris Golf's 90 homes that will go along with a new clubhouse at Boothbay, or their 58 house lots along four holes at Sunday River, available for $150,000 to $300,000 apiece.
Within the next year, the company plans to announce another world-class, Trent Jones course in northern New England (though not in Maine). Harris Golf also is developing a retail website, www.harrisgolfshop.com, and expects to have it up by the fall. In addition, the Harrises are planning an "affinity" card, which will allow customers to earn points on purchases ˆ good for discounts, free golf and equipment ˆ at all four facilities.
"This course is big," Harris says of Sunday River. "Big for Maine. Bigger than us, really. But we're not stopping here. We're just entering the development phase for this company."
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments