One of my favorite intellectual exercises, often with the help of others, examines a company through a different lens. McDonalds or Starbucks's real estate companies as food and drink stalls. Disney On Ice perfect customer is not a 10-year-old; It is a parent who wants to be a hero to her children. And General Electric's biggest strength is management, not lamps. Washington developer, technology entrepreneur, restaurateur and nightclub owner Anthony Lanier prompted me to look at real estate differently when he explained the business discipline that built a Georgetown barony which occupies 60 buildings and enough space to fill eight football fields.
"We built a conveyor for the renovation," said Lanier (pronounced lon-YAY), 59, explain the method that transformed the dilapidated Townhouse for profitable stores and offices. Lanier's assembly line was composed of engineers, architects, heritage conservation specialists, zoning attorneys and construction companies that could pump out refurbished buildings one after another. The first purchase in the mid-1990s was a townhouse at 3060 M St. NW. price: $ 540,000. It is now worth about $ 2 million, said Lanier. Next was a terraced house on the street. Cost: about $ 1 million. He bought 3067 M St. NW for $ 600,000. Then he bought 3210 M St. NW of foreclosure.
Through this process built Lanier profit margins and credibility with the city authorities. "That aside," salami method "was a good risk diversification, as no job and therefore mistakes, itself was large enough to have a significant impact," he said. It took 10 years, increasing real estate values and retail demand, but the Laniers bets are paying off; His Georgetown tenants include Brooks Brothers, Crate Barrel's CB2 & chain, MAC Cosmetics, and Madewell. His property portfolio is worth several hundred million.
The success has not been without controversy. He is embroiled in a very public, the five-year legal case with developer herb Miller over the rights to buy Georgetown Park mall. Lanier empire included more than 200 employees of several companies, including real estate management and development company EastBanc Inc., EastBanc technologies, Cafe Leopold restaurant and L2 Lounge, his trendy nightclub where celebrities such as Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and the comedian Kathy Griffin hung out recently.
Lanier is interesting and eclectic entrepreneur I've ever met. He is not rich as the thumpingly (real estate, baseball) and Rales brothers (Danaher Corp.). But he's got money. Probably tens of millions.