As I cast a fly into Montana's pristine Gallatin River, I can't help but think about the interplay of outdoor experiences and conservation — that you have to see it to want to save it. Standing in the thirty-degree water just outside Lone Mountain Ranch, one of the Everlands destination club's properties, pausing every few casts to clear ice from the rod, I grin like crazy while I drop a little rainbow trout into my net — a colossally unlucky fish to be caught by a newbie like me. I feel alive, healthy, victorious. I have bitten Everlands' lure.
Fly-fishing among the snowbanks at a classic Rockies resort on a January afternoon is exactly the kind of experience that the Everlands executives — cofounders Robert Burch, the CEO of Red Badge, an international real-estate, venture-capital and investment company, and James Millership, who developed a fractional-sales program for another real-estate company, along with their CEO, Kenneth May, a former president of Disney Vacation Club — hope will nurture a desire to save some of our planet's last wildlands. Burch's vision is to assemble a collection of the world's great outdoor properties and "put them in a financial position where they can be maintained and used for generations," by members only. His team has devised not just a growth model but also a mission to "recapture a kid's spirit of adventure" while conserving land and promoting environmentalism.
A hallmark of the club's business plan is the Everlands Conservation Initiative, to which 5 percent of member revenues will flow directly. Its board of directors will oversee conservation audits at all Everlands properties and promote best practices, initiate environmental projects in the surrounding communities and establish a million-dollar conservation prize, awarded annually. With all these high-minded projects, the founders have wooed eminent paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey to chair the board. "We hope the Everlands Conservation Initiative will become a significant influence in setting standards for field-based conservation," says Leakey.
Everlands' model of buying entire established retreats outright sets it apart from other destination clubs like Exclusive Resorts, which offers fractional ownership of specific villas or rooms within a resort. Jan A. deRoos, an associate professor at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration and an authority on these types of time-share schemes, gives Everlands' vision of wholesale resort ownership an A-plus. "They know they can't do everything from scratch, so they have bought high-quality resorts," he says. "That's a great strategy, because you're not only purchasing a beautiful environment, you're purchasing operations and a structure that's in place."
One, two, three — Burch ticks off the requisites for the Everlands portfolio: natural beauty, historical significance and some element worth saving.
THE OFFER
Here's the deal in a nutshell: members pay a onetime $1 million initiation fee and $40,000 a year in dues, which buy weeklong visits (room, food and drink, and activities included), space permitting, at a growing array of destinations. In theory, a member could spend a delightful month in residence, moving from property to property but staying no more than one week at each spot in order to keep rooms available. Currently, Everlands' roster includes six resorts, from Alaska to New Zealand. The company's flagship is the Point, the beloved Rockefeller Camp in New York's Adirondack Park. Right now, this and holdings such as Bristol Bay Lodge, in Alaska, and Lake Rotoroa Lodge, in New Zealand, are still open to the public, but with every 100 members who join Everlands, another resort goes private, bookable by members only. Five years from now, cofounders Burch and Millership hope to have 1,800 members and forty-five private Everlands resorts around the world.
According to Cornell's deRoos, "Everlands might not be for the top 2 percent of the population who've got multiple homes already. It's for people who don't mind planning and sharing." The audience, deRoos says, is people in the 95th to 98th percentile of wealth, who make half a million to a million dollars per year. So far, Burch and Millership have raised $120 million in founding capital, including an investment by Lehman Brothers, whose managing director Alan J. Kanders says: "We believe the market is moving toward experiential travel, and we have strong confidence that Everlands can execute the business plan. The conservation side is a big bonus."
THE REALITY
Both of the Everlands resorts that I visit — Lone Mountain Ranch and the Point — offer luxury that is laid down not by acres of gleaming marble but by preserved settings, an authentic environment and a boundless, gorgeous outdoors. This is four-seasons luxury, lowercase.
Assembling a hearty buffet breakfast in the Lone Mountain dining room under the gaze of mounted moose and bison heads, I feel athletic just sitting amid all that Patagonia and Marmot. Middle-aged like me, Lone Mountain's other guests are not too old for soft adventures such as snowshoeing or skiing on the resort's award-winning cross-country trails. They're also not bothered by some lingering hiccups that need to be soothed. The ranch was homesteaded in 1915, and a few of Lone Mountain's buildings date back to 1926. Some of the resort's edges are still cowboy rough, like the linoleum floors in the bathrooms. Under Everlands' ownership, the log-cabin guest rooms are slated for an upgrade.
Two weeks after my fly-fishing initiation, I am again standing on pristine Everlands snow, 1,800 miles east of Montana. The Point is what Everlands executives describe as their archetype for elegance and service. Built in 1933 on a rocky wooded spit of land slicing into Upper Saranac Lake, the resort has eleven rooms, all with grand stone fireplaces and water views. This is rustication a tycoon would love. Your bookcase may be clad with tooled birch bark, yet the food is sophisticated and superb: roast breast of duck with truffle-potato purée the night I am there. And the fact that the kitchen will make your breakfast to order and pack a custom picnic lunch says everything about the service. "Exclusive Resorts and NetJets have demonstrated that there are great ways to share great things," says Burch. "But we're offering the opportunity to participate in a real club. Every evening at our resorts should be like a wonderful dinner party. Our guests have just spent the day riding a horse, in the water or hiking, a commonality that means they'll really connect. That's when the conversation becomes extraordinary."
To me, though, that poses a key question: do wealthy outdoorsy people really want to hang out together? Burch's hope is that enthusiastic Everlands members will recruit their friends. During our stay at the Point, my husband and I try out the togetherness concept at one of the communal evening meals. (Solitude seekers can request dinner in their rooms.) We are delighted by our tablemates; the conversation is smart and lively. Stephen B. Burke, president of Comcast Cable Communications and Everlands' first member, isn't worried that affluent travelers who love their fresh air won't want to mingle. "I have found that people who are passionate about the outdoors and conservation almost by definition are people I enjoy spending time with."
THE BOTTOM LINE
Only time will tell whether Everlands will attract enough members to succeed. The moment is ideal in one respect. Experts agree that after a shakeout in the industry, including the bankruptcy of a major player, Tanner & Haley, two years ago, the luxury-vacation-club world has matured, with better business plans, to become a valid alternative to high-end hotels. Still, the stalling economy and the real-estate slump could hurt member recruitment. But Cornell's professor deRoos remains enthusiastic: "Everlands has done a marvelous job of engendering trust, with well-respected founders, an incredibly deep operations team and a financial partner in Lehman."
Important as well is the fact that Everlands will acquire the resorts debt-free and that members' initiation fees give them equity in the real estate. And not just any real estate, but property protected in perpetuity.
Burch tells me he likes the word curate to describe how he wants to assemble a great collection of outdoors resorts and like-minded people. "It's all about saving these properties so that my grandchildren can catch fish in the same river." His words take me back to that snowy morning on the Gallatin. If I had a million dollars earmarked for doing good for both the planet and myself, I'd invest in Everlands — and take my own daughter on her first fly-fishing adventure. And if I got lucky, I'd take my grandkids one day, too.
Everlands currently operates Lone Mountain Ranch, in Big Sky, Montana; the Point, in Upper Saranac Lake, New York; Bristol Bay Lodge, in Alaska; the Inn at Blueberry Hill, on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts; the Oasis, at Castle Hot Springs, Arizona; and Lake Rotoroa Lodge, in Nelson Lakes National Park, on South Island, New Zealand. It is under contract with Mangrove Cay Club, on Andros Island, in the Bahamas, and Hotel Endsleigh, in Devon, England. 212-774-3690; everlandslife.com.
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