TC developer

downtown journal

http://www.skywaynews.net/articles/2006/05/15/news/news02.txt

Jim Stanton was building in the North Loop before most of Downtown’s condos were a glimmer in a developer’s eye.

Stanton, the president of Shamrock Development, says he’s learned a few things over the last 44 years in the development business — when to speak his mind and when to stay silent, when to take risks and when to keep the reins tight. And all those years, he’s been churning out projects Downtown and around the metro.

“I’ve never had long-range plans,” Stanton said. “When the opportunity is there, I take it. I think most developers are like that.”

Now that he’s 70, Stanton says he’s starting to think about being “a little more hands off,” but he’ll never really retire.

“I heard somebody say once, ‘If you really like what you’re doing, you never have to go to work,’” Stanton said.

The pioneer

Stanton grew up on a Northfield farm, the first of a dozen children. “My dad and I were like gas and matches,” he said. After “barely finishing high school,” he took a construction job and moved up from laborer to foreman. At 26, he got a job as a real estate agent and eventually moved from selling to building.

In the 1970s, Stanton made his mark as a developer in Coon Rapids, where he said at one time he owned 80 percent of the vacant land in town.

In 1985, Stanton bought land in Downtown’s North Loop. He sold some land, including choice riverfront parcels. Other properties he developed, such as the Riverwalk Apartments and Lindsay Lofts — both in 1987.

“No one has been around longer,” said David Frank, president of the North Loop Neighborhood Association (NLNA) and a project manager for developer Schafer Richardson. “As a developer, I look at him as a pioneer.”

Twenty years later, Stanton is still right in the mix of a developing Downtown, with a half-dozen buildings recently built or converted, another under construction — the Bridgewater, at the old Liquor Depot site on Washington Avenue — and the 500-unit Eclipse towers, his most ambitious project to date, planned for the corner of Hennepin & Washington.

Hold the bells and whistles, please

Over his career, Stanton has seen the market ebb and flow. His early North Loop projects were a bit of a risk, he admits. “I used to have to give a free month’s rent to get a six-month lease,” he said. More recently, he’s answered the demand for Downtown condos with more than a half dozen projects converted, built, under construction or planned.

“Think of the fingerprint he’s put on this city,” said Andrea Christenson, a real estate broker for Colliers Turley Martin Tucker who bought a condo at 212 Lofts last June. After looking at other urban lofts, she settled on Stanton’s because it offered the necessary amenities — high-end wood floors, upscale appliances — but without all the “bells and whistles,” she said, at a good price per square foot.

“His buildings fit in well,” Frank said. “It’s not radical architecture. There’s a place for that, and the market has responded well.”

Unlike most developers, Stanton doesn’t rely much on banks to lend money for his projects.

On the one hand, it’s risky. “Developers are optimists by nature,” Stanton said. “If you wait for the sure thing, it’s probably already past.”

He recalls only one big regret, when a Chicago developer pulled out of a land deal. It cost him $6.5 million. “You can’t get burned often,” he said. “You won’t be here if you do.”

At the same time, Stanton keeps construction schedules tight and contract bids as low as possible, which in the end allows him to keep his prices lower than competitors, he said. It’s all part if his no-nonsense style.

“I don’t have the big groundbreaking and ribbon cutting,” Stanton said. “I just start a building, I sell it and then I build another one.”

In proper style, Stanton said he made a rule long ago not to speak publicly against another developer’s project. “I might take them out in the hall and have a talk,” he said, “but I never take a shot publicly.”

A notable exception, recalls Frank, was Stanton’s comment at a public NLNA meeting the owners of Trocadero’s nightclub, which was originally proposed as a topless bar.

“Jim doesn’t often speak in this kind of a setting,” Frank said, “but when his turn came, Jim very clearly, calmly, strongly said, ‘I was here first. This is something that goes counter to forming a new neighborhood. You need to know that I will be helping the neighborhood fight you.’”

The John Wayne moment drew a round of applause.

“I just thought it was unfair,” Stanton said, noting that attorneys for Trocadero’s had claimed the zoning code allowed an adult use, even though it was within 1,000 feet of residential buildings (several of them Stanton’s).

“If the gentleman’s club had been there first and the neighbors were bitching, I would have been on the other side of it,” he said.

The friends and family plan

Stanton’s four children have followed his lead. His son Kevin and daughter Debbie Woodward all work for Shamrock. Another son, Dennis — a former employee — is in the mortgage business, and his daughter Colleen runs her own development company. There’s even a third generation at Shamrock — Stanton’s grandson Jesse works construction and maintenance.

Stanton credits his Shamrock employees for allowing him to lean ever so slightly toward retirement. That includes traveling; in the past two years, Stanton has been to Rome, London, Paris, Beijing and Bangkok.

When he travels, he’s finally starting to be able to leave work behind, he said. “It used to be, when I’d take a 10-day vacation, they’d place bets on how many days I’d be gone.

“They’d probably do better without me,” joked the developer of his team, offering a nugget of the half-joke, half-wisdom he’s always good for.