Holly Duran leaned back in her chair and swiveled just a bit toward a construction manager sitting next to her. She spoke briefly but made her point clear: Her client would not be paying for any additional repairs to the new space he had just leased.
The manager avoided her stare. “I try to stay away from money,” he said sheepishly, reminding Duran that his boss would deal with that.
Duran, owner of Holly Duran Real Estate Partners LLC, a boutique tenant-representation firm, smiled. The tension broken, she resumed reading her to-do list. Stained sections of carpet needed replacing. A doorbell had to be installed. A cracked door would be fixed.
It was all part of nailing down the final details after her client, Melamed & Associates, moved in late March to a 3,000-square-foot office space on the 16th floor of 30 S. Wacker Drive. Even small repairs could increase the cost of the move, and part of Duran’s job is to make sure the budget stays on track.
It is this attention to detail that has helped her retain clients for decades, Duran said. This particular client, Leo Melamed, a prominent figure in the futures industry and chairman emeritus of CME Group Inc., has worked with her since the early 1980s, when the then-Chicago Mercantile Exchange was looking for a new home.
“She was not only willing to take it on — take on the man’s world, so to speak — but she outdid everything,” Melamed said. “And her tenacity and willingness to be meticulously prepared always amazed me.”
Duran became the exchange’s real estate adviser, negotiating leases globally as the company grew from a membership-only firm to a publicly owned operator of futures exchanges. She developed a niche, representing other firms in Chicago’s futures industry in their real estate dealings.
Her firm offers an array of services, from strategic advice to project management. It has negotiated deals on more than 15 million square feet of office, industrial and data center space in dozens of cities around the world.
In her most recent assignment from CME, Duran co-brokered the $151.5 million sale of two of the three towers that make up the Chicago Board of Trade Building.
“Her reputation is industrywide. Most people (in the commercial real estate industry) work in large organizations. She doesn’t and has carved out a name for herself,” said Bruce Miller, who worked with Duran on the deal as head of Jones Lang LaSalle’s Capital Markets Group in Chicago. He added that Duran has a reputation for being a tenacious negotiator on behalf of her clients, and he got to see that firsthand.
Often, when deals are outside her area of expertise or outside the Chicagoland market, she partners with other commercial real estate firms. That lets her keep personnel costs down and gives her flexibility to navigate difficult times. Last year, her team had been negotiating two office leases with MF Global Inc., whose parent filed for bankruptcy protection, costing her the commission.
A little friction
The second of four children, Duran, 55, grew up in Merrionette Park, a suburb bordering Chicago’s far Southwest Side.
“It was a little, very blue-collar subdivision. A lot of policemen. A lot of firemen,” she said.
Her mother, Blanche Searle, ran the house, and her father, August Arrigo, was a union worker in charge of salesmen at the South Water Market, a wholesale produce center southwest of the Loop.
She attended public school until eighth grade. Then her parents enrolled her in Mount Assisi Academy, a Catholic school in Lemont, to shelter her from the racial violence they saw in neighborhood schools. Her commute was nearly two hours each way, but it was the only school her father could afford. To ease the financial burden on the family, her two brothers stayed in the local school. Her father figured they could protect themselves. “My brothers are huge, really big guys,” she said.
Duran had a hard time adjusting to the all-girls school and hated wearing the uniform. But being surrounded by girls ultimately boosted her confidence, and eventually she became class president, she said.
“I was known to be a little mouthy,” Duran said. “But I think I was always a pretty good negotiator. I don’t know if that was self-born or because my dad was a salesman … but I was usually able to get (the nuns) to understand our side, and 90 percent of the time I could get them to do what I wanted.”
She didn’t always win, including the year she had to take a child care class (“This is the ’70s, so it’s that archaic”) and the year she was forced to decide between honors classes versus typing and accounting — and chose the latter. Her teachers couldn’t understand why she, a smart student, would want to take those classes, which were meant for kids unlikely to attend college.
