All About Buildings
When my fish business was done, my wife and I moved our lives to Phoenix, Arizona, looking for new careers at age thirty. In the mid-1980s, Phoenix was a boomtown, and we were interested in learning more about real estate. I had passively invested in real estate through a business partner while living in Arabia, picking up bits of knowledge here and there. And my wife had become curious about the field of real estate appraising. I thought her idea would be a great way to learn more about real estate before doing any more investing. So, we both started at the bottom of this industry, taking all the classes and passing all the exams as we worked as apprentices for established commercial property appraisers.
In five years, we had completed our formal appraisal education, achieved the highest professional designation in our field, left our respective employers, and formed our own real estate appraisal and consulting firm. We did really well in the business, developing a large client base that included major banks, insurance companies, government agencies, and developers.
After twelve years together, my wife and I started to go in different directions, which sadly led to a divorce, but we remained friends as we each moved on to new fields of exploration. This led to a period of studying and teaching philosophy and related subjects, and when that astonishing adventure reached its natural endpoint, my intuition led me back into real estate, but in a completely new way.
In my prior career in property valuation, I gained a lot of knowledge on commercial real estate, appraising about a billion dollars’ worth over a decade. I knew how to read blueprints and measure buildings, decipher zoning codes and real estate law, analyze complex leases, and formulate discounted cash flow spreadsheets. I wrote convincing appraisal reports for clients that could withstand scrutiny from lenders, developers, and cross-examination by attorneys whenever I ended up on the witness stand in court. But I was always analyzing other people’s property and had never done any creative investing or developing of my own.
McDowell Studios
As I re-entered the field of real estate looking through a new set of lenses, I now saw it as a creative form of expression rather than one of complex analysis. I formed an LLC with a new business/romantic partner, and we started doing resto/re-development projects, both residential and commercial. One of our adaptive reuse projects called McDowell Studios in the Coronado neighborhood of central Phoenix, was a 1948 office building that we redeveloped into five live-work lofts. It actually won a design award and was featured in the Business Journal and some glossy magazines.
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Non Pariel
Another interesting project involved restoring a converted horse barn residence, part of a mid-century apartment complex called Non Pareil, that was developed in 1950, and later converted to condos for individual resale. The development was located adjacent to Phoenix College in a vintage neighborhood on Osborn Road near downtown. Visit the link to a blog post I created which describes the rich story behind this unique property and how we approached the resto-refresh:
Horse Barn with Stripper Poles
Meanwhile, here are a few photos of the horse barn house project...
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Executive Towers
My partner and I also restored six residences in an architecturally important, 22-story highrise designed in 1963 by noted architect Al Beadle. The work we accomplished in transforming these units helped spark a redevelopment wave in midtown Phoenix in the early 2000's.
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Speaking on a more philosophical level, there are intangible, archetypal aspects to buildings. In primal mythologies all over the world, the temple, the lodge, and the house are associated with a central sheltering place, an enclosed space where people commune, exchange ideas, and create together. A physical structure in this sense represents the internal world, a womb where rebirth, regeneration, or initiation can take place, such as the Native American sweat lodge.
On the practical side, re-developing old buildings is a substantial monetary investment. You can’t just endlessly bask in your mythic imagination. You have to be aware of economic concerns—market demand, real estate cycles, the larger economy, and so on. Creating new uses for old structures is a continual left brain/right brain dance.
