Hannah’s Blog

The principals in the Sea Island Company would probably contest that assertion, arguing that since its opening in 1928 with the Cloister Hotel as an anchor on the south end of Sea Island, Georgia, the resort on the edge of the Atlantic has always been a well-run enterprise. In a generous mood, the Scion of Sea Island, might well suggest that there’s some confusion about the Sea Island appendage to St. Simons and the Jekyll Island Club across the Sound to the South. And, indeed, that Jekyll fell on hard times during the first great depression and was eventually acquired by the State of Georgia at a tax auction is frequently remembered, in part because of its historic connection to the organization that eventually evolved into what we now know as the Federal Reserve System and which, once again, was asleep at the switch as the world’s bankers messed up.

But, there’s no mistake. Bankruptcy seems endemic to the Golden Isles, even though, until recently, entrepreneurs at least went through the motions of trying to avoid it. So, for example, the financial situation of the Jekyll Island Club, which caused them to default on the taxes they owed the state, is described thusly:

The Revenue Commissioner, M E Thompson, wanted to purchase one of Georgia’s barrier islands and open it to the public as a state park. Finally, on June 2, 1947, the state purchased the island through a condemnation order for $675,000 (or approximately $5,563,416 in 2003 dollars).

And the first time the properties, that eventually evolved into the Sea Island Company holdings from their original acquisition by Major Pierce Butler soon after his wife’s death in 1790, fell under the auctioneer’s gavel in consequence of his grandson’s profligacy and mismanagement the event was recorded thusly:

Pierce Butler (Mease) squandered a fortune estimated at $700,000, but was saved from bankruptcy by the March 2–3, 1859 sale of his 436 slaves at Ten Broeck Racetrack, outside Savannah, Georgia — the largest single slave auction in American history.

So, technically speaking, there was no bankruptcy a hundred and fifty years ago, but there is one now and the effect on those who labored to make the enterprise profitable is much the same–family disruption and economic hardship. One thing it’s not is a surprise. The debacle that is now Sea Island did not happen over night. One could see it coming. I saw it coming.

When I moved to St. Simons Island in 1993, the Sea Island appendage, which one accessed via a rather short causeway over a marsh or by wading across the mouth of the Black Banks River at very low tide, was “protected” by a largely unmanned guard house. Presumably, that served as a check point to be activated when the various Presidents (Eisenhower, George H.W. Bush et alia) visited, to insure that trespassers didn’t venture near. Though later the Presidents’ stay at the Cloister was commemorated with a plaque on a tree dedicated to their honor and pointed to with some pride by the locals. I have not checked to see if the eminences at the G-8 Summit in 2004 were similarly honored.

Ten years earlier, Sea Island was the very model of “conspicuous consumption,” a derogatory phrase coined by Thorstein Veblen, with whose assessment I don’t agree. While I would happily do away with the designation of “consumers” entirely, if consumption there has to be, then I’d much prefer it to be of the “look, but don’t touch” kind practiced by the host of pilgrims and tourists in church and commercial tour buses who visited Sea Island and had a look around. That’s because I have no quarrel with people accumulating wealth and then hiring artists and craftsmen to create and build for everyone’s delight what most people have neither the talent nor time to manage and maintain. Appreciation for the beautiful is the best kind of consumption there is.

Referring to tourists as pilgrims may seem strange, but there were a significant number of visitors apparently drawn to the Golden Isles of Georgia in search of spiritual sustenance and contact with their roots, very likely including the descendants of Neptune Small in whose honor the park at the southern end of St. Simons Island, next to what used to be the Retreat Plantation, is named. Being able to view and even touch the tabby ruins of the hospital, in which both Neptune’s mother and his sisters cared for the slave population on Retreat, proved an inspiration to people who had no interest in playing golf at the Sea Island course that now sits on the edge of St. Simons Sound.

Visitors and island residents enjoyed the annual spring garden tour of Sea Island, as well as the opportunity to visit the studios and workshops of the artists resident in the cottages. And, of course, the historical novels of Eugenia Price had sparked interest in the area, drawing writers to conferences from far and wide.

Perhaps the first sign that change was afoot were the notices on the island’s main road that tour buses were permitted to go no further and needed to turn around long before they reached the end. The “no parking” signs along each access point to the beach seemed superfluous since, compared to the magnificent East Beach on St. Simons, the narrow Sea Island beach had little to recommend it, except to the occasional horseback riders and the drowned bodies and other detritus brought back by the tide. The signage was unnecessarily unfriendly.

The Shops at Sea Island, a new shopping center with a movie house built on St. Simons near the causeway to Sea Island were a welcome addition. As is typical of high-end merchandisers everywhere, better quality at less cost made the Shops doubly attractive and residents from the mainland soon found it worth while to do weekly shopping on the island. Also welcome, from an environmental perspective, was the appearance of mini buses and vans to shuttle employees to Sea Island from a parking lot near the newly built shopping facilities and the company headquarters. That the ultimate agenda was to transform Sea Island into a gated community wasn’t obvious at first. Only that the employees’ vehicles were to be parked off-site. Now “gated” seems to be the official designation.

