Excerpt from NJSGA Golf Magazine, Spring 2024. By Rebecca Corzo.
FROM THE GROUND UP
For three decades, Rich LaBar has built a successful golf construction business right here in the Garden State. And he’s only getting started.
Back in the 1990s, Rich LaBar spent his summers working as a general laborer at a new resort emerging in the hills of Sussex County — Crystal Springs. He was a student at Rutgers University at the time, studying economics with the goal of finding a job on Wall Street. His plan changed one day, when Gene Mulvihill, owner and developer of Crystal Springs Resort, approached him and asked him not to go and take a ‘real’ job once he graduated.
Odd, right?
That’s because Mulvihill wanted to offer him a different kind of job after graduation – helping him build Black Bear Golf Club, one of the golf courses on the Crystal Springs property. LaBar agreed.
“Gene was a Wall Street guy – that’s where he made all his money,” LaBar explained. “He just said, ‘Don’t go and work on Wall Street. Stay with me and we’ll have a lot of fun together.’”
It turned out to be one of the best decisions he’d ever make.