Homestead Reflections: A Few Words with Robert Kuras

Sept. 4, 2002

Over the past 27 years, Robert Kuras, president of The Homestead, has developed the Glen Arbor resort into Leelanau County‘s largest private employer and one of the premiere vacation destinations in the Midwest.
Superlatives can‘t measure the beauty of The Homestead‘s setting. Its weather-toned condos nestle among the trees at the mouth of the Crystal River, along which a crescent of beach offers views of the majestic Manitou islands. The Homestead has a naturalistic, laid-back feel that draws visitors and homeowners from all over the country.
Part of The Homestead‘s story includes the 15 years of conflict over a plan to develop its Crystal River property as a golf course (see sidebar). In the following interview, Kuras discusses The Homestead‘s roots, his own odyssey, and how his resort became a model for blending in with a natural setting:

NE: How did The Homestead get started?
Kuras: The Homestead originally was a camp for boys of the Christian Science faith. It was purchased by educators from St. Louis named Cora and Skipper Beals in the 1920s. They had a remarkable sense for the out-of-doors; they looked at three locations, all of which were ultimately added to the National Park System.
They purchased the property and then of course the Depression came. There‘s a wonderful story about the construction of the original building here which is now the Inn -- it was built back in 1928 or ‘29 for $12,000. Heresay goes that sometime in the early ‘30s they started to use the school facilities for vacationers. I‘m old enough to remember the day when these camps had the pine-paneled rooms, linoleum floors, a bathroom down the hallway and squeaky beds, and we all ordered dinner by circling on a menu with things like green beans.
So time went on and the Beals owned it until sometime in the ‘40s. It was sold to a brother and sister-in-law. They added some facilities, although it was still a very modest operation and the principal focus was on the school.
I got involved because I had a very small part in a very large ski resort in New England. One thing led to another and I met a man named Ed Horner who was president of Chrysler Realty. He called me one day and asked me to come to Detroit to meet someone; and I said I couldn‘t do it because I was still in night school -- I was 27 at the time. He said he‘d send an airplane to pick me up. And I said I still couldn‘t do it because I had a class schedule.
Well, it turned out the man he wanted me to meet was Chet Huntley (one of the leading television journalists of the ‘60s of the “Huntley--Brinkley Report“). Huntley wanted to buy Big Sky, Montana. He was from Montana. I didn‘t know at the time, nor did anyone else, that he wanted to leave the evening news because he was in very poor health. Chrysler was looking to put some money into the sale and were looking for I guess a hired-hand to help it go through.
(Kuras goes on to say that Huntley was worn out by the demands of reporting at the height of the Vietnam War. Discussions over buying property in Big Sky moved to Manchester, New Hampshire, where Kuras heard of the Homestead property for the first time.)
Before I bought the Homestead property, I had extensive conversations with the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) about it. At that time, ABC was dead last in the ratings and they decided to get much more heavily involved in sports broadcasting. Roone Arledge had just come on line and they were having more success with the sort of animated sports shows like Wide World of Sports. There was a good reason for them to be interested in this area in that their strongest market was in the industrial heartland of the midwest. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, sports broadcasting was extremely strong in Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and all the towns of the midwest. The concept was to buy a home base for Wide World of Sports; it was going to be a real estate project, but under the umbrella of Wide World of Sports, with televised golf, tennis and aquatic events. The ABC board was divided on the idea and it never came to pass.
(Richard Huey and a partner bought The Homestead in 1972 and Kuras bought it from them in 1975. The property was 225 acres at the time.)

NE: How about backing up a bit and telling us about yourself? Where were you born and raised?
Kuras: I was born in Flint, Michigan and we moved to Ypsilanti when I was young. I went to Bloomfield Hills for high school and got my undergrad degree at Notre Dame. I got my masters in business at Harvard, which in spite of what you may have read in the paper, (former senator) Don Riegle was not my college roommate. He was at Harvard in the doctoral program at the time I was there in the MB program. I did not know him there although we had the same faculty advisor and a very close friend.

NE: How did you happen to get into real estate development?
Kuras: (laughs) Should I say bad judgement?
Oh, I had another school friend named Ralph Hoagland who was a real free spirit, not the type you‘d expect to see in business school. Ralph had not two pennies to rub together but was very involved in urban issues in Boston, which I was too. They were inner city issues involving housing, poverty and race. Ralph and I kind of got to be friends and decided to start a business. In doing some things for him, I heard of an urban renewal project in Manchester, New Hampshire, and decided to bid on it with about two cents in my pocket and a lot more energy than judgement. I went to work on it and one thing led to another.
We ended up having offices in Boston, Washington and Detroit and I started working on projects all over the country in 18 states. One time, I woke up in a hotel room and didn‘t know where I was and decided that was enough travel. I‘d have to look at an area code to figure out where I was.
So at any rate, this opportunity came up with a chance to invest in something (at The Homestead), so I decided to move here in the mid-‘70s.