“The dummies took business, and the dummies took the accounting class and the bookkeeping class and all the practical skills that relate to business. I’ll never forget it,” she said.
When she graduated in 1974, she decided to go to Northern Illinois University to become an accountant. But her father had gotten her a union job at a grocery store and didn’t understand why she wanted to leave it.
“I remember my dad arguing with me: ‘Why do you have to go away to college? You have this great job?’ ” she said.
Her bigger hurdle wasn’t his approval; it was money. She soon realized she didn’t want to become an accountant. With funds running out, she decided she would take all the classes she liked before quitting school.
Then she called a great-aunt who ran a placement agency in the Loop. Her aunt was looking for a secretary to help run a startup. Its owner, Howard Ecker, had left his job at Arthur Rubloff & Co. to start a tenant-representation firm, a new concept in the commercial real estate industry.
It was very little money, Duran said, but she saw the potential. She started as a secretary, and as the company hired more workers, her position elevated. Eventually, she started working closely with Ecker, earning a commission on some of the deals.
Her career was taking off, but her personal life had a setback. In less than 18 months, she had married and divorced her college sweetheart. Then, when she turned 21, Duran said, she got her real estate license, hoping to become a broker and earn more money. Instead, she lost her job. One of her friends was dating Larry Levy, who had just started his own company, the Levy Organization. The friend set her up with an interview.
Levy, the developer and restaurant operator, offered her a job in Schaumburg, where he was planning to build an office campus. The Woodfield Lake Office Campus project included a multiuse, four-story tower overlooking Woodfield Lake. Her first assignment was to help Levy market the building.
“I used to drive to Schaumburg every morning, and half of the time I had to pull over on the side of the road and throw up, because I was so nervous.” Duran said.
Duran and Levy found a tenant, but to seal the deal they had to promise to finish construction four to five months ahead of schedule. Duran was in over her head, working with construction lingo she didn’t know. But she asked questions and eventually learned to read construction estimates. Not everyone wanted to help, but she always found a way, often treating colleagues to drinks or dinner to talk shop and learn.
Levy said Duran has the ability to handle power suits and construction workers.
“She is South Side Italian. She is a combination of sophisticated and not sophisticated, and she uses the part that is not sophisticated tremendously to her advantage,” Levy said. “She’s taught me a few words I never knew.”
But toughness wasn’t all that was required. When the first tenant moved in, the building was not completely enclosed. For about two months, there was major construction still going on. It was the middle of winter, and after a storm the tenant called complaining about how cold the offices were. Duran, who had transitioned to a building manager role, said she bought sweatshirts for every worker, plus hot chocolate and space heaters. When spring arrived, the building was enclosed, but the tenant called again, complaining about the heat. Duran said she ordered fans and ice cream.
“We made like it was a fun thing,” she said, and the tenant’s representative was impressed that the firm was so understanding.
Once the building was finished and leased, she told Levy that she wanted to work on the tenant side of the business. Levy had been hired as a consultant for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which was looking for a new home, and he asked her to tag along to their meeting.
“We walk in. There was this big boardroom table. Really nice boardroom table. Really pretty,” Duran said. “I take the seat next to Larry, and the room, of course, fills with all men. All men. And Leo Melamed walks in, and he is looking around.” Melamed was looking for his assistant, who had gone home sick. He turned to Duran and asked her to take notes. “And I said, ‘Certainly, I would be happy to take the minutes, if you type them up.’ “
The whole room got quiet. “And Leo looked around and he laughed,” Duran said. “I took the notes. I didn’t type them, and he didn’t type them.”
Melamed said he has since apologized. “It’s a mistake men often made,” he said.
Coming into her own
Duran went on to represent the Merc in its move from 444 W. Jackson to a three-building complex south of Madison Street on Wacker Drive. Two of the buildings, a 40-story office tower and the adjacent trading facility, were delivered in 1983. The third building, a second 40-story tower, was delivered in 1987.
She also represented a number of the company’s members that moved to the new building. It was a difficult time, Duran said, especially because everyone wanted to be close to the trading floor. To make it manageable, she created a bidding system in which firms had to commit to a place by certified mail. Firms that lost the bid weren’t happy.
