_November/seeingthingsthrough.jpg "Seeing Things Through")
By Steve Donahue
Frank Adamiak’s road to course ownership has been bumpy, but he remains committed to his cause
It’s been a long, expensive saga for Frank Adamiak, but his stars might finally be aligning.
Adamiak, a New Jersey native, became owner of nine-hole Shephard Hills Golf Club in tiny Roxbury, New York, in 2000. Since that time, he’s been toiling to transform the course he grew up playing into a destination. Finally, things seem to be coming together.
“I’ve probably made mistakes,” admits Adamiak, who shuttles between running Shephard Hills and his family’s New Jersey-based real estate rental business. “I’m still learning.”
Shephard Hills—built atop the 365-acre estate of 19th-century railroad magnate Jay Gould—is a local facility with a local mentality. That combination won’t recoup the countless dollars and sweat equity Adamiak has invested, nor will it lure visitors from New York City (two-and-a-half hours away), Albany (one-and-a-half hours) and Kingston (one hour). Still, he labors on.
Adamiak was a longtime Shephard Hills Golf Association member when he became the de facto owner after the facility was sold to the SHGA. He assumed the contract and now leases the facility to the association.
“I literally fell into this course,” says Adamiak, whose family has owned a Roxbury farm since 1965. “I’m a hands-on landlord. My herniated discs and bad knee prove it.”
Once he took over, Adamiak set about breathing new life into Shephard Hills. He gutted and renovated the club’s 1912 Dutch Colonial clubhouse himself, and built a 150-foot wedding patio overlooking the 10-acre Kirkside Lake. “I’ve basically owned a money pit for 14 years,” Adamiak quips. “You can’t make this stuff up. It’s a wait-and-see adventure.”
Adamiak’s hurdles have been numerous, including stretches without payment or reimbursement for extensive expenses, once for “six or seven years.” He also had to fire several employees, some for stealing, and then watch as his pro shop and food-and-beverage managers left during the 2008 recession.
Shephard Hills “bottomed out” in 2012. That’s when Adamiak terminated an association-hired chef who was consistently either too tired to cook or turned away customers. A few months later, Adamiak’s father died, which forced him to stay in New Jersey all summer. Then in September, the association belatedly announced it was broke, couldn’t pay employees, and had to close. Adamiak was also notified tardily that a 50-year drought had turned the course brown.
“We crashed and burned,” Adamiak recounts. “I propped up that course for years. They ran out of water and money. Everything went dry.”
Somehow, Shephard Hills opened—a bare bones version, mind you—in 2013 without a liquor license; the concession consisted of sodas and water and a hot-dog machine. Adamiak turned to high schoolers to man the shop. A greenskeeper/lumberjack even logged the property, which yielded $10,000 that was used for seasonal start-up. “It helped,” says Adamiak, “but I still had to pony up lots of money.”
Later that summer, a group of intoxicated teenagers broke into Shephard Hills’ shop, stole keys, and caused $30,000 of cart fleet damage. Soon after, membership dropped “precipitously,” and Adamiak could only afford two of his three maintenance crew workers. Shephard Hills “eked by” in 2013, and Adamiak managed to bank enough money for 2014 in case memberships further dwindled. “That’s when I realized the transition from local-only to destination—diversifying into banquets and weddings—had to happen,” Adamiak says.
That epiphany seems somewhat prophetic now, as the destination puzzle pieces are coming together. Improbably, Roxbury has become one of New York’s biggest barn-wedding destinations, with the town’s five venues each accommodating 200-plus people. Adamiak discovered weddings and golf mix when 40 wedding attendees played nine holes, ate and drank. That outing reaped a one-day profit of $1,800. Energized, Adamiak spent $28,000 to purchase a 13-foot vaulted wedding tent with LED lights. “Wedding planners now know about us and send people here,” he says.
To be fair, Adamiak has also benefited from The Roxbury Motel—transformed by savvy owners into a hip, theme-based destination with 30 unique rooms—being located a half-mile from Shephard Hills. The venue sells out every weekend, at roughly $750 nightly. “The Roxbury is rated one of New York’s top 10 destination spots,” Adamiak says. “I can capitalize on that.”
In another stroke of good fortune, teaching professional Gordie Faulkner moved his large youth clinic program from nearby Margaretville’s Meadows Golf Center to Shephard Hills’ range in fall 2013 at no cost to Adamiak. Faulkner’s cousin, Meadows’ superintendent, offered to resurrect Shephard Hills’ greens. According to Adamiak, the putting surfaces are “in the best shape in years.”
Meanwhile, Shephard Hills’ food-and-beverage business received a boost when chef Paula Douralas’ successful Brooklyn eatery closed. Douralas fell hard for Shephard Hills’ clubhouse during a scouting trip to the Catskills Mountains—so much so that she moved her Greek Mediterranean restaurant, Petra Taverna, on property. The eatery opened this summer and sells out nightly.
“She called me out of the blue, insisting on leasing a restaurant from me,” Adamiak says. “She completely redesigned my place. [And] her food is incredible.”
With the operations side of the business falling into place, Adamiak is now focusing his efforts on creating an advertising and marketing budget, establishing a social media and website presence, and prioritizing his resources. He hasn’t needed his own capital to support Shephard Hills recently, and rounds are steadying.
“I’m not at the weekly average [for golf] I need to sustain myself,” admits Adamiak, “but it’s trending up slowly. We’re a ways away from righting the ship, but there is a rainbow ahead.”
Steve Donahue is a Connecticut-based freelance writer.