NE: It seems like you were ahead of the curve in terms of designing a resort that blends in with the environment and didn‘t trash the place like other developments around the country.
Kuras: Yes, from day one we were very research-oriented. After buying the property we spent about a year researching other locations around the country and could have written a book on what was well done and what was poorly done.
One thing I noticed was that here‘s Michigan which had more coastline than California, but there was no major resort that focused on the water. So that was of interest to me.
Another thing that was interesting was that most resorts in the country had a primary focus, such as golf or tennis or boating or fishing. At that time, 70 percent of women were homemakers and it was the dad who was always working. So it was a common belief that since dad was always working, then vacation resorts should be oriented to dad‘s interests. If dad‘s interest was fishing, the family took its vacation in Canada, since leisure time was scarce.
So we looked at the research and said what if we try to establish a vacation resort that would appeal to each member of the family. I don‘t want to appear sexist here, but if mom really happened to like shopping and the beach, and dad really liked fishing, and the kids really loved a swimming pool, and someone else really liked tennis, could you offer everyone a choice of those activities so that one member of the family didn‘t end up being bored to death on vacation?
And when I looked around the country, it was pretty clear that people who were buying second homes were obviously the more affluent members of society. What was of far more interest was that they were also highly educated. And when you looked at those demographics, what became clear real fast was that those people were environmentally-aware long before it was fashionable and they were conscious of issues related to nature. They‘d tell you in interviews that (a natural setting) was what they liked and what they were willing to pay a premium price for and that they didn‘t want to recreate Chicago or Phoenix or whatever city they were from.
So, we were fortunate to have that information, and it remains true today. If you give people a multiple choice questionnaire on why they come here, water resources will always be number one.

NE: Is that why the Homestead done well? Facilities and location?
Kuras: Well, I think if you went back to the original research and then take a step forward you‘d have the answer. Back in 1977 we went to the township and the county and asked for rezoning. At that time the the property was zoned in several different categories, and I didn‘t like that because a line drawn on the property here or there would force you to concentrate an awful lot of development in one area without being sensitive to the natural resources.
So we said to the community, give us a single zoning category, which is commerical resort, and we‘ll build at two-thirds of the allowable density. And of course people said, yeah right. But if you take a look around here 25 years later, you‘ll see that we kept our promise to build at two-thirds of the maximum allowable density. Our research showed that people who wanted to come here had a certain lifestyle they aspired to -- a certain sort of feeling or ambiance or character -- and I don‘t think you can get that if you build to maximum capacity.

NE: You‘ve got a 9-hole golf course at present and that was a factor in the Crystal River controversy. Is an 18-hole course essential to a resort‘s success?
Kuras: It‘s just as important today as it was 20 years ago. The reason in my opinion is because a course offers the ability to create demand from spring through October and that helps stabilize employment at the resort.
It‘s more of a community issue than a single-business issue. If you can stabilize employment, a number of things happen. First of all, you have associates who have the security to do the things we all want, such as buying a home and raising a family -- they have some security in their life. Secondly, those associates become highly skilled and provide the kind of service that our mission statement says the guests desire and deserve... So because golf drives demand in the spring and fall, it stabilizes employment and improves service, and when you improve service, it drives real estate sales. So yes, I think golf is vitally important to our industry, it‘s important to the area‘s commerce, and for us, it would make a bit of difference in our modest plan.

(SIDEBAR)

The Swap

For such a quiet stream, the Crystal River has managed to whip up one of Northern Michigan‘s most controversial battles over the past 15 years in a tug-of-war over its fate between environmentalists and The Homestead.
Today, the Crystal is back in the news as part of a proposed swap: The Homestead would like to exchange a 130-acre parcel and 6,300 feet of river frontage it owns for 168 acres of property in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore that lies adjacent to the resort.
If the swap doesn‘t go through, the alternative is constructing 194 condo units along the Crystal as part a Homestead development called Woodstone.
Four local environmental groups are opposing the exchange -- a move which will paradoxically ensure condo development on the river they‘ve spent 15 years trying to protect (see sidebar).
Here‘s what Robert Kuras has to say on the matter.