The Atlanta Constitution and Journal story on the bankruptcy explains:

The company, Glynn County’s largest private employer, controls the gated Sea Island community with its famed five-star hotel, the Cloister. The small barrier island is dotted with more than 500 private homes, which are called “cottages” even though they sell for more than $1 million — one (9 bedrooms, 9 full baths) is on the market for $13 million. The company also runs the Lodge at Sea Island, a five-star golf resort on neighboring St. Simons Island.

As a matter of fact, Sea Island is a tiny sliver of land, an appendage really of the Manhattan-sized St. Simons, which probably accounts for the designation at. Though the island has all the public facilities, there’s not much buildable land left. Never mind that the new on-site golf course is unlikely to be economically viable as long as exclusivity is more important than revenue.

Some of Sea Island’s residents trace the company’s problems to 2001, when Jones launched an ambitious $500 million plan to create a world-class resort — a Pebble Beach of the East — from what had been a regional destination. Sea Island hosted the G-8 Summit in 2004, an event that bolstered the resort’s reputation for secluded elegance.

Family commitments prompted me to leave the Golden Isles in 2003. One of the few benefits of that decision, in my mind, was that I would not have to endure the G-8 Summit, which had already been announced. Since the news media were apparently directed to identify Sea Island as lying close to Savannah, some 75 miles away, the influx of disruptive outsiders was not as bad as it might have been, but the locals likely perceived neither elegance nor seclusion, what with helicopters whirling overhead and the small island airport being invaded by private jets. Those who could, absented themselves for the duration.

The company began developing an upscale golf and horse community on a 3,000-acre site on the north end of St. Simons Island, known as Frederica. Prime lots were to go for $2 million.

Actually, the north end of St. Simons is where the Hampton Plantation was situated–the property, along with Butler Island on the mainland, just south of Darien, to which Pierce Butler (Mease) brought Frances (”Fanny”) Kemble and which she wrote about in her Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839. Frederica is the name of the Fort, located about half way up St. Simons Island and built by James Oglethorpe to protect British interests from incursions by Spain. The apparent penchant for identifying geographic locations as being other than where they are seems passing strange. Perhaps that’s how exclusivity is supposed to be maintained.

Said Katie Mountcastle, a Connecticut resident whose family has owned a Sea Island home for 40 years: “They priced themselves out of the market. They must have thought this was Dubai or something.”

And, more evidence of mental dislocation?

In 2008, just two years after Sea Island celebrated the Cloister reopening with a party that one guest described as something out of “The Great Gatsby,” the company was in deep trouble. And the downward spiral was gaining speed.
/snip/
In April, Synovus announced the company had defaulted on its loans. By July, the bank announced a restructured loan package of about $400 million. Three months later Sea Island placed large tracts of undeveloped land — including thousands of acres in neighboring Camden County — on the market in an attempt to pay down debt. A month after that, Wells Fargo took over the deed to the Frederica development to settle a loan estimated at $140 million.

Sea Island defaulted on the restructured Synovus loan in January, and last month Goldman Sachs was brought in to try to clean up the remaining mess. What happens next is anyone’s guess.

Sending for Goldman Sachs to “clean up the…mess,” is somehow not reassuring. But, the question about the future is part of the standard reporting script. Predictions seem to provide a neat closing that can’t be argued with. They also serve to disguise what’s already happened. State Representative Keen, quoted as opining that,

“Glynn County without the Sea Island Co. is like Atlanta without the state Capitol. It’s hard to imagine them not being there.”

seems equally out of touch.

Rep. Keen, who worked for Synovus until two years ago and knows Jones personally, said Sea Island’s plight could affect everything from the county’s unemployment rate and tax base to property values on neighboring islands.

The speculative frenzy to which the Sea Island Company contributed, where homes that cost two hundred thousand to build and were sold for a million, has already resulted in the property taxes on bungalows built for shipyard workers during World War II to be tripled. And for what? There’s been no increase in services and our ability to access the ocean and at least look at what our money has built has been reduced in the interest of some people’s “elegant seclusion”–people who, like the original plantation owners, aren’t even here most of the year.

What we have here is another good example of people not learning from the past. Thinking they can do better, they conveniently overlook that the better of bad is worse. At least that rumored causeway to the north end didn’t get built. Though, the federal government’s failure to fund that scheme is likely blamed in some minds for yet another land speculator’s bankruptcy. And to think, the interchange on the interstate was already in place!

On the other hand, it may just be that the ancestral spirits of Hampton Plantation are having a bit of revenge. When I took my artist friend, Alyne Harris, to see the sights of St. Simons she caressed the tabby ruins and reported that the spirits of the slaves were speaking to her, welcoming her visit. Maybe Alyne, who’s always painting angels, was on to something.

**********************