And Now, Century No. 2

By Lee Pace

The golf courses at Mid Pines and Pine Needles were the 1920s offspring of a group of moneyed businessmen and regular visitors to Pinehurst who believed that the four courses at the resort weren’t enough for America’s most noted golf destination and that they were so popular that an alternative that operated at a more relaxed pace would be attractive.

“There is the desire of a number of old Pinehurst guests who want to have comfortable quarters where they can be away from the activities of the hotels,” said Leonard Tufts, son of resort founder James Walker Tufts and the resort chief from 1902 through the mid-1930s.

Mid Pines opened in 1921 with a Donald Ross-designed course and a three-story, Georgian-style hotel; it was strictly a private club. Pine Needles followed seven years later just across the road, with Ross laying out the course through residential framed corridors and with an English Tudor style hotel open to the public.

Both have ridden the crests and valleys of wars (the U.S. Air Force used Mid Pines as a base during World War II) and economic calamity (Pine Needles went bankrupt in the mid-1930s). But they have endured because of the quality of the golf laid out by Ross, the Scotsman who came to America in 1900 and found the Sandhills’ sandy soils a mirror to what he knew from home.

Caption: Donald Ross

The resorts have been further joined at the hip not only from their Roaring Twenties conception but having a shared ownership structure since the late 1900s, when the family of long-time Pine Needles proprietors Warren and Peggy Bell bought Mid Pines.

Now with Mid Pines four years into its second century and Pine Needles on the cusp of its own centennial, the resorts are transitioning into an initiative that one member of the ownership group says “will reposition them for the next hundred years.”

Mid Pines and Pine Needles are entering a partnership with Marine & Lawn, a hotelier with extensive experience renovating and managing historic golf-centric hotels in the United Kingdom. Among the early priorities for the new venture is Marine & Lawn taking over a total reconstruction of the hotel at Mid Pines. Renovation work will begin immediately, and the hotel will be shut down for six to eight months.

“What’s exciting to me is Marine & Lawn specializes in restoring old properties,” says Kelly Miller, president and CEO of the company that owns Mid Pines and Pine Needles as well as Southern Pines Golf Club. “They know how to refurbish a hundred-year-old hotel.”

Indeed, as there are cases in point across Scotland and Ireland.

At Rusacks St. Andrews, discerning travelers can sip a dram of the Macallan beside a fireplace and gaze up at paintings of Old Tom Morris and the Swilcan Bridge in an iconic 1800s building, just a block from the Old Course.

Caption: Kelly Miller

At Dornoch Station in the Scottish Highlands, you’re just a short stroll from the homeplace of a young Donald Ross. You fall out of bed, devour a Full Scottish Breakfast and skip out to the ancient links swallowed up on spring days by a sea of golden gorse.

And at the Slieve Donard Hotel on the edge of Irish sea in Newcastle, you sleep in Victorian splendor and look out the window at the majestic Mourne Mountains, then amble up the lane to Royal County Down.

Miller has talked with hotel consultants and potential partners in recent years about what to do with Mid Pines, a historically significant structure designed by the noted architect Aymar Embury II. The owners have refurbished some rooms in recent years to the standards of modern golf travelers, but other rooms harken to the last century. How much money do you spend to revitalize the property? And what does the next iteration look like?

“In talking with various potential partners over the last 10 years, almost all of them said, ‘We’re going to tear Mid Pines down and build it back up, and you’ll never know,’” Miller says. “That hotel was not going to be torn down on my watch. Marine & Lawn has the experience to do the job right. They have the vision and operational experience. And, most importantly, they have enhanced the culture at every one of their properties while maintaining the heritage of each one.”

This will be Marine & Lawn’s first hotel venture in the United States, although its parent company, AJ Capital Partners, has extensive presence in the hotel industry through its collection of Graduate Hotels in college towns across America. The total investment in the two properties is estimated at $47 million over the next 12 to 16 months.

“This is an exciting initiative for our resorts,” says Miller. “We’ve needed for some time to upgrade our lodging facilities, and Marine & Lawn is the ideal partner for us.”

Caption: Mid Pines Inn & Golf Club

“We love the state of North Carolina and the Sandhills,” adds Haresh Tharani, a partner in the Mid Pines ownership group since 2018. “And we believe very strongly in the area. This is a way to enhance our portfolio while at the same time looking at other opportunities to bolster our presence in the golf capital of the United States.”

Warren Bell and his wife Peggy Kirk Bell, a founding member of the LPGA Tour, began operating Pine Needles in 1953, bought it in 1959, and it has remained in the family ever since. The Bells took on partners in 1994 to purchase Mid Pines. Today the enterprise is owned and operated by the Miller, McGowan and Tharani families, who will retain total ownership of the golf courses.

Miller said the family has had numerous conversations with potential partners and hotel owners and operators over many years and had three criteria for a potential new venture.

“One, make sure that we respect and honor what Mr. and Mrs. Bell started here in 1953 and continue the history and tradition of the properties,” Miller said.

“Two, we wanted to reposition these resorts for the next 100 years. We think we’ve done a pretty good job with the golf courses and bringing them up to much higher standards. Now, it’s time to do that on the hospitality side.

“And three, we wanted to keep the family involved. Both Mid Pines and Pine Needles have been strong family operations for many decades, and we want the younger generation to have an opportunity to stay involved if they’d like.”

Caption: Mid Pines Inn & Golf Club

Marine & Lawn is a division of AJ Capital, which was founded in 2008 by Ben Weprin and manages over $5.4 billion in real estate investments in markets throughout the U.S. and U.K. The “AJ” stands for “adventurous journeys” and was launched as a platform for Weprin to pursue his passions of history, architecture and elite travel destinations. He had purchased and renovated rundown hotels in cities like New York, Chicago and New Orleans when his golf trips to the U.K. prompted the idea to purchase and restore historical hotels adjacent to iconic golf courses.

“For us, it’s always been about preserving the heart and soul of golf through thoughtful hospitality,” says Phillip Allen, president of Marine & Lawn Hotels & Resorts. “What started with Rusacks St Andrews has grown to six iconic properties across Scotland and Northern Ireland, each selected for its deep connection to the game of golf and sense of place. We couldn’t be more excited to now bring that ethos stateside — and we couldn’t imagine a more fitting destination, or better partners, to do it with.”

Lee Pace is a freelance golf writer who has written about Sandhills area golf for four decades and is the author of club histories about Pinehurst Resort & Country Club, Mid Pines, Pine Needles and Forest Creek.