Will the Tryon International Equestrian Center be ready for the World Games?

In just under a month, the rural North Carolina community of Mill Spring, less than 10 miles from the South Carolina state line, will become the epicenter of the equestrian world.

Mark Bellissimo, a Campobello resident and the founder and managing partner of the Tryon International Equestrian Center, knows the clock is ticking. Bellissimo said his team is pulling out all the stops to ensure the sprawling 1,600-acre complex is primed and ready to host the 2018 World Equestrian Games in September.

He said roughly $200 million has been invested in the center to date, with more likely on the way, as it prepares to host a competition that’s expected to draw some 500,000 people to Polk County near the Carolinas' border. It's expected to have in the neighborhood of $400 million in economic impact on the region.

Last week, Bellissimo offered GateHouse Media the final up-close look at the center’s facilities and progress ahead of a media and public access blackout that will last through the World Equestrian Games' opening ceremonies.

It’s time Bellissimo and company said the center needs to focus fully on the massive construction project before teams, competitors and fans descend on the region next month. With hundreds of workers attacking different tasks across the campus, the project is progressing at a near-hourly rate.

The question is, will it all be ready in time? For Bellissimo that answer is yes, with perhaps a few caveats.

“We’re going to be ready to go,” Bellissimo said Thursday. “We’re focused on what we’re doing, and we’re going to get there. It might not have all the polish and finish it will ultimately have, but this is going to be a great facility for the WEG.”

Sharon Decker, a former North Carolina commerce secretary and the equestrian center's chief operating officer, admits a lot of work remains to be done, but she says it's doable.

“We’re fortunate that we’re not building anything we didn’t already have in our business plan, and we’ve been working very steadily at it," Decker said. "We’ve got a great team of contractors and a good, solid plan. We’ll get there.”

A race to the finish

Bellissimo said Thursday he always knew the task of preparing for and hosting the 2018 World Equestrian Games was going to be a massive undertaking.

Drawing competitors from all over the globe and taking place every four years, the World Equestrian Games combine eight world championships into one event, including jumping, dressage and para-equestrian dressage, eventing, driving, endurance, vaulting and reining. The inaugural games were hosted in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1990.

The 2014 games in Normandy, France, attracted more than 500,000 spectators and drew a worldwide television audience of 350 million. The games in Mill Spring will be broadcast on NBC Sports.

A typical host site might have four to five years to prepare for the event, Bellissimo said. His team has had to compress that work into just 18 months.

The grading work and site preparation alone has transformed rolling hills, fields and forest into usable ground. That work continues, as heavy equipment operators dig and transfer soil around the property.

Belissimo said much of the critical competition infrastructure — rinks, fields, indoor and outdoor stadiums and courses — is completed or well on its way to completion, and the center has hosted numerous “dry runs” for each of the competition’s events to ensure everything is ready for prime time.

Portions of the hospitality and resort infrastructure are also complete, with multiple restaurants and retail spaces fully operational. The center’s 1,200 horse stalls and quarantine facilities are ready to go, and a number of one- and three-bedroom cabins dot different portions of the property.

But much remains to be done.

Like any building project, Decker said much of the center’s construction timetable hinged on favorable weather conditions. Polk County has been battered by tremendous rains in recent months — notably causing at least one deadly mudslide just miles away from equestrian center. Decker said rainfall through the first seven months of the year already exceeds average yearly totals.

Red clay mountain soil is as visible across the complex as portions of roadway remain unpaved and buildings around the property sit at various stages of completion.

Decker said earlier this year the center planned to construct three finished hotels, offering a combined 1,500 rooms, by the time the games arrived. At present, only site prep and elevator shafts have been built for the first of those three hotels, with major construction work expected to begin on a 210-room facility next week.

That could bode well for off-site hotels and bed-and-breakfasts in surrounding counties, which have advertised limited vacancy and skyrocketing rental rates in the weeks during the games.

No doubts

Bellissimo reiterated that he’s confident the equestrian center will be ready to put on a show by the time September arrives.

In dusty blue jeans and beat-up Ariat boots, he bounded across the property pointing at specific spots where his vision will unfold.

He climbed two ladders to the third floor of a half-built structure overlooking one of the center’s stadiums. Offering fantastic views of the mountains to the west, he said the combination restaurant and event space’s windows would maximize that view by September.

While the center remains a work-in-progress, Bellissimo said he’s having fun.

“There’s always been naysayers,” Bellissimo said. “First they said we were crazy to build this center here. Then they said, ‘There’s no way you’ll get the World Equestrian Games.’ Now they’re saying it’ll never be ready in time. Well, we will be.”

He said the pressure to produce in time for September has, in its own way, been gratifying. He identifies with former President Teddy Roosevelt’s famous "Man in the Arena" address, for instance.

Bellissimo said the project will enter a breakneck building phase that he hopes will put the finishing touches on the equestrian center. He’s got an onsite concrete production facility that’s working nonstop, and he said he purchased enough steel — pre-tariff, he noted — to support the ongoing work.

Decker said the project has employed as many as 500 full- and part-time workers this summer, though lining up enough labor remains a challenge.

Bellissimo said he put out a call for extra hands to help tackle the upcoming hotel build.

He said he asked for 30 employees to help with the project and ended up with 57. Telling the story, he pulled out a photo of a woman who approached him after he made the request.

“Her name is Faith,” Bellissimo said. “And she said she wanted to help.

"Now, I thought that was very fitting.”