A lush expanse of multimillion-dollar homes and championship golf courses, Sea
Island, Ga., is dotted with hundred-year-old oak trees and golden marshes and
will soon be awash in government security and logistics personnel, as will St.
Simons, a larger and only slightly less sumptuous island five minutes to the
west. From June 8 to 10 these so-called Golden Isles of southern Georgia will
host the 2004 Group of 8 (G8) Summit, the annual gathering of the heads of state
from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the
United States. | | STATELY HOMES, old oak trees and marshes dot the Sea Island landscape. |
If leisure time is allowed amidst discussions of politics and the economy,
the world leaders might indulge in a round of golf, scuba diving, sailing,
horseback riding or even wild turkey hunting. Perhaps some of the 7,000
delegates expected to attend will decide to buy their own beachside “cottages,”
as the houses are called by the locals. Actually, the main force behind
bringing the G8 Summit to these sleepy isles was the Sea Island Co., which
operates the two most luxurious resorts in the Golden Isles and develops its
real estate, albeit at a pace designed not to disturb the islands’ sea turtles
and egrets or the moss-hung Old South charm. The man behind these efforts,
Alfred W. (Bill) Jones III, the chairman and CEO of the Sea Island Co., is
carrying out a dual legacy of expansion and preservation that he learned from
his father, Bill Jones Jr., who learned it from his father, Bill Jones Sr., who
learned from his cousin Howard Coffin in the 1920s and 1930s. The two patriarchs
continue to speak from the grave. The legacy of careful development and canny
marketing left by the visionary developer “Mr. Coffin,” as the present-day CEO
reverently calls him, still guides the business, while the first Bill Jones’
conservative financial management strategy informs decisions made today.
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