“I got offered a lot of things; some good, some not so good,” she said with a laugh.
Melamed remembers hearing complaints.
“I often got delegations of members coming to me and saying, ‘We are not being treated right. I can’t get the space I want,’ ” Melamed said.
Board members pushed to have her replaced at times, Melamed said, but her meticulousness won out. “She was a survivor. … And there was often a tug-of-war that she survived because she could prove her case in every instance.”
In 1988, Duran married Richard Duran, a eurodollar broker. Richard Duran had two children from a previous marriage, and the couple had a son, James.
When James was 9, the family went on vacation to Panajachel, Guatemala, renting a house with another couple and their child. The day after they arrived, the two children were playing with a ball by the pool. They threw the ball outside the property, and James got a cleaning pole to grab it. When he lifted it, the pole hit a high-voltage electric line, giving him an electric shock.
James spent a night in a nearby clinic before being transferred to Guatemala City and later airlifted to Chicago. In a period of 35 days, doctors at Children’s Memorial Hospital performed 32 surgeries on him. He had third-degree burns over 40 percent of his body.
Richard and Holly Duran still get teary-eyed when they share the story of how their son, now 16, survived. Sharing such a difficult time, Richard Duran said, made them a stronger couple. Even in those tough moments, the family managed to share a laugh.
“We had a funny moment where this nun came in and asked if it was OK if she said a prayer with us. I thought I was on ‘Candid Camera,’ because she went on for, like, 10 minutes,” Richard Duran said. “And James is on the bed rolling his eyes at her.”
Over the years, Duran’s role in the Levy Organization grew, becoming a partner and managing broker of the Real Estate Services Group. In 2004, after more than 20 years working together, Duran bought the boutique firm and changed the name to Holly Duran Real Estate Partners.
“I watched her become very skilled and very good at reading people, which is a part of being a great broker and a great consultant,” Levy said. “The transition of me being there for the big moments to me not being there for the big moments, nobody ever told me they saw a difference.”
On his wife’s ability to read people, Richard Duran said he remembers being on a trip with her to Michigan when Duran got a phone call from a landlord who wanted to revisit a lease.
“She starts yelling at the guy, and she says, ‘Do you want to screw this up? I have another landlord right now who would take this client tomorrow, happily,’ ” he said. They argued until the landlord backed off. “She hangs up and says, ‘Whew, good he didn’t call my bluff.’ “
Duran said deals she had in the pipeline shielded her firm through 2010 and during the worst of the economic downtown. Local deals were down in 2011, but international ones helped her make up losses. She employs four staff members and four brokers who are independent contractors.
On a recent morning, Duran looked out from the window of the yoga room at The Peninsula Spa in the Near North neighborhood, four blocks from her home. When she moved downtown in the 1970s, many of the towers didn’t exist. She singled out a few buildings, shared a fact or two about each of them, then paused.
“This is why I like real estate. You can point to your work.”
– – –
Holly Duran, owner, Holly Duran Real Estate Partners LLC
Family: Married with son, James, 16. Her stepson David, 33, is a eurodollar option broker. Her stepdaughter, Andrea, 31, is a residential building manager in Lincoln Park.
Business mantra: Knowledge is power.
Inspirational words: Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, which begins: “Lord, make me a channel of your peace/Where there is hatred, let me sow love/ Where there is injury, pardon/ Where there is doubt, faith/ Where there is despair, hope/ Where there is darkness, light/ and where there is sadness, joy.”
Currently reading: “Rules of Civility,” by Amor Towles, a novel about an ambitious young woman in 1930s New York.
Nonprofit work: Duran is a board member of Children’s Memorial Foundation. She also is on the executive committee of the hospital’s Children’s Service Board, which plans the annual Gold Coast Fashion Award fundraiser.
Favorite quote: “Never underestimate the power of passion.”
———-
acancino@tribune.com | Twitter @WriterAlejandra
