Marilyn Pickworth was not in the market for a second home
when,
three years ago, she gave in to her husband Kelly's suggestion and agreed
to spend a few days at the Ritz-Carlton Lodge at Georgia's
Reynolds
Plantation. The first time Kelly had suggested this, after reading
about the place while staying at the Ritz-Carlton in Sarasota, Florida, Marilyn had balked.
"Absolutely not," she told him. "It's so secluded. There's
nothing
to do there."
But after reading another story about the Lodge, located an
hour's
drive east of Atlanta, she agreed to stop
for a few days on their way back home to Ohio,
after dropping their son off at Auburn University. If it wasn't love at first
sight, it was darn close. "We loved the service, the people we talked
to,
everything," she says. "We got a guest pass and took a boat out
through the
marina to look at all that beautiful property from the
Lake."
They liked what they saw so much they made plans to fly back
a month
later, for a "discovery visit," as the folks at Reynolds call it. They
were given a special "discovery" rate at the Ritz, and although Marilyn
says
they were too busy looking at homesites to take full advantage of
all the Ritz
has to offer, they were just about sold. After one more
visit, a month later,
they bought a lot. They have yet to build on it,
but if all goes well with
Kelly's dental laboratory business, they plan
to do so in about seven years.
In the meantime, they visit Reynolds frequently. "We feel
connected
to the place," says Marilyn, adding that they've used it to celebrate
college graduation, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. They stay
either at the
Ritz or at one of the Reynolds cottages, depending on how
many family members
and guests they have invited.
What the Pickworths learned almost by accident—that you can
get a
great sense of a community by staying at the hotel—savvy real-estate
shoppers can make use of quite deliberately, to help narrow their
choices. It's
a great way to fly under the radar when scouting a
community.
"There are a lot of people actively shopping for real estate
who
kind of sneak in and sneak out without getting on our sales person's data
base just by checking in, staying at the Ritz, and seeing what's out
there,"
says Bill Houghton, Reynolds' vice president for marketing,
explaining that
while the Ritz is technically outside the property
gates—you have to give your
homeowners some special privileges after
all—a network of bike and hiking trails
leads through the property, all
of it easily accessible from the Ritz. "You get
more and more folks
doing that who don't really want to be on a traditional
real-estate
list. So [the hotel] is a big benefit to us as well."
Building the resort was a smart move for Reynolds,
which—let's face
it—is a bit off the beaten track. A luxury hotel not only
boosts the
profile of the community, but its meeting facilities guarantee a
steady
flow of potential buyers. "You don't realize this place is out here until
you decide to take a vacation or your company decides to do a retreat
or meeting
out here," says Houghton."Then it's ‘Wow! We're only an hour
from Atlanta and
we've got
Shangri-La!' You get people who fall in love." Reciprocally,
for Reynolds
owners, the hotel is a fantastic addition to what was
already a wealth of dining
and shopping options: Not only was another
golf course built to handle the extra
traffic—at no cost to the
owners—but the presence of a Ritz almost certainly
adds real dollar
value to their properties.
