Paul Mihailides has devoted his life to the art of building, first with carpentry and cabinet making, followed by single family homes, moving on to golf communities and massive developments, to now constructing the ultimate ‘Club of Clubs’ in North America: The Preserve Sporting Club & Resort.
In a revealing conversation one of the most creative minds in the real estate development space walks us through the beginning of his career, the keys to building a billion dollar empire, his philanthropic endeavors, and how he manages to find balance between family, worship, work, and play.

The Preserve Sporting Club & Resort – best described as nirvana for lovers of nature, luxury, relaxation, and exhilarating experiences – offers every amenity you ever wished for, and some you didn’t even imagine.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the property, expanding across more than 3,500 acres of prime real estate in Rhode Island, has it all. With everything  presented in pristine fashion, and delivered by a knowledgeable, friendly staff prepared to meet your most demanding expectations.
We recently visited the destination and you can read all about it here.

HOMBRE: How would you describe The Preserve?
Paul Mihailides: The Preserve is the finest four season sporting club in America. We are amenity rich and have all the outdoor sporting activities that anyone could possibly want, with white glove service.
You can certainly find pockets of wonderful adventures, but The Preserve prides itself on every adventure being a wonderful adventure.

More importantly, what makes us so special is location. We’re right on Interstate 95, the only exit from Newport on Route 138 coming from New York. Six miles to the train station, 17 miles to the international airport, 12 miles to our FBO at Westerly Airport. We have a helipad on site.
We’re close to everything, and yet when you come here you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere.
The Preserve is a very special place for a lot of different reasons.

H: How did you develop the concept?
PM: It began when I was the only joint venture partner of Foxwoods Resort Casino and as we were building some of the recreational facilities I said wouldn’t it be great to have a ‘club of clubs.’ It was discussed with the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation there when the Lake of Isles was being built, but did not come to fruition.
Some people like tennis clubs, others fishing clubs, or equestrian clubs. I said wouldn’t it be nice to have something for everybody, all in one place, and that’s when the concept was born.

H: Creating something like that could be expensive, what about the finances of it all?
PM: I thought about what’s the least amount of money you can do it for, and what’s the least amount of people that you can have to make it really uber exclusive. I figured you need a couple of hundred people spending $10,000 a year and this would cover staffing for the operation.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think initiation fees would get to be $500,000. which we’ve enjoyed here at The Preserve.

Golf at The Preserve

H: Has your vision been realized?
PM: If you look at what I submitted to the town board in 2015, everything that was on my master plan I have executed, I have not deviated. I wanted what we call unique sleeping spaces and tiny homes, we wanted equestrian, hunting, fishing, golf, tennis, places for people to stay, activities like zip lining and rock climbing, treehouses and tents. Everything that I created with my team and submitted to the town and state for approval was done. They didn’t think I would be able to execute it. Today every single thing I said I would build is now completed at The Preserve.

Oh! Spa at The Preserve

H: How are memberships structured?
PM: The $500,000. tier is sold out. We have our Lifestyle Membership which is $250,000. initiation, and fees of $8,500. a year. We have a Social Membership fee that allows you some reciprocal relationships and use of our jet center and some of our sister facilities, that’s $125,000. initiation with fees of $8,500. We have our Clay, Tennis, and Pool membership which is probably the most social and the most utilized. That’s $15,000. a year.

H: So the range is between $15,000. to $500,000.?
PM: That’s the initiation fee, the dues are between $8,000. and $15,000. depending on membership class.

H: Let’s talk about owning real estate at The Preserve.
PM: We have homes at The Preserve that range from a million dollars to the Homestead Estates which are ten million dollars. We have sold homes at about twelve million dollars. They range in size from 3,000 to about 7,500 square feet.

H: What benefits can owners enjoy?
PM: You can bike, hike, cross country ski, ATV, snow mobile. You have one hundred miles of trails, an equestrian center, concierge. We have a five star spa, five star dining with three restaurants, grass and clay tennis courts, an 18 hole golf course, best in class sporting clays, the longest automated indoor shooting range in the world, and a myriad of white glove amenities that people can enjoy.

H: What about benefits outside the property?
PM: What makes The Preserve so unique is that we have 284 reciprocal relationships with some of the finest clubs. Ninety of them are the top one percent of the clubs in the world.
The Preserve touts being one of only eight clubs in the world that has both The Distinguished Club and The Platinum Club of America designation. You can’t apply for it, you need to be nominated and then accepted. We’re very proud of those accolades.

H: What is The Preserve’s relationship with Bentley?
PM: We have the only Bentley partnership, and the only Bentley Off-Road Track and Bentley Extraordinary Experience in America. You can come and experience the new Bentley Bentayga on our one mile off-road track that tests the limits of the Bentayga. You can drive at different angles, climb over logs and rocks, through puddles. It shows you the capabilities of an all-wheel drive, all-wheel steering vehicle and what it can do when it’s pushed to the limit.

H: Can the Bentleys be used for other activities?
PM: We have eight Bentleys here that are utilized for people that take suites. They can have it complimentary and drive it up to fifty miles or four hours, which is pretty special. If you’re staying at the resort you can also rent it for longer.
We have one Bentley that’s made just for fly fishing, one that’s made for a picnic, and one that’s made for sporting clays.

