Christopher T. Carley discovered the pleasures of real estate development while working as a volunteer rehabber of inner-city housing for the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago.
Robert A. Wislow uncovered his knack for dealmaking while in college, when he picked up some land on Michigan`s Upper Peninsula and built and rented out three A-frame vacation cottages.
Robert Meers switched his career goals when as an undergraduate architecture student he learned to his chagrin that it`s the developer, not the designer, who calls the shots.
Stephen Tinsley landed his first job after college working condominium conversions for American Invsco–and decided that he`d rather spend the rest of his life changing the skyline than talking little old ladies into buying their apartments.
These four individuals are representative of today`s crop of young, smart, aggressive developers making a name for themselves in Chicago real estate.
They have plenty of company. To name a few of their contemporaries, there are Larry and Mark Levy of the Levy Organization, famed for 1 Magnificent Mile as well as a host of restaurants.
Steven D. Fifield is busy building a financial empire by constructing office towers and buying up savings and loan associations, while John Buck is building a skyscraper at 190 S. LaSalle St. and is the prime contender in the American Medical Association`s search for a developer of its Near North Side holdings.
Carley summed up the desire of every developer: ”I always wanted to be an entrepreneur.”
While an undergraduate at Marquette University in Milwaukee in the early 1960s, for example, ”I ran a student cake service, where I solicited parents and lined up a bakery to produce cakes to be delivered on their children`s birthdays,” Carley said.
”I also sold novelties to fraternities and sororities, and made a summer job for myself by setting up a day camp that my sister and I ran out of our parent`s home in Winnetka.”
Carley went on to receive a bachelor`s degree in philosophy in 1965 from Marquette; and master`s degrees in business administration and urban studies in 1969 and 1972, respectively, from Loyola University in Chicago. A Winnetka resident to this day, Carley, 42, lives there with his wife, Nancy, and children Clare, 19; Christopher, 17; Beth, 16, and Brian, 13.
While doing postgraduate work, Carley became involved in the Catholic Archdiocese`s Community Life Program, in which limited-dividend corporations built housing for low- and moderate-income families.
This experience, he said, taught him that real estate ”is really one of the few industries left that still offers entrepreneurial opportunities, the ability to develop one`s own business.”
After graduating, Carley worked as a real estate consultant in the Chicago office of Booz Allen & Hamilton, a business consulting firm. ”It was a very fast way to get a lot of experience across the country,” he said.
In 1973, Carley became a trainee in the real estate lending department of Continental Illinois National Bank & Trust Co. of Chicago. Three years later, the bank named Carley vice president and division manager for construction lending.
”The bank was a vehicle to get more real estate finance experience, because without a doubt, that has become the major function of a developer,” he said.
”Years ago the financial variables used to be quite cut and dried. Now they`re quite complex, and a developer has to be much more astute when it comes to financing. The days of working out a deal on the back of an envelope are gone forever.”
Carley left the bank in 1979 to become president of Regis Homes of Illinois Inc., a subsidiary of Regis Homes of Newport Beach, Calif.; and project partner in the condominium conversion of Four Lakes Village in Lisle. He left Regis in 1981 to form his own real estate company, CTC Associates. Two years later he joined Universal Development Corp., a Chicago- based developer of Sun Belt housing, as financial vice president.
In January, Trammell Crow Residential Cos., a housing affiliate of Trammel Crow Co. of Dallas and one of the nation`s largest developers, tapped Carley to be its Midwest partner and president of Crow-Chasewood Development Inc.
”Trammell Crow is unique in that it offers the best of both worlds,”
Carley said. ”It`s the largest and certainly one of the most successful development organizations in the country, and it operates by setting up local, autonomous entrepreneurs and really letting them develop their own projects.
”The company believes real estate is definitely an indigineous business that varies not just from one part of the country to another, but from one part of a city to another.”
Carley`s is spearheading Trammel Crow`s entry into the Midwest apartment market. His first project is Stewart`s Glen, a $36 million, rental complex southwest of Ill. Hwy. 83 and 55th Street in west suburban Willowbrook. One-and two-bedroom units have monthly rents of $600 to $800 a month.
”Out of 200 apartments in our first phase, we`ve rented 120 units in the 60 days since we opened,” Carley said. ”We`ll start the second, 288-unit phase in September and open in May, 1986.”
Crow-Chasewood has lined up land for three more projects to open in 1987 that will total more than 1,200 units in Buffalo Grove, Elk Grove Village and Schaumburg. The company is negotiating for two, Near North Side sites for rental high rises to be started in the next two years.
Carley also is seeking additional apartment sites throughout the Chicago area for projects possibly to be developed in joint ventures with property owners.
Robert A. Wislow still owns the three A-frames he built 19 years ago near Big Powder Horn Mountain, a ski hill near Wakefield, Mich. They`re a reminder, he said, of the experience ”that gave me a little bite of real estate.”
Wislow, 40, was born and raised in Chicago, where he lives with his wife, Susan, and daughters Sundee, 10, and Britney, 8.
He graduated from North Central College, Naperville, with a bachelor`s degree in business in 1968.
”My main goal at the time was to get into the stock and commodities businesses,” Wislow said. ”I traded stock all the way through college and in my last two years there, traded virtually every day. But I still had an interest in real estate.”
Wislow spent the next 1 1/2 years trading pork bellies for Packers Trading Co. on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Next he took a job as a computer sales representative for IBM.
In 1971, he heard that IDC Real Estate, predecessor of LaSalle Partners Inc., was looking for help in opening its first downtown office. He joined the company and later established its corporate relocation and leasing/marketing divisions.
