Kitchen and Bath Association

By Angela Wibking

Small towns don’t attract many big-time meetings. While charming, these communities usually lack the facilities and services, not to mention the air access, required of most professional meetings. Yet when the National Kitchen and Bath Association was planning its annual board retreat last year, a small town on Florida’s Gulf Coast proved the perfect destination.

Twenty-eight NKBA board members flew in from as far away as Hawaii for their annual weekend retreat at Seaside, Fla. in early December 2000. Seaside, a planned community of 300 residences about 35 miles west of Panama City, has long been a popular vacation destination but has only recently evolved into a unique small meetings venue. Its uniqueness proved irresistible to Gary West, NKBA board president. "We always try to do something a little out of the ordinary for our board retreats," says West. "I also wanted someplace without distractions and one that created a bonding atmosphere for our meeting. I had seen a PBS television program about Seaside several years ago and as I was looking at different venues and locations for our board retreat last year, Seaside just came to mind. So I went to their web site, made a phone call and set up a site visit."

Still, West knew that holding the NKBA retreat in a small town like Seaside, where accommodations would be in shared cottages rather than in individual hotel rooms, might not be to every board member’s liking. "We knew we would have to put more than one person in a cottage and that was something we had never done before," he says, adding that past retreats have been in traditional hotels in Sedona, Ariz. and Keystone, Colo. West visited Seaside in July 2000 for the site inspection and was joined by NKBA executive assistant and meeting coordinator Charlotte Breidenstein, who works at the association’s headquarters in New Jersey. After seeing the town first-hand, both felt confident board members would enjoy the unique destination. Just to be sure, though, West polled his board and gave members the option of having a private 1-bedroom cottage instead of sharing. "The vast majority chose to share – and once we were at Seaside, we even had one individual in a separate unit who ended up moving into a larger cottage with other board members," says West.

Educating meeting planners about sharing accommodations is a key to growing Seaside’s meetings business, according to Alvin Bettcher, director of sales and marketing for Seaside. "It’s a challenge to get the concept of sharing a home across to meeting planners at first," admits Bettcher. "There’s a perception in the corporate world that "I don’t share rooms" but with our cottages everyone has a private bedroom and bath. What they are sharing are the common areas like the living rooms and kitchens." Companies that have "shared" at Seaside in the past few years include Coca-Cola, Bristol-Myers Squibb and the Texas Society of CPAs, to name a few. "We’re not a conference center," stresses Bettcher. "Our niche is with executive board meetings, sales retreats and incentive meetings, with 75 people being the ideal size for us."

The NKBA delegates were housed in a total of 14 cottages. "Six people requested a 1-bedroom cottage but the rest shared 2- and 4-bedroom homes," says Lynn Holland, Seaside’s senior sales manager who worked on the NKBA board meeting. "We had to make sure they were all comparable even though each Seaside cottage is so different from the next." Seaside’s cottages are privately owned and are custom designed and decorated, with hardwood floors, luxurious baths, fully equipped kitchens, wide screened porches and other architectural details. Each house is painted a different bright pastel shade with white trim and sports a fanciful name like Dream Catcher or Snail’s Pace. The cottages sit on quiet little brick-paved streets that lead to the post office, a gourmet grocery, a white frame schoolhouse and dozens of small shops and a few restaurants. There are also tennis and croquet courts and three outdoor swimming pools in the town. Each main street leads to an individually designed pavilion overlooking the Gulf of Mexico that provides access to the beach. Since no cottage is more that a quarter mile from the beach and or Central Square, around which the shops and eateries are clustered, delegates can easily walk or bike anywhere in Seaside.

The NKBA board meeting began with delegates arriving on Friday afternoon at nearby airports. Initially, West had been concerned that air access for his board members to a small town like Seaside might be a problem. Regional jet service to nearby major airports and Seaside’s airport shuttle put that concern to rest. "We use a local service that meets and greets the delegates at the baggage claim at the airports and shuttles them to Seaside," explains Holland. The NKBA delegates flew in from Montana, California, Indiana, New Jersey and Hawaii to the Panama City airport, a 45-minute drive from Seaside, or the Pensacola airport, 90 minutes away. Continental, USAir, Delta and Northwest and their regional subsidiaries are among the airlines serving these airports.