H: What are some of the other partnerships?
PM: Other partnerships we have are with Molton Brown, Baccarat, Hunter, we’re the largest Rigby dealer in America, we have an Orvis store here. Matouk with their 1,200 thread count sheets is a partner here. We also have a partnership with Loft and Madison which is our mattress partner.

Paul Mihailides welcomes guests to the opening of The Sporting Shoppe

H: What about your newly opened store?
PM: Our Sporting Shoppe has a total of about 95,000 square feet under one roof, and about 45,000 square feet of retail. We have many brands within our store that normally don’t allow free standing operations including Rigby, Tom Beckbe, Blaser, SITKA, to name a few. We are a Beretta premium store. We opened in December and had a fantastic year, we essentially doubled our revenues.

H: You are a serial entrepreneur, but what was your first business and the process of developing an empire?
PM: I’ve had several businesses. We started with the furniture and cabinet building businesses when I was a young boy. Everything has always been around wood and metal. I grew from a carpenter to a general contractor to a developer and by being a developer I was able to vertically integrate a lot of the other things that I’ve been involved in. I’ve been very fortunate because everything is always engineering based. I’ve been able to take products and make them a little different and better, basically create some better mousetraps.  We have several patents.

Fine dining at The Preserve’s Double Barrel Steakhouse

H: What are some of those other businesses?
PM: We have been and are currently in the development business, we own pipe and supply businesses, the FAMARS brand of guns, which I think builds the finest side by side shotgun in the world bar none. We own a boating company called M2. All of our companies have the M brand and we have the M brand of clothes. The holding company has more than 50 different businesses.

H: Being as detail oriented as you are, how do you manage so many enterprises?
PM: I surround myself with wonderful people. I’ve had people with me for forty five years. And all the people that run my businesses they run on their own. They all have a president or a general manager that I’ve chosen and worked with when I started the businesses. We all interact with each other to help each other any way we can.

H: You are always involved in philanthropy, why is it so important for you?
PM: Most importantly is my love for conservation. It’s not about myself or even my grandchildren, it’s about their children. I tell people, if you love being outdoors, hiking, biking, birdwatching, canoeing, kayaking; every hour that you spend out in the woods you should spend two hours trying to conserve it. Whether that’s talking about it, cleaning up beaches, fundraising, or raising awareness, anything that you can do to help people be as responsible as they can. It’s not about us it’s about future generations. It’s the air we breathe, the land we’re on, the waters we drink.

H: But you do much more than that.
PM: My philanthropic efforts have always been around the outdoors, hunting, and fishing. Then we started to expand it into clothing as it relates to helping homeless people. Warm clothing to be worn in inclement weather. Now it’s expanding to housing. We strive to make the world a better place and help as much as we can.

Paul Mihailides with Adam Vinatieri during a recent fundraising event at The Preserve

H: I know you recently held a huge fundraising event.
PM: One of the organizations we just held a fundraiser for was with Adam Vinatieri for the Tunnels to Towers Foundation. They focus on housing for veterans and disabled vets that can’t afford housing. It was a fun event and we raised some money too. We’ve raised and given away millions of dollars for conservation.

H: What would you say is the key to success?
PM: My family is the key to my success. I also think that people that work very hard are lucky. People say ‘you’re so lucky.’ No, you work really hard and luck comes your way. Opportunities come your way. If you’re prideful in what you do every day you’ll become a success. While we do more than a billion dollars a year in business. Success is not always measured in money. It’s measured in beauty, it’s measured in quality, it’s measured in feeling, it’s measured in elements of what you do for other people.
Success is having thousands of people that are happy. People that you have retired, that you made their lives better.

H: In the beginning, why did you choose to focus your business on home building?
PM: In most businesses there’s a winner and a loser. In the stock market someone buys high and sells low, someone buys low and sells high. There’s a winner and a loser. In my business if people buy a home it’s usually the home of their dreams. If they stay there for thirty years, pay their mortgage on time, and don’t refinance they have a nice umbrella to retire. We have built more than fifty thousand homes. Everybody wins, it’s a business where the homeowner wins, the  banks win, the realtor wins, we win. You do the job, you get paid, the subcontractors win, the landowner wins, then the city and municipality win because they get tax dollars.
It’s not always about money, but it’s about what you leave behind. And did you make your surroundings a better place.

H: What advice can you offer young entrepreneurs?
PM: There’s no second place for education so you need to educate yourself. Then I say that if you follow your dreams and you believe, anything can come true. Follow your dreams and don’t give up.

H: What is your vision for The Preserve moving forward?
PM: The Preserve is growing. We just got approval for 200 more homes so we’ll start a couple of new phases of development. We’re working diligently in Florida to build a second Preserve, called The Preserve South in the Naples/ Fort Myers area. We’re excited about that. And we’re looking to share  our reciprocal relationships with our members more and more.

H: What does family mean to you?
PM: There isn’t anything more important. I have a beautiful wife and we just celebrated our 40th anniversary Memorial Day. I have beautiful children and grandchildren. There’s nothing more important than our family. It’s sacred, it’s communal and the balance in life is family, work, worship, play. Those are the pillars of balance, and for me everything is about balance.

HOMBRE Magazine: Paul Mihailides – Trailblazing Visionary, The Preserve Sporting Club and Resort, creator and chairman of the preserve, the sporting shoppe, Rhode island, luxury resort, the preserve, Paul, Mihailides, businessman, successful, entrepreneur, the preserve

Hobbit House at The Preserve

Paul Mihailides, creator and chairman of The Preserve Sporting Club and Resort