How Alum Vic Howie ’83 Launched the U.S. Whitewater Center

Vic Howie ’83 has those characteristics in spades, which is how he turned a doodle on a napkin into the U.S. National Whitewater Center, one of the country’s preeminent facilities for outdoor recreation and paddle sports.

If you didn’t know the backstory on the founding of the U.S. national whitewater center in Charlotte, N.C., you might look at the crude drawing that launched the whole endeavor and dismiss it as the fanciful expression of a child.

And while the artist, Vic Howie ’83 is no child, he is childlike in a few very important ways: He’s not afraid to chase big dreams. He tends to get bored quickly. And he’s fond of asking why not. He first floated the idea of building a manmade whitewater river in Charlotte while visiting Tennessee for the 2000 U.S. Olympic Trials for whitewater events. One evening, while socializing with a group of people involved with the competition, Howie shared his bold dream.

The group practically laughed him out of the room. After all, Charlotte was known for banking. If you wanted to get all outdoorsy, then you’d go to Western North Carolina, with its abundance of mountains, rivers and outfitters.

“Everybody laughed because Charlotte was certainly not the epicenter of whitewater at that point. At that time, it was outrageous,” says Howie, a wealth management advisor and managing partner with HPL & Associates at Merrill Lynch in Charlotte.

But that was exactly Howie’s point: Why did he and others who love whitewater paddling have to travel across the state to get their fix? Why couldn’t there be a place in Charlotte where children, families and adrenaline junkies could enjoy a variety of outdoor activities? Why not? he asked.

Wanting to get his point across, Howie found a white cocktail napkin and a black pen and quickly sketched his ambitious vision. In the background of the drawing are the skyscrapers of the Charlotte skyline. In the foreground, three kayakers paddle along a circular river.

Howie readily admits that he had indulged in red wine the night he drew that picture and that the libations might have emboldened his belief in the idea. But the next day, in the sobering light of morning, the concept remained vivid in his mind. Why not?

Nearly 18 years later, the U.S. National Whitewater Center that Howie founded has become a popular destination for outdoor recreation and adventure sports, drawing upwards of one million visitors annually. Situated on 1,300 acres near the Catawba River, the center is the official training headquarters for the U.S. Canoe and Kayak Team, and it hosted the U.S. Olympic Trials in whitewater slalom for the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics.

Much more than just a place for outdoor water sports, the Whitewater Center has become a fixture in Charlotte. Kids dare parents to zipline over the treetops and throw down challenges to see who can scramble to the top of the climbing walls. Co-workers, clubs and friends bond on the ropes courses, testing their balance and agility and exploring their comfort level with heights by jumping from the 100-foot Hawk Tower. Mountain bikers and runners test their endurance on miles of trails. In the evenings, visitors and locals sprawl on the grass or relax on Eno hammocks and lawn chairs to watch free concerts as brilliant sunsets paint the horizon in shades of amber and slate. Millennials pack the beer garden to sample the craft brews. Food trucks, dogs and Frisbees round out the scene amid the ever-present soundtrack of rushing rapids. Howie’s idea doesn’t seem all that outrageous now.

A Startup Mindset

Howie will be the first to tell you that the center came to be only because an army of smart, hardworking and community-minded people came together to focus on a shared goal. But every project needs a champion, someone to present the vision, to keep the plan moving forward, to attract key partners, to solve problems and to be a constant cheerleader for the idea, especially when the inevitable challenges arise. These are Howie’s specialties. (Photo below courtesy of U.S. National Whitewater Center.)

Call it charm, moxie or confidence – whatever it is, Howie has the sort of personality that makes you believe in him, makes you willing to get behind his big ideas. Spend enough time soaking in his folksy Southern drawl, easy smile and playful laugh, and he’s got you. He’s a pitchman who delivers on his promises.

He had already built a successful career in banking before this big idea of his came along. He didn’t need to do it; he wanted to. The fact that many were skeptical only spurred him on. But how do you build a whitewater center? Where do you start? As it turned out, he had been preparing his whole life to lead a project like this.

Growing up in Greenville, S.C., Howie had a passion for playing baseball. He gravitated toward the catcher’s position because he liked orchestrating the action on the field. The diamond was where he learned to communicate plans to different types of people and to see the big picture.

He enrolled at the College in 1979 and majored in business administration. Courses in marketing, management and a broad array of liberal arts subjects expanded his worldview.

