The Founders: Drew and Quinn Millegan
Drew and Quinn Millegan visit the future site of Pegasus Equestrian Resort & Venue.
Two brothers with a shared vision, Drew and Quinn Millegan have founded Pegasus Equestrian Resort & Venue. While they are personally devoted to the project, the passion extends far beyond their own goals for the venue, as they aim to change the scope of equestrian sport on the west coast through the creation of Pegasus Equestrian Resort & Venue.
The Millegan family began riding when Drew and Quinn were 9 and 6 years old, respectively. The family went on a trip to the former generational ranch in Millegan, Montana where they spent time around horses. Quinn enjoyed the horses and suggested that the family take up riding. “We started with lessons, then small local shows. We rode through high school and competed in small hunter/jumper shows,” Quinn explains.
Both Drew and Quinn rode throughout high school. “We were amateur riders, we didn’t do huge shows,” says Drew. “It was less competitive and more recreational. I enjoyed the relationship with the horse. It’s a very unique sport in that your ‘equipment’, per se, can make its own decision. It’s as much of a mental game as it is a physical game. The horse will only put in as much work as you do.”
Over the course of their junior riding careers, Drew and Quinn each recall the horses that had an impact on their riding. “One of my favorite horses I rode during my junior riding career was named Paco. He was your typical schooling horse; he would really work you through the process,” says Drew.
Quinn recalls a pony named Reggie, “When I started riding I rode a horse we owned named Reggie. He was orange and full of character. When he was young, before we owned him, he snagged a barbed wire and part of his lip was gone so he always looked like he had a grin. He was the pony I grew up with. He was easy to learn on as a young rider, but the problem was that he didn’t grow with me. I stayed on him a little too long, but had a hard time parting with him. He is actually still around, today.”
Drew (left) and Quinn (right) spent many years in the saddle before the idea of Pegasus Equestrian Resort & Venue.
While Drew and Quinn both competed, their horse show days were spent at local farms rather than large venues. “I learned more about horse venues after I stopped riding regularly,” says Drew. “There were not a lot of show options in Oregon when we were growing up, we were showing at someone’s local barn. The local shows were great fun, but they lacked the amenities of larger shows.”
Drew and Quinn’s personal show experiences, along with a desire to offset the costs of their sport, grew into what is now Pegasus Equestrian Resort & Venue. “Riding turned out to be kind of expensive, even at a local level,” jokes Quinn, “We’ve always been a finance-focused family and we looked into ways to turn our hobby into a business. We wondered - how do we break even and do something good for the industry? It turned out that there was a need for a large, multi-disciplinary venue on the west coast. Although we approach the project from a business perspective, the horse is central to what we are doing. We are building a business around the equestrian.”
The brothers’ backgrounds in finance helped drive the project forward, “We have been in finance our entire lives. We’ve been trained from a young age to read charts, and I was licensed to trade as a broker before I could drink. I was probably at one point the youngest broker in the state of Oregon. In late 2016 we decided to start the hedge fund, and we were fully funded by the beginning of 2017. It’s a value-based contrarian hedge fund, which means it is comprised of about 90% public equities. We invest in companies that are out of favor or undervalued and we have a small portion of private equity companies.”
Quinn explains how their finance background plays into the Pegasus Equestrian Resort & Venue Project, “I really like what we do because it is different every day. Our strategy can change and our position can change. We have to be okay with doing a 180, then doing a 180 again, and we have to be okay with admitting to mistakes. You have to constantly be reevaluating your own decision making to ensure that decisions are based on reasoned, long-term value and not just the wins of the moment. This results in staying power in the marketplace. We have taken that experience to come up with a vision for Pegasus that is generational in scope because there is a lot of stagnation in the industry and a lot of fragmentation, to no fault of the riders. We aim to create a venue that is sustainable long term and adds value to the industry.”
The future site of Pegasus Equestrian Resort & Venue encompasses 2,800+ acres in the low hills of Douglas County, Oregon.
To create a world-class, multi-disciplinary equestrian venue, Drew and Quinn needed a perfect piece of land, along with land use approvals. “On the west coast, there has been 20 years of lackluster infrastructure investment into equestrian facilities. There has been a loss of a lot of facilities due to urban encroachment and conversion and there is more fundamental pressure on the equestrian industry because the land is rural in use with urban characteristics,” explains Drew, “Venues require a lot of land and, if the land is in an urban area, there is a big incentive to redevelop it. Land use laws in Oregon are designed in such a way that it makes people think of the broader implications of a project before they build. However, once you have approvals, it is certain that the project can go forward and there are very clear steps of development.”
The site has close proximity to an underutilized interchange on I-5.
Quinn explains the benefit of the location of the site, “The site is unique in having an underutilized full interchange with direct access to the site from I-5 without going down any small rural roads. The I-5 corridor is the main and only north south interstate along the West Coast. This is important for the development, but it is also important from a community viewpoint in that our neighbors are not impacted.”
Through their extensive research and combined knowledge of finance and the equestrian industry, Drew and Quinn are turning their vision into a reality. “Pegasus Equestrian Resort & venue is multigenerational. We aim to become an equestrian hub from which the west coast and the U.S. equestrian industry can grow, and to be a venue that can spark change and innovate in the industry. We can build it from the ground up with the needs of the average equestrian in mind without adapting an old site to fit new needs. We can build and innovate with the future in mind,” explains Quinn. Drew adds, “Pegasus Equestrian Resort & Venue means stability. It means an anchor for the industry and a core seed that the industry can germinate from for decades to come.”
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