Post by ferryfast admin on Aug 18, 2011 11:05:26 GMT -5
Will a new Rochester-to-Toronto ferry take shape?
Brian Sharp
Staff writer
www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20110818/NEWS01/108180331/Will-new-Rochester-Toronto-ferry-take-shape-?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|News
August 18, 2011
The man behind a push to restart Rochester-to-Toronto ferry service is described by associates past and present as a hands-on and shrewd businessman, a quick study who takes calculated risks.
Harper Sibley, 56, has seen a multimillion-dollar resort hotel slide toward foreclosure, only to save it in the final hour. He has smoothed public relations when a resort complex was ill-received. And he has stepped away from a development project in which he was a partner when family obligations beckoned.
"Harper is a very sharp guy," said John Nichols, who, with a partner, developed Valentines Resort and Marina in Harbour Island, Bahamas, opening about six years ago, and hired Sibley to oversee the operation. He "very quickly learns how or gets the lay of the land, so to speak, and winds up understanding what his challenges are.
"And he deals with them effectively."
Such flexibility would be vital to starting up and operating a ferry service. Past ventures, both private and public, have ended in failure, losing millions of dollars.
Sibley has no experience in such operations, but moved back to Rochester from the Bahamas in December to pursue the ferry venture. His goal is a mid-May 2012 startup for a passenger-only service.
"Some people in this area are a little bit afraid of the fast ferry because the Spirit of Ontario had so much bad happen with it," said Henrick Hollesen, 45, training captain on the former high-speed ferry, who has spoken with Sibley about his plans. "This here could really take off without a problem. It just needs to be really done right."
Whether Sibley is the man for the job is the question.
Early missteps
Sibley declined to be interviewed for this story and would not allow a photo of himself to be taken, saying he is negotiating with potential investors and thus prefers less attention at the moment. He admittedly has no experience in the ferry business. His father, Harper Sibley Jr., was a mortgage banker, insurance executive, city of Rochester public safety commissioner and a developer of resorts. The latter field is where the younger Sibley built his career, navigating a sometimes-rocky economy.
Picking up the story in 1994, Harper Sibley was the lead owner of Nonantum resort in Kennebunkport, Maine. The $6 million getaway with 100-plus rooms was so behind on its bank payments that a foreclosure auction was looming.
Sibley blamed the financial woes, at least in part, on the 1992 presidential election, thinking Kennebunkport would have seen the kind of boom that Hyannis, Mass., did during and after the Kennedy presidency if only George H.W. Bush hadn't "managed to lose" re-election, he told the Portland Press Herald at the time.
Ironically, Sibley was a top fundraiser for Democratic congressional candidates during the years he lived in Maine, and hosted fundraisers at his Portland home.
"I remember the day that all of the ads had gone out" for the auction, said Nonantum general manager Tina Hewett-Gordon, recalling that people later showed up at the resort expecting to bid. "At what I would consider the 25th hour, he was able to save the property from going into receivership."
Sibley found an investor, Herbert Ginn, a Maine native who owns a real estate firm in South Portland. Ginn later bought out Sibley's share of Nonantum and still owns the resort today. Sibley "was personable, bright, but he was over-extended," Ginn said in a telephone interview.
Sibley owned several hotels at the time, and Ginn invested in "a few of them." Nonantum had been owned by a series of people who had not reinvested in the property, leaving it in need of considerable work, he said. Ultimately, the pair divided the properties, went their separate ways and have not seen one another for years.
"I don't make a very good partner, I guess," Ginn said, without elaborating.
Making his mark
Not longer after, Sibley and another business partner, David Bateman, hatched an idea for a $5.5 million luxury hotel and high-end apartment development in Portland's Old Port. The project never got off the ground. Other investors stepped in, Sibley left but Bateman stayed, ultimately building a hotel twice the size and for more than twice the expense, coming in at $14 million, and opening in 2002.
Bateman was the landowner and said it was a difficult financing environment at the time, particularly for hotels. Sibley told him he would not ordinarily walk away but his father had taken ill, and Bateman said he was not surprised that Sibley sort of "fell off the radar" in Greater Portland about that time.
Bateman said he and others in Portland think highly of Sibley to this day.
"He is a very capable developer ... a dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneur. If there is a challenge, he is going to take it up," Bateman said, adding that Sibley wouldn't take up anything he can't handle.
Nichols' and Valentines' business partner Tom Murphy Jr., a longtime friend of the Sibley family, brought Harper Sibley down to the Bahamas in 2003. Sibley's father was an investor in the project.
Among the elder Sibley's many developments was Key Largo's Ocean Reef Club, which remains open, and Nichols said the younger Sibley impressed him and others while working with the staff there.
Valentines had its early objectors, being on a tiny island that is barely 3.5 miles wide. And, now open, there are regular challenges that must be overcome, particularly in these difficult economic years.
"Harper has done a great job under very difficult circumstance, working on a foreign island, under a foreign government, trying to keep the employees happy," Nichols said. "He's been good at managing people and trying to keep the herd headed west. He is very good and focused on what the ultimate goal is, and he has been excellent on the financial side and working with our banks ... as well as individual homeowners."
Sibley led operations through the global financial crisis, which brought an initial 15 to 25 percent drop in revenue but has slowly climbed back, said Nichols, founder and CEO of Nichols, Brosch, Wurst, Wolfe and Associates, a Florida-based architecture and planning firm specializing in condo/hotel and resort design.
Skeptics, optimists
When the name Harper Sibley surfaced locally in news reports last month, it did more than stir memories of the ferry.
There are some who still harbor suspicion about Sibley's father and his alleged ties to the Stirling Homex Corp. stock scandal here in the early 1970s — in which insiders made millions and the general public lost more. The elder Sibley sold enough stock to walk away with $9.5 million before the collapse, but insisted he had no knowledge of or ties to the business after moving to Florida well before the collapse.
He said at the time that he, along with his family, was left holding more than 500,000 shares.
Regarding the ferry service, Sibley has said he will not seek public funds, but instead has used an undisclosed amount of his own money and raised $3 million from private investors.
Former Mayor William A. Johnson Jr., in office during the earlier, failed ferry ventures, is cautious. He has seen this before, private developers — first from Canada, then ultimately, from Rochester — who "claimed up front they had deep pockets and numerous other investors willing and able to join and then, after that, they were standing there with cups in their hands, with hands out begging."
"Nobody should get too excited at this point," Johnson said.
Given Rochester's past experience with ferry service, Johnson expects that investors will "give stronger than careful scrutiny" to any new proposal. But he is quick to add of Sibley: "If he can do it, I would applaud it."
Sibley's is not a newfound interest. He says he approached the Johnson administration about taking over the operation in 2004-05 after the private operator failed. Johnson does not recall this, saying that any such contact "would have been very fleeting."
Count Hollesen, the training captain from the prior ferry service, among the believers.
Hollesen has stayed in the area, married, and travels for work, currently working part time with the Navy in Middletown, R.I. Since the ferry, he has developed his own business model, one that would start in Toronto, get established with trips to and from Niagara Falls and add Rochester in the second year or later.
Having seen where past efforts failed, Hollesen has ideas of where to reduce costs, where not to and what can be done better.
"They don't have to hire me. I just want to advise them a little bit," Hollesen said. "They don't have too much experience operating ferries, which I have a hell of a lot of. ... I'm still believing in this."
BDSHARP@DemocratandChronicle.com