January 6-January 19, 2016 —
COLORADO REAL ESTATE JOURNAL
— Page 27
Office
by John Rebchook
Bob Leino always knew he
wanted to go into business.
“When I was a very small
boy, I used to carry my dad’s
briefcase around,” the 79-year-
old Leino recently recalled.
More precisely, he knew
what area of business he want-
ed to specialize in.
“I always wanted to sell real
estate. I never wanted to do
anything else.”
He fulfilled his childhood
wish.
Leino, a senior vice president
and principal at Fuller Real
Estate, has had a real estate
career that spans 56 years.
Real estate has always been
in his blood.
“I’m a third-generation real
estate broker,” Leino said.
“My son, Chris, (of The Pauls
Corp.) is fourth generation,”
he said.
While his father was the
treasurer at the University of
Denver, Leino’s alma mater, his
mother’s father and his mother
were in real estate.
“My mother was a pioneer in
real estate,” Leino said.
“At one point, she had 25
salesmen working for her,” he
said.
“She operated in the late
1940s through the ’60s, at a
time when there weren’t a lot
of women in real estate.”
After graduating with a real
estate degree fromDU and
being discharged from the
Army as an infantry captain,
he joined his mother’s firm
and sold houses for about three
years.
Then, he joined the vener-
able Van Schaack Co. and sold
houses for about four years.
“I decided what I really
wanted to do is sell commercial
real estate,” Leino said.
“I thought it would be more
mentally challenging and excit-
ing,” Leino said.
Forty-eight years ago, he
joined Fuller and Co. as a real
estate broker.
“I was salesman No. 12,”
Leino said. “They were a very
young company at the time.”
John Fuller Sr., who founded
his namesake firm, Fuller and
Co., (the original firm has been
sold and renamed) couldn’t
say enough good things about
Leino.
But he tried.
“I’ve had the pleasure of
calling Bob Leino a friend
and Fuller broker for over 35
years,” Fuller said.
“In addition to being per-
haps the hardest working
and smartest broker I’ve ever
known, he’s also one of the
best people I’ve ever known,”
Fuller said.
“The old adage of people do
business with friends epito-
mizes Bob as his clients really
do like him, and they go out of
their way to recommend him
to other friends,” Fuller said.
“On a side note, one of the
more interesting aspects to
his career is that he’s always
drawn to those deals that
nobody else can handle,” Fuller
said
“We actually joke that he
needs to just do some ‘regular’
real estate deals from time-to-
time. He recently closed on a
land deal in Weld County that
was ripe with about every chal-
lenge one could encounter.
“Eight other people tried to
see that deal to the closing table
and everyone else failed before
Bob saw it to the finish line.
“He’s truly amazing broker,”
Fuller said.
“We’re pleased to have him
here at Fuller Real Estate,”where
Leino is one of the owners.
At Fuller and Co., Leino said
he thinks his first “significant”
sale was 49 finished residen-
tial lots east of Broadway and
south of Arapahoe Road.
“I don’t remember the price,”
he said.
For the past 15 years, he pri-
marily has sold dirt.
He has sold land for multi-
family communities, housing
and restaurants. He estimates
that has accounted for 80 per-
cent of his business in recent
years.
When it was pointed out that
he has returned to his roots by
selling land, he said: “That’s
true. I never thought of it that
way before.”
However, during his career
he has done much more than
sell land.
“During much of my career,
I was pretty much a jack of
all trades,” Leino said. He has
closed more than 1,400 sales
and leases.
“I’ve sold well over 100 office
buildings, shopping centers
and apartment projects,” Leino
said.
“I’ve also sold more than 100
restaurants,” he said.
His single-biggest deal
in terms of value was a
16,500-square-foot Del Frisco’s
Grille lease in the Rockefeller
Center in NewYork City.
“My client wanted me to find
space in Manhattan,” Leino
said.
“The Del Frisco’s was the
highest-grossing restaurant
in NewYork City for a long
time,” he said.
During his career, Leino has
weathered six downturns.
“The worst one might
have been the great flood in
1965, when the South Platte
overflowed and destroyed
thousands of businesses and
affected thousands of people,”
Leino said.
“That was probably the clos-
est Denver has come to a true
depression in my lifetime,” he
said.
“It was very hard to bounce
back from.”
Although in one way, it
helped his business.
“It gave me the opportu-
nity to sell a lot of property to
people who had lost their busi-
nesses,” he said.
