'THE QUINTESSENTIAL ENTREPRENEUR': Emerald Grande developer had share of ups and downs before striking it big

DESTIN — By 1991, developer Peter Bos had been forced to file for bankruptcy and sell his dream project, Sandestin.

It is a decision that still haunts him.

But rather than give up, Bos started over. He founded Legendary Inc. and today is responsible for some of the most lavish and popular developments in the region: Destin Commons, The Emerald Grande and HarborWalk Village, Regatta Bay and Legacy on the Bay.

“I still cry, I still get tears. I never wanted to sell (Sandestin),” Bos said. “But if I hadn’t sold Sandestin, you probably would not see Destin Commons or HarborWalk today. As a private individual, you can only do so much at a time.”

For many people, the ability to come back from disappointment and fight to see your business survive and thrive again would be the definition of the American Dream.

When Bos started Legendary in 1991 he had roughly 80 employees, most of them working at his restaurant Harry T’s. Today, Legendary employs between 550 and 650 people depending on the season.

“What I grew up on was an ethic of ‘good, better, best, never let it rest until the good is better and the better best,’ and that will screw up a kid,” Bos said. “It did. No matter what you accomplish, you always feel there’s more to be done. It just comes from the environment.

“I think I’ve sacrificed way too much in the sense that there are hundreds if not thousands of dinners that I missed with my family because I’m working,” he added.

David Goetsch, a local economist and vice president for community relations and workforce development at Northwest Florida State College, said it was hard to imagine what Destin would look like today without Bos.“He is the quintessential entrepreneur,” Goetsch said. “He is a person with vision who sees a need that should be filled and he’s willing to take the financial risk to fill that need. You can see that in every one of his projects. If you want to see the definition of entrepreneur, look in the dictionary there will be a picture of Peter right there.”

Getting an early start

Bos is the first to admit his life is a little different than most.

He grew up near Buffalo, N.Y., raised by his engineer father and homemaker mother and attended school in a two-room schoolhouse with no indoor plumbing.

Bos’ work ethic and business sense started very early.

His family had a cottage in Long Point, Canada, and he got his first job at the age of 7 delivering the lo-cal newspaper. By 8, he was delivering three newspapers. It was three newspapers and 25-pound blocks of ice at 9 years old. At 10, it was the newspapers, ice and baked goods.

When he was 11, Bos started his first company, of sorts.

“At that point I hired little kids and paid them a penny a paper to deliver the papers,” Bos said. “I’d just dispatch it and divide them up into zones and I’d have little kids deliver them. I’d get 3 cents a paper, I’d give them 1 and I kept 2.”

The next year, he built a small ice house near a local convenience store so people could pick up their ice rather than wait for him to deliver it.

By the end of the summer, he had made more than $1,000. Minimum wage at the time was 65 cents an hour.

When he was 12, Bos decided that he wanted to be in the resort business in California or Florida. He graduated from Cornell Hotel School — now Cornell University School of Hotel Administration — in 1968 and went to work for Interstate United Corp., which ran food and beverage operations for many national amusement parks.

While working at Busch Gardens, Bos ended up talking to a customer named Jerome Fletcher who wanted to build a restaurant.

Fletcher hired Bos in December 1968, and a year later they got involved in the development business. In 1972, Bos was promoted to executive vice president of the Jacksonville-based Fletcher Properties.

“I think everybody starts with a certain amount of luck and hard work and that was just pure luck,” Bos said. “Both (Jerome and brother Paul Fletcher) had tremendous faith in me and they gave me opportunities that were frankly unbelievable. I had hundreds of people working for me and I was 24, 25.”

Over the bridge

During his tenure at Fletcher Properties, Bos oversaw the development of mostly large projects such as Stone Bridge in Memphis, Tenn., Baymeadows and Villages of San Jose in Jacksonville and St. Albans in St. Louis.

Also in 1972, Bos made his first trip to Northwest Florida in hopes of buying the land for Sandestin. He was blown away by the view of the Destin Harbor as he drove over the old Destin Bridge. He pulled over to the side of the road and sat at a picnic table, captivated.

“I ended up sitting there for over an hour,” Bos said. “It was the most beautiful piece of property that I had ever seen. I made a commitment right there that I would do everything I could to figure out who owned that property and see if there was any way to buy that property.”

It was years before he acquired the land, but it eventually became the site of HarborWalk Village.

However, his reason for visiting Northwest Florida in the first place went unfulfilled as another company had tied up a portion of the land he wanted for Sandestin.

He left Fletcher Properties in January 1976 and started his own company, The Bos Group, and he returned to area. At the time, the country was going through a recession and Bos was hired by several local lenders to oversee the management of about 25 condominiums and an apartment complex, representing several thousand units.

