Incredible Courting

Incredible Courting

Development by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

Five million-dollar waterfront homes aren't so unique these days on the Gulf Coast. But a group of local developers is betting on a project that includes playing golf and tennis on the footsteps of legends.

Wayne Ruben and Greg Breunich are long-time developers - the former in real estate, the latter in athletes - so they know to be cautious when throwing around words like special, unique and incredible. Hyperbole, both in real estate projects and the budding superstardom of young athletes, can be as common as Formica countertops and first-round flameouts.

But the pair are turning up the adjective volume when pushing a new project between their respective ventures. For Ruben, the 2001 Review's Entrepreneur winner, that's Sarasota-based Ruben Holland Development and for Breunich, that's Bradenton-based IMG Academies, a training and education complex for junior, amateur and professional athletes.

The project being pushed is Legends Bay at IMG Academies, an upscale housing community planned on land that borders Sarasota Bay, just west of the IMG Academies campus in northwest Bradenton. While home sales are open to the public, Ruben and Breunich expect the residences, with some costing as much as $5 million, will be a big draw for athletes who use IMG Academies, and their families.

Golfer Paula Creamer, a two-time LPGA tour winner and one of the sport's projected future stars, is interested in buying a Legend's Bay home, for example, as is at least one pro basketball player.

But the insert-stupendous-word-here aspect of the project is deeper than a potential who's who of residents, backers of the development say. Deeper even than the now common "special" features of many Southwest Florida upscale developments, perks such as beautiful water views, easy access to top-shelf shopping, highly rated private schools, and of course, plentiful and beautiful golf courses and tennis courts.

The kicker is that every Legends Bay homebuyer has access to IMG's coaches, trainers and facilities. Those are the same gyms, golf courses and basketball and tennis courts used by dozens of well-known professional athletes, including tennis star Maria Sharapova, baseball's Nomar Garciaparra and basketball's Kevin Garnett and Vince Carter.

IMG Academies is so respected and well known in the sports world that NBA Commissioner David Stern recently took a personal tour of the grounds, as he and the league ponder developing its own training camps for young basketball players.

"Lots of folks have a tennis court or a golf course, and that's good" says Ruben. "But this is more than you can imagine. There's never been a community like this in northwest Bradenton."

Adds Breunich, a co-director of IMG Academies: "Very few projects can offer what we are offering."

The partners expect construction crews to break ground on the project early next year, as Manatee County planners recently completed the 13-month approval process.

"We are not trying to be a ho-hum community and peg it to the name of IMG Academies," says Roger Holland, a principle of the development firm. "We are building a top-notch community."

Seeking expansion

The genesis of the Legends Bay project started with access to land, no small feat in heavily built-out western Manatee County. Ruben says the home sites, in between the IMG-owned El Conquistador Country Club - which Legends Bay residents will have full access to - and the 300-acre IMG campus - occupy just about the last continuous mile of undeveloped bay front property in Greater Sarasota.

Ruben says he's worked on other projects around IMG Academies' sprawling grounds for as long as he's been working in Gulf Coast development, about 15 years, so he was aware of the site's potential.

Breunich, who has been with IMG and its predecessor, the Nick Bolletteri Tennis Academy, for about 25 years, also recognized the value of the property, especially in the late '90s, as IMG began to grow beyond tennis and golf to other sports.

The number of parents of athletes who were looking to move into the grounds to be with their children year-round was increasing, and although there were condos and some carriage homes, there was no big-ticket housing community. "As more of our customers started buying into our community," Breunich says, "we looked to expand."

Breunich says he zeroed in on the land, owned by a combination of three family trusts, almost four years ago, and could have bought it for $5 million. But the corporate heads of IMG balked at the time and the land was ultimately bought in 2005 for $17.5 million by a partnership under the name Sara Bay Associates, a group that includes Ruben Holland Development, IMG Academies and Sarasota attorney David Band.

"We had to search out for the highest and best use for the property," says Rueben. "This isn't for inexpensive homes."

High demographics

The developers began putting together Legends Bay soon after buying the land. First, there was the Manatee County approval process, one Ruben says despite the hoop-jumping is worthwhile, as it weeds out the poorly planned developments.

The first phase of the project is planned at 189 single-family homes, with 38 of those bordering the bay. The second phase, to be called Legends Cove, will have 60 coach-style homes; that aspect of the project is strictly a Ruben Holland development.

The Legends Bay builders, Arthur Rutenberg Homes and Gibraltar Homes, are putting together residences that will have a California-meets-Naples architecture style, Ruben says. The homes, some as big as the 6,000 square-foot range, are also being built using environmentally friendly green building practices. Prices are expected to range from about $900,000 to about $5 million for waterfront homes.

With the building process nearly underway, the selling phase is the next challenge. Despite a slumping real estate market, Breunich exudes confidence in that department - and not just because of the project's particulars.

The high expectations also stem from past experience in selling condos and homes inside IMG Academies. The Academy Realty Group, a real estate brokerage formed in 2004 to sell to families of IMG athletes, has already made $95 million in sales, Breunich says, with all but about $7 million of that coming from on-campus homes.

"We are always pumping a high demographic through here," says Breunich. "We are our own micro-economy."

A sporty business

The business of training the next Andre Aggassi, Michael Jordan or Mia Hamm is lucrative. And growing.

Bradenton-based IMG Academies, the all-everything training and private school education complex for athletes -young and old, amateur and professional - proves that. In addition to providing school and training for thousands of athletes from several sports, IMG provides a bevy of other features, such as on-campus college courses through the University of Miami, mental conditioning, and even foreign language lessons.

And what started out as a tennis school built on a tomato farm has grown significantly during the past 25 years, in revenues, physical size, sport offerings and customers. "The academy has a business model built for growth," says Greg Breunich, an IMG Academies senior executive.

IMG Academies took in about $30 million in tuition from its 12,000-plus students in 2006, Breunich says, a number that has grown about 15% a year for about the last ten years. About 65% of that comes from its mainstays: Tennis at $12 million in 2006 and golf at $8 million in 2006. IMG has programs for other sports, too, including baseball, basketball, soccer and fishing.

Tuition, depending on the sport an athlete plays and the school he goes to, can run as much as $40,000 a year. "It's a significant commitment," Breunich says. "There's nothing inexpensive about this experience, but we offer something very unique."

In addition to sports training, those offerings include The Pendelton School, a K-12 private school inside the grounds of the academy, as well as other educational components, such as tutoring and college-prep classes.

The current IMG Academies started in 1978 as a tennis school run by Nick Bollettieri, a tennis instructor who coached Boris Becker and other top tennis players. While the Bollettieri-led tennis academy developed a national following in the early '80s, it didn't hit its growth track until 1987, when International Management Group, a Cleveland-based sports and entertainment marketing and agent representation firm, bought it.

With the financial backing of IMG and in 2004, Forstmann Little & Co., a New York-based buyout firm that bought IMG for $700 million, IMG Academies has grown more than 10 times its original size. The current version of IMG Academies is also supported financially by a small group of Sarasota investors.

-Mark Gordon