Still, flight delays caused late arrivals for some NKBA delegates and the opening dinner had to be postponed an hour. That meant the team-building event scheduled for after dinner also began later than originally planned. "Gary wanted to do the Beach Olympics competition after dinner the first night and we tried to talk him out of it because of the lack of lights on the beaches here," says Holland. "But he was willing to pay for the generator and the flood lights to make it possible." Before the games began, delegates gathered for a barbecue buffet at the Seaside Pavilion, a function space atop a dune overlooking the gulf. With the December sun long set over the gulf and no moon in sight, things got darker and cooler quickly. "A few of the ladies who were wearing sandals realized they’d made a mistake," says Holland. "But then here came Gary (West) in shorts and a referee’s black-and-white striped shirt."

With the floodlights switched on and the group divided into four teams, the competition heated up quickly. Activities included running a tire obstacle course on the sand, a relay race, volleyball using a glow-in the-dark ball and a blind communication exercise where partners coached each other through a series of tasks. The final event was a classic tug-of-war. "They were right in the middle of this when the generator blew and the lights went out," recalls Holland. "But since Gary told us he wanted a ‘Survivor’ feel to the games, that actually made for a dramatic finale. And we learned something about generators and having extra fuel on hand."

The next day was devoted entirely to the business portion of the board meeting, held in the Central Square Meeting Room. The spacious room is situated on the second level of a large building overlooking the town square and affords sweeping views of the gulf from its wide covered porch. While the space accommodates 50 classroom style and 75 theater style, the NKBA group wanted a more casual seating arrangement. "They wanted it to be arranged so that if someone wanted to sit on the floor that would be alright," says Holland. The Seaside staff complied and furnished the room with groupings of upholstered couches and brightly-colored wooden Adirondack chairs. The meeting began at 8 a.m., following a catered hot breakfast served in the reception area of the meeting space. A catered lunch was also served.

Seaside has three other indoor meeting spaces, including the Meeting Hall that can accommodate 90 delegates theater style. The town also has numerous outdoor venues, including the Lyceum, a wide manicured lawn that can be tented for events of up to 800 people. Meeting spaces expected to be completed later this year include an 800-square-foot space with projection room atop the Seaside School building and a free-standing, non-denominational chapel with seating for up to 200 people.

"Since the NKBA board had spent all day Saturday in a meeting room, they didn’t want to do dinner that night in another meeting space," says Holland. Instead Holland and her staff planned a catered dinner buffet at the 4-bedroom, 4-bath cottage called Lemonade Stand. "The cottage is right on the gulf and has a great view from the second floor," says Holland. The closing dinner menu included pork tenderloin and sautéed shrimp, 3-cheese polenta, corn and potato pancakes with a sherry beurre blanc, salad and a tiramisu dessert topped with chocolate-covered coffee beans.

Following the dinner, board members re-formed the same teams used for the Beach Olympics and played Pictionary in the cottage’s large living room. Earlier some of the delegates had also gathered at the 2-bedroom cottage called The Truman House, so named because it was used as the home of Jim Carrey’s character in the film The Truman Show, which was shot entirely on location at Seaside. "We rented the film while we were at Seaside because several members hadn’t seen it," says Breidenstein, who shared the cottage with another NKBA board member. "We had popcorn and ice cream and all watched the movie." Board members also used a few minutes of their limited free time for a little professional research. "Our board members are from all over the country and from many different backgrounds in the kitchen and bath business, including retail, design, distribution and manufacturing," says West. "There was great interest in visiting each other’s cottages and comparing the kitchens and baths during our free time."

That kind of informal bonding is something that just seems to happen at Seaside. "Meeting planners tells us how their delegates end up sharing morning coffee in rocking chairs on the screen porches of their cottages before walking or riding bikes together to the meeting facilities," says Bettcher. "I can’t think of a better way to get your corporate team to bond than that."

After meeting at Seaside, West agrees. "Even though each year only about 20 percent of our board are new members, we still need to use our annual retreat to build on the concept of working together to achieve common goals and accomplish our strategic planning," he says. "Seaside fit our every goal."