He’s managed a bus company and built swimming pools; he’s hired cranes and sold converted garage doors. Adrian Gardiner’s business versatility is again on show with a set of villas and apartments overlooking the St Francis Links golf course, where a major tournament will be played next week.
Before Covid, Gardiner’s hotel group had approvals to build on the hill overlooking the 18th hole, with views of St Francis Bay and the Kouga Mountains. Then, as Gardiner remembers, “the leisure industry completely collapsed”.
But Gardiner is nothing if not adaptable, as his storied career of entrepreneurship shows. His post-Covid response was to retain the footprint of the hotel but to create a “hybrid” — the St Francis Links Villas will be a collection of freehold free-standing villas and apartments where owners can use the clubhouse and leisure centre of the main estate and a rental pool allows for income generation.
It’s part of the Mantis Collection, a selection of luxury hotels, ecolodges and waterways in destinations as varied as Rwanda, Zanzibar and Costa Rica. He is best known for establishing Shamwari, the Eastern Cape’s first luxury game lodge and conservation hub.
“The intention was never for Shamwari to be commercial,” says Gardiner. “It was just to have a farm outside Port Elizabeth.” Only once he started acquiring a few farms did he think: “My gosh, I better make this commercial.”
Part of Gardiner’s business philosophy is to learn (“copy”, he says) from others. “The first thing I did when I started Shamwari was to go to Londolozi and Mala Mala to see how they were doing it.”
So well did Gardiner do it that by the time he sold to Dubai World in 2008, Shamwari was regularly winning international awards.
Gardiner’s first job after university was at Spar head office, then he was general manager of a Cape Town bus company, something he “didn’t like one bit”.
A move to Port Elizabeth followed in 1968 to join a Spar wholesaler as a partner. With the proceeds of the sale of that business, Gardiner started building swimming pools and highways. In 1979 he lost everything when someone who owed him a lot of money went insolvent.
A string of ventures followed from a base in the Baakens Valley in Gqeberha. These were not so much unique ideas as things that were new to the Eastern Cape and which, remembers Gardiner, “nobody thought would work”. Converted garage doors, personal pagers (previously only carried by doctors), the first gunite and fibreglass swimming pools and Gqeberha’s first big mobile cranes. There was even some horse breeding.
Along the way, Gardiner established partnerships and met many interesting people. He credits Graham Beck, business magnate and stud farmer, with advising him to get out of horse breeding. Gardiner declares himself “a great one for endorsements” and he was delighted that conservationist Ian Player got behind his environmental efforts at Shamwari.
A transport business partnership with Neels Els introduced him to the extraordinary golfing talent of Neels’s son, Ernie. Gardiner has a passion for golf and he’s owned a few golf estates. In the early 2000s, Steenberg was bought and sold. In 2016 the Mantis Collection and Val de Vie Estate jointly bought the Pearl Valley Golf & Country Estate.
The Pearl Valley Hotel by Mantis was built and a form of part-ownership introduced. “The Pearl Valley model was that we built and sold the rooms on the basis that the person can occupy for 30 days a year and get a return,” says Gardiner. “That model was working well so we built two show units at St Francis ... then Covid came.”
The golf course where his latest venture is sited has itself had to deal with economic adversity. The global financial crash of 2008/2009 caused a radical rethink at the newly developed St Francis Links. Now well established, the service ethic at the venue is palpable with CEO and golf professional Jeff Clause and operations manager Liezl Clause making a formidable combination.
The golf course has always been highly rated and will host its third South African PGA Championship as part of the Sunshine Tour in November.
Gardiner is convinced that the St Francis area will bring good returns for investors. “The capital growth in St Francis Bay has been phenomenal,” he says. In addition, seasonal rental rates can “cover all your costs for the year”.
One of the St Francis Links Villas will be for Mr and Mrs Gardiner. “The birdlife and the wildlife make St Francis unique,” he says. But then variety has always been the mark of this master entrepreneur.
*The $1.5m SDC Championship, a Sunshine and DP World Tour golf tournament will be held at St Francis Links from March 16 to 19. European players can earn points towards Ryder Cup selection in the event
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