NE: There‘s been some controversy over your plan to exchange the Crystal for National Park land. How did the swap idea come about?
Kuras: Well, I don‘t think of it as a controversy. I think there are some differing opinions, which in a society such as ours is a healthy thing.
Perhaps it came about because there was an unfortunate misperception, maybe due to some misinformation through the years, that if the golf course wasn‘t built, the land along the Crystal would stay the same forever. But that was never the case. We tried our best for 16 years to politely say that to us this was a major investment and that ours is a real estate business, and not a park or a land conservancy.
So about a year-and-a-half or two years ago, a decision was made to begin a housing project (along the Crystal). So we started on the housing; it‘s going to be a very attractive community that‘s done in a way that‘s sensitive to the land along the river; (yet) I‘ve said publicly for a long time that I don‘t think it was the most appropriate land use for the property.
After we started, I had casual conversations with a couple of dozen people in the community who said they understood why we were doing it, and that we had every right to do it, but it didn‘t seem to be the best land use. People asked if there was a way to make a sale of the land to the National Park Service or have an exchange.
And to be very frank with you, we‘d been down that road. We‘d offered to sell the land to the Nature Conservancy and the Leelanau Conservancy; that did not gain the support it needed. We offered to sell it to the Natural Resources Trust Fund; that was not supported. And the Park Service never had the money to acquire it. The exchange had been proposed three times going all the way back to 1986 and had not been supported. So we said no. But frankly the questions continued, and I guess it‘s a tribute to our neighbors, because they were all in a reasoned, thoughtful way. So we decided to look into it one more time.
(The Homestead re-contacted former NPS Director Jim Ridenour in an attempt to mediate a settlement and found that Park Service officials were agreeable to the swap. Kuras went on to say that the proposed exchange would give The Homestead free title to a 45-acre wastewater discharge area and its 32-acre front entrance and lawn for which it already has an easement in perpetuity, freeing local Park officials from some bureaucratic functions relating to these areas. The remaining acreage would be used to build 80 housing units on a ridge disputed by environmentalists, albeit with Park-mandated restrictions, such as setbacks 250 feet from roadways and required landscape screening.)

NE: Were you surprised by the reaction from environmental groups about this trade?
Kuras: Well, I guess I was surprised only by one facet. And that is all who‘ve commented on this, from business people to government people to environmentalists, the soil conservation agency, the Glen Arbor Citizen‘s Council, everyone is in 100 percent agreement that the Crystal River should be part of the lakeshore. I‘d suggest that that is remarkable by itself. To the extent that there are differences, it is whether the property should be acquired by purchase or by trade. So I guess we were very surprised.

NE: Some of the critics of the swap have said you can‘t really build on the Crystal property anyway because of wetlands and septic system problems.
Shirley Debelack, Sr. Vice President of The Homestead: That‘s exactly what they said last time around, but Woodstone is a reality. As I said in one of the public hearings, we‘re not going to threaten you with development; we‘re not going to say agree to this or else. But we are a business, not a national park, a philanthropic organization or a land conservancy, and we will do what we have to do get our money out of that property, and the development is ongoing.

NE: How do people feel about the swap here in Glen Arbor? Do you have any sense of that?
Kuras: I think there‘s a perfectly clear sense. The Citizen‘s Council met last weekend; it was created 42 years ago in response to the National Park. They have a long, long history of serving as a counterbalance here. There was a long discussion with people very much in favor and very much opposed, but when chairman Jim Dutmers called for a show of hands vote, it carried five to one. That‘s the ‘senate‘ of Glen Arbor voting on this issue.
Debelack: Getting back to the development issue, we can develop that river land north of (county road) 675 without applying for one septic permit or touching one tablespoon of wetlands.
(Kuras and Debelack say that 14 lots have already been sold in the vicinity of the Crystal and that it will cost The Homestead less to develop the riverside property than the hill it hopes to swap for. A road has been started into the site. They state that the front-end capital cost of developing the Crystal is $1-1.5 million versus $10-$15 million for the proposed swap site.)

NE: Virtually every year at the NMEAC award dinner, you receive their Golden Bulldozer Award (a mark of dishonor). Do you ever feel that no matter what you do it will be perceived as the wrong thing by the environmental community?
Kuras: I don‘t respond to that much personally. I‘m hopeful that there will be an evolution of the environmental community. I think there are ways that the environmental community and reponsible landowners can work together. It seems to me there‘s so much to gain there.

NE: It must be frustrating though with all of the research and thought you‘ve put into the environmental aspects of your resort to be demonized in an area that you‘ve focused on.
Kuras: Sure it is. We all have feelings and opinions, but again I‘m trying with my colleagues here to take a leadership view on what we want to be and what we want to do ten or 15 years from now to leave to the younger generation in this area.
What I think you have to remember is that when I was working in 18 or 20 states, you‘d see these kinds of issues come up (relating to the environment) and the responsible developers would disappear and be replaced by less responsible people who‘d build at a much higher level of density. That‘s the law of unintended consequences. Environmentalists have to understand that you can‘t always be opposed to everything, and that government by the loudest is not the best.