“But it is very hard to con-
vince people to have the vision
to buy during down times,” he
said.
On a personal level, he was
hit hard in 1992.
He was forced to declare
bankruptcy, following a string
of investments he had made in
land, offices, apartments and
shopping centers from 1975 to
1985.
In 1986, Congress changed
the rules on write-offs on
investment properties, making
his holdings less valuable.
At the same time, real estate
slumped in Denver because of
overbuilding and a collapse of
oil prices.
At the time, Leino was
president of Moore Commer-
cial Realty and was forced to
resign, so the company could
continue to work with the
Resolution Trust Corp., the
government agency created to
deal with the assets from failed
saving and loans.
“I was in a lot of real estate
and it couldn't be turned
around, and you couldn’t bor-
rowmoney on it,” Leino said.
He didn’t hide his bank-
ruptcy and didn’t lose clients
because of it.
"I've been completely up-
front and frank with all my
business clients, some of whom
I've done deals with over the
last 30 years," Leino told the
Rocky Mountain News in 1992.
''Although the bankruptcy
has been very embarrassing for
me, all of my clients have been
very loving and supportive."
He bounced back after a lot
of “hard work and prayer,”
said Leino, who likes to read
Old Testament and New Testa-
ment scriptures in his spare
time.
He remained bullish on Den-
ver real estate, even when he
was mired in the bankruptcy.
“I never lost faith in real
estate,” Leino said.
“Never.”
When not selling real estate,
he serves on the boards of
Red Shield and the Salvation
Army and is involved with the
United Way.
For fun, he also goes scuba
diving once a year.
Even though he has been
selling real estate longer than
many brokers have been alive,
he has no intention of slowing
down.
“I don’t know how to spell
retire,” Leino said.
“If you love what you do, it
is not work. And I love to sell
real estate.”
s
Profile
Bob Leino
by Jill Jamieson-Nichols
A two-building office complex
on the Union Boulevard cor-
ridor in Lakewood sold to an
Alaska-based group for $10.65
million, or $98.64 per square
foot.
DPC Development Co. sold
Union Business Center to
2100 Bethel Holdings LLC,
which was completing a 1031
exchange. DPC had owned the
buildings since 1994, according
to DPC Development President
Chris King. The property totals
107,964 sf.
King said Union Business
Center is a “great multitenant
property.”
DPC had completed its plan
for the property and is focused
on acquiring typically larger,
and often newer, assets.
“From 1994 to now, we’re a
completely different company,”
said King. “This was a legacy
property for us. After owning it
all that time,
we had com-
pleted
our
business plan
and thought
it was a good
exit
point
for us, while
still allowing
upside
for
the guys who
bought it.”
Union Business Center con-
sists of a three-story building at
445 Union Blvd. and a four-sto-
ry building at 405 Urban St. The
complex was approximately 85
percent occupied at the time of
the sale.
“It really caters to some of the
service industries out there –
energy, accounting,” said R.C.
Myles, Cushman & Wakefield
managing director and princi-
pal. “It was a local, multitenant
rent roll, and the buyer really
liked that.”
Touchstone Imaging and Palo-
mar Natural Resources are the
largest tenants.
Union Business Center was
built in 1976 and was upgrad-
ed significantly under DPC’s
ownership. “It was a Class B
building, but we put a lot of
Class A finishes in it,” said King.
Recent improvements included
“fairly dramatic” landscaping
upgrades as well as an interior
face-lift.
“Investors still want to buy
in Denver. We had a handful
of buyers that pursued it,” said
Myles. Union Business Center
was “a great exchange proper-
ty” for buyers interested in own-
ing that type of asset, he said.
“They (2100 Bethel Holdings)
are going to continue with the
improvements that DPC has
undertaken and hope to aggres-
sively fill up the currently vacant
space,” said Myles.
Myles and James Brady of
Cushman & Wakefield handled
the transaction in cooperation
with C&W leasing advisers
Doug Wulf, Dan Miller, Whit-
ney Hake and Andrew McCabe.
According to public records,
2100 Bethel Holdings is affili-
ated with Anchorage-based
Bethel Native Corp., a diversi-
fied company involved in com-
mercial real estate, government
contracting and other business-
es. The company was created
in accordance with Alaska law
and the Alaska Native Claims
Settlement Act, as stated on its
website.
Union Business Center is 2100
Bethel Holdings’ first Denver
asset.
s
DPC Development Co. had owned Union Business Center for more than
20 years.
R.C. Myles