His professors taught him to challenge assumptions, to look beyond the obvious and imagine what could be.

His first job after college was in group sales at Wild Dunes Resort on Isle of Palms, where pitching decision makers helped sharpen his presentation skills and taught him that sales is more than just knowing your product; it’s also a performance. The only problem with the job was that the father of the girl Howie was dating at the time thought it was a dead end.

Thinking his daughter’s beau could do better in his career, the father set up an interview for Howie with an influential member of a bank board. Howie turned on his charisma, got the job and began his career in banking.

“I stayed with the career, but not the girl,” he says with a laugh.

He wouldn’t stay single long. In 1988, he married fellow CofC alum Sherri Montgomery ’87. (They have two children, and their youngest, Caroline Howie, is a sophomore at the College.)

As he worked his way up through the banking industry, he lived in Beaufort and Hilton Head, S.C., Highlands and Asheville, N.C., and commuted from the East Coast to San Francisco for two years before landing in Charlotte in 1998. In the middle of all that, Howie and his wife, Sherri, launched a successful adventure travel company, which they sold in 1994 for a nice chunk of change.

It was while building his career in the mid-’90s that Howie was first introduced to kayaking. His employer, NationsBank (now Bank of America), had signed on to sponsor three Olympic teams for the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta, and Howie was assigned to work with the USA Canoe and Kayak Team, which was then based at the Nantahala Outdoor Center in Bryson City, N.C. Over the next few years, as he got to know the athletes, coaches and others involved in the sport, he became a whitewater kayaking fanatic.

Like any good enthusiast, he was soon trying to get others hooked on the sport. He made converts of family and friends, and helped start a whitewater kids club aimed at teaching children important life skills through exposure to the outdoors. A child at heart, Howie can relate to kids who struggle to stay focused on one thing for long periods. He estimates that in his more than three decades in banking and finance, he’s changed jobs an average of every two years. It’s the classic startup mindset: Build something great and move on so you can build something else great.

“I get bored really quickly,” he says. “That’s kind of one of the ways these other creative ideas and startups I’ve done have come around. I might get bored at work – I’m still doing the job – but I’m thinking about other things, too.”

Along the way, he’s run bank divisions, marketed banks and overseen multiple bank mergers – the latter being notoriously difficult projects that require a strong leader who can manage people and unite stakeholders around a common purpose. Overseeing mergers forced him to develop skills outside his comfort zone.

“A merger has a million things that can go wrong – technology, personnel, real estate. Being able to develop those timelines and those critical paths of what has to happen and when was a really good exercise for me because I don’t think that way,” he says. “I am more creative thinking not necessarily operations thinking. But somehow the square peg got pushed into the round hole.”

The Big Idea

In April 2000, Howie was attending the U.S. Olympic Trials for whitewater events on the Ocoee River in Tennessee. During a conversation with the team’s athletes and staff, talk turned to the whitewater kayaking venue for the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney. The paddlers would be competing for medals at Penrith Whitewater Stadium, which features a circular, artificial river.

Whitewater competitions have historically been held on point-to-point courses along natural rivers, meaning spectators only see the action when it passes their vantage point. The Sydney venue was designed so whitewater events could be watched in their entirety, just like track and field. It was game-changing for the sport.

Howie listened intently. He could hardly believe what he was hearing. His mind raced. A manmade river could be built anywhere, he thought. It could be a centerpiece for a community, a place for hardcore athletes, weekend warriors and children and families alike to partake in fun and healthy activities. He could no longer contain his enthusiasm.

“I finally blurted out, ‘We ought to have this in the U.S., and we ought to have this in Charlotte,’” he recalls.

Everyone laughed. They said it would cost too much, that the idea would never get enough buy-in or draw enough visitors to sustain itself. Later that night, undeterred, he drew his vision on a cocktail napkin. Why not?

One person who didn’t laugh at Howie’s crazy idea was his friend Chet Rabon, a Charlotte attorney, who began researching the artificial river in Sydney and tracking down the company that built it.

No doubt, it would cost millions; they’d need financing, land and partners. But, yes, Howie and Rabon believed, this was a viable idea. Adopting a startup mentality, they drew up a business plan and began tapping their professional networks. Soon, Howie had others believing in the idea.

Charlotte Whitewater Park Inc. was incorporated as a nonprofit organization in early 2001 with the goal of creating an outdoor lifestyle hub for city dwellers. They established a board of directors and board of advisors, loading them with influential, well-known people from the Charlotte area. Howie was named chairman of the board of directors and began pitching his idea to anyone who would listen. By the end of that summer, the organization had assembled an impressive team of supporters and partners representing both the private and public sectors as well as nonprofits.