After cutting his teeth on such suburban office projects as Gould Center, Rolling Meadows, and 1 Woodfield Place, Schaumburg, Wislow jumped in 1976 to Fidinam (U.S.A.) Inc. As senior vice president, he helped the Swiss development company establish a U.S. foothold.
Wislow left Fidinam in 1978 to found U.S. Equities Group, a Chicago-based real estate company of which he is chairman.
U.S. Equities is the developer of 1 Financial Place, a 40-story, 1-million-square-foot office tower at 440 S. LaSalle St.; renovator of the former John M. Smyth Building, an 8-story, 180,000-square-foot structure at 20 N. Michigan Ave.; and consultant to the $750 million, Denver Union Station redevelopment in downtown Denver.
The Chicago Union Station Co. recently appointed U.S. Equities to plan the redevelopment of the 8-story Union Station building on Canal Street between Jackson and Adams Streets.
Wislow devotes much of his spare time to such organizations as the Chicago Economic Development Commission, Burnham Park Planning Board, Chicago Architectural Foundation, Chicago Tourism Council and Sculpture Chicago `83,
`84 and `85.
His resume notes that he enjoys ”sailing, water skiing (and) snow skiing.” Some things learned on the Upper Peninsula you never forget.
Robert Meers, 34, was born in Chicago and lived in the city until he was 10 years old, when his family moved to Lake Forest. He attended Princeton University, Princeton, N.J., where he received a bachelor`s degree in architecture and urban planning in 1972.
At Princeton, ”I attended a lecture by an architect who designed a plant for Ford Motor Co,” Meers recalled. The architect talked about how Ford essentially wanted the building to stand for only 25 to 30 years. Then the plant would be obsolete, and Ford really didn`t care what happened after that. ”It became clear to me that it was the corporate developer who dictated the real essence of design, at least in this period of history,” Meers said. Upon graduating, Meers joined Urban Investment and Development Co., Chicago, as an assistant project manager at the Fox Valley Center regional shopping mall in Aurora.
In 1973, Meers signed on with Daily Mortgage Co., a small Chicago mortgage house, and about the same time began buying and converting to condominiums small apartment buildings along the lakefront.
Meers and William S. Donnell started Broadacre Management Co. in 1975. The partners undertook such condo conversions as those of the high-rise apartment buildings at 33 E. Cedar St. and 71 E. Division St.
All told, they went through five buildings totaling 800 units before
”condomania” fizzled. Donnell left to form the Montauk Co. in 1980.
Meers directed Broadacre`s efforts toward a lucrative new field of development: historic rehabilitation.
”I was particularly interested in some of Chicago`s architecturally significant buildings, which were in very poor condition and really needed to be preserved,” he said.
”The more I looked, the more I realized that the runup in (office) rents had not yet affected old buildings, and that it therefore was probably an opportune time to look into rehabs,” Meers said. However, ”it was all very dicey,” he added.
Then came the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 and the significant investment tax credits it extended to renovators of historic properties. With Uncle Sam on his side, Meers–and other rehabbers–were off and running.
Broadacre`s projects today include the recently completed renovation of the Traders Building, a 150,000-square-foot office structure at 401 S. LaSalle St. and the restoration of Market Square, a 140,000-square-foot retail area of downtown Lake Forest.
Today Meers lives on the North Side with his wife, Anne, and children Ethan, 5, and Marion, 2. He is a board member of the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois, Nature Conservancy, Metropolitan Housing and Planning Council and the Body Politic Theater.
Leisure-time pursuits include squash, cross-country skiing, windsurfing, hiking and tennis, he said, ”but what I probably enjoy as much as anything else is reading good poetry and fiction.”
Some people, like Stephen Tinsley, senior vice president of the Alter Group of Wilmette, ended up in real estate by accident.
Tinsley, 34, was born and grew up in Chicago, graduated from Francis Parker High School in 1968, ”and then took two years off to backpack around the world, spending time in India, Nepal, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey and Europe,” he said.
After returning home, Tinsley attended the University of Illinois at Chicago and received a bachelor`s degree in history in 1974. He did postgraduate work at the University of Chicago, earning a master`s degree in philosophy in 1976.
”At that point, I had to go into the real world and find a job,”
Tinsley said. ”I joined American Invsco–they were accepting anyone–and started selling condominiums for them as an assistant sales manager at 1 E. Schiller St. and 260 E. Chestnut St.
”After getting my feet wet in real estate, I realized that I really wanted to be a developer,” he said. ”I liked the concept of putting up buildings and changing the face of the earth, and I wanted to work with decision makers, the heads of large corporations.”
In 1978, Tinsley joined Metropolitan Structures Inc., and within a year was named a vice president of leasing. He moved to the Alter Group in 1981 and was promoted to senior vice president responsible for leasing and developing all of the company`s properties in 1983.
”Met Structures certainly is the best in the field of putting up downtown high rises, but at Alter I had the flexibility to do all different kinds of projects . . . and to learn a great deal more of the deveopment business because I`d be able to see the whole picture,” Tinsley said.
”Alter`s a full-service company, which means it solves problems, manages, constructs, designs, consults and does some brokerage for a few corporate clients,” he said.
Today, Alter owns and manages 8 million square feet of office and industrial buildings in the Chicago area. It has 100 acres under development and another 300 acres slated for construction. All of Alter`s land is in the suburbs except for three parcels suitable for small, built-to-suit office buildings on the Near North Side.
Tinsley lives in Highland Park withis wife, Bebi, and daughters Lauren, 3 1/2, and Susan, 1 1/2. He jogs and holds a green belt in karate, ”though between work and my family, there`s not much time for anything else.”