A Dutch developer bought Sandestin from Chase Bank in 1978, when the development had just 192 units, a golf course and a hotel. Bos immediately took it upon himself to meet the buyer, and the two became business partners until Bos bought him out and became Sandestin’s sole owner in 1981.

The Bos Group developed a new master plan that greatly expanded the size of the project.

“Sandestin was, is and will remain a spectacular piece of property. The fact that you have seven miles of natural shoreline, you have bay and beach, a hard shoreline facing west and that’s rare … all this natural beauty, it’s a spectacular piece of property,” Bos said. “I was able to assemble 2,450 acres contiguous and then unbeknownst to most people, it’s the only project next to Disney in the state that really has no restrictions on it.

“At the time we started it, there was no building department in Walton County, there were no building inspectors. We inspected our own work and the county basically said, ‘We can’t tell you how to do it any better than you’re doing it,’ he added. “So as a result, the project basically has complete flexibility in how it’s planned or done, whether it’s commercial or not commercial, how tall the buildings are, how short they are.”

The dark days

By the late 1980s, Bos’ bank was under lending restrictions and his life became a nightmare. Over-building had become a problem and interest rates were close to 17 or 18 percent.

Despite problems with his bank, Bos was so optimistic that he could find another lender that he used his remaining credit to finish construction on projects that had been started.

“When things are good, you assume they’ll keep being good,” Bos said.

Bos filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

His first plan was to find someone to invest in Sandestin with him. He found one in Midwest Life Insurance. Midwest agreed to pay off the loan on Sandestin in exchange for a 50 percent interest in the project.

Four days before the deal was to close, the federal insurance commission took over Midwest Life and the deal was terminated.

Unable to find a partner, Bos reluctantly found a buyer that was willing to keep the development in one piece rather to sell it off piecemeal. Sandestin was sold to Sime Darby of Malaysia for $50 million.

Bos was retained as a consultant for Sime Darby, but in 1991 he essentially started over and formed Legendary. At the time, he retained ownership of Harry T’s.

“I had a very large company in 1986 and basically by 1991, basically through attrition of selling things off one by one to stay alive, I had very little left and mentally that can really get you down,” Bos said. “I knew I wanted to stay in Destin because I loved it. We managed to keep everyone employed … and we just started again.”

A Legendary return

It’s said that the night is darkest just before the dawn. The day Bos signed over ownership of Sandestin to Sime Darby was the day he signed a 50-year lease for the land that would become his most recognizable development, HarborWalk Village.

“Peter has been successful because his vision is accurate,” said Goetsch of NWF State. “You’re not really a seasoned entrepreneur until you have filed for bankruptcy once or twice, at least. That’s a mark of an entrepreneur because you have the right vision, but you can’t control the ups and downs of the economy.

“He opened Emerald Grande, beautiful place right on the harbor, but then the economy crashed so they’ve had to work real hard to keep the Emerald Grande going, but his vision was right on target,” Goetsch added. “Bankruptcy is going to happen for entrepreneurs. Bankruptcy is just another day at they office for an entrepreneur. And the good ones don’t let it stop them.”

Bos’ first project under Legendary was the Lucky Snapper restaurant, which is now a part of HarborWalk Village.

One of his goals when starting Legendary was to build a festive marketplace in Destin to add a sense of community to the area. Bos designed Destin Commons in 1995 and tried unsuccessfully for years to bring national tenants to the development.

That led him to form a partnership with Turnberry Associates, which had developed a number of large-scale shopping center. Destin Commons opened in November 2003.

Legendary and Turnberry also continue to partner in Turnberry Harbour, an upscale condominium project that will be located near Regatta Bay. That project has been put on hold because of the soft housing market.

For now, Legendary is focused on expanding its marine division. Legendary Marine started in 1991 after Bos noticed a shortage of boat slips in the area.

He believed that if people had a place to keep their boat they would be more likely to buy one. Even though the marketing study Legendary funded showed there was no need for such a service, Bos built the large boat-storage facility at the south end of the Mid-Bay Bridge. He then created Legendary Marine as a boat sales and brokerage business.

“We started that company from zero in 2001 and according to General Electric last year, 52 percent of all boats sold between 17 and 52 feet in length are sold by Legendary Marine in the whole north Gulf Coast,” Bos said.

The first phase of HarborWalk Village was completed in 2007. In addition to Turnberry Harbour, Bos has plans to build a second phase of HarborWalk Village and Destin Commons, the latter he expects to happen in the next few years.

Goetsch said it would be hard to overestimate Bos’ importance in turning Northwest Florida into a year-round tourist destination.

“He’s a visionary person and his vision has been very good to the community because it’s a matter of continual growth and expansion,” Goetsch said.