Things were happening, and the venture was gaining momentum. And then planes crashed into the World Trade Center. For a while after 9/11, no one wanted to talk about the project. Later that year, Howie got the ball rolling again with the hiring of the center’s first executive director, Jeff Wise, who remains in that role today.

While many of the pieces were starting to come together, a crucial one – where to build the park – had not yet been decided. One day Howie got an excited call from Wise, telling him they needed to meet right away at a large, mostly vacant property outside the city that had 27 acres of waterfront along the Catawba River. Howie, still working full-time at Bank of America, showed up in a coat and tie. He and Wise surveyed the expansive surroundings, imagining the possibilities. It was more land than they had been looking for, but the larger parcel would enable them to offer more activities besides whitewater rafting and kayaking.

The real boon was that the property was owned by the Mecklenburg County park system. A large public partner would bring additional benefits to the project, such as qualification for grants, and it would keep the park in the public domain. They soon inked a long-term lease deal with the county. But, acquiring more land and adding more activities and features tripled the center’s initial price tag of $12 million. With the addition of ziplines, ropes courses, climbing walls and other activities, the total cost eventually ballooned to $36 million. From a drawing on a cocktail napkin to a $36 million gamble. Why not?

A Dream Realized

Howie and the project’s other leaders recognized that creating additional revenue streams would be essential to the park’s viability. They formed a partnership with the Charlotte Fire Department to conduct swift-water rescue training at the center, which would draw first responders from around the world. They built a restaurant, retail store and concert stage.

As more partners from the region climbed aboard, they expanded the center’s market reach to be more national in scope.

The creative and design stages stretched out until 2004, with construction continuing through 2005. Finally, more than six years after he first floated the idea, Howie arrived at the U.S. National Whitewater Center in May 2006 for its unveiling: “When we first turned all six pumps on and ran the water through it, I thought some of us were going to cry. We never thought that day would come.”

There were growing pains that first summer. Crowds didn’t immediately flock to the center, and many of those who did come weren’t sure how it worked.

“It started off kind of slow,” Howie says. “We discovered we had a fundamental problem, which was that people did not know how to use the center.”

Borrowing time-tested tactics from museums and theme parks, they brought in docents to help orient visitors upon arrival, and they changed their pricing structure so that visitors could pay one fee to access all activities. A robust annual schedule of themed events, trail races, climbing and paddling competitions, and concerts lured a diverse mix of visitors. Word traveled and business began to pick up.

Visit the center today, and it’s clear it has tapped into something special in Charlotte and beyond: A place for people of all ages to connect through physical activity and a shared appreciation for the outdoors. There’s something for everyone. It’s exactly what Howie imagined and what he pitched, even though he admits he had his doubts.

“This should never have happened,” he says one morning while overlooking the property.

“There were so many obstacles, but the team overcame them one by one.”

Pitch Perfect

Howie’s role in creating the Whitewater Center, which by any measure was an audacious startup, brought him some notoriety in the entrepreneurial world, and he began fielding requests for advice from would-be entrepreneurs. A few years ago, he was having lunch at the center with a friend, when they began discussing why so many startups struggle to attract funding.

“Because they don’t have a way to practice their pitch before the events, and they’re not doing very well,” Howie had said. “So, investors are not investing in them. They need a practice session.”

Howie got an idea: What if he could create an event where entrepreneurs could practice their pitches, get feedback from seasoned business pros and even get a free video recording of their performance. Why not?

Howie and some partners launched Pitch Breakfast in Charlotte in 2013. Every month, the nonprofit gives four companies five minutes each to pitch their business plans. They get 10 minutes of feedback from a panel of rock-star volunteer entrepreneurs. The breakfast became so popular that Howie, who is a board member of the College of Charleston Foundation, expanded it to Charleston, where among the entrepreneurs pitching ideas are students from the College’s Interdisciplinary Center for Applied Technology, better known as ICAT.

He gets animated when he talks about the exciting business plans he’s heard at Pitch Breakfast, especially those from the ICAT students. The sessions are exhilarating, Howie says, because you never know when the next big idea will emerge.

There’s another dreamer out there with a pitch that’s even crazier than building a playground for outdoor enthusiasts, complete with a manmade whitewater river. Why not?