April 6-April 19, 2016 —
COLORADO REAL ESTATE JOURNAL
— Page 43
estate investor in the Northeast.
“Dan became a very active
buyer,” and the two became fast
friends.
“We did everything on a
handshake,” Meranski said.
Weingarten was buying a lot
of properties from the RTC and
sometimes there wasn’t money
available to pay Meranski’s
commission.
“He always made good on it,”
when he turned the property
around, he said.
“Dan really had a huge depth
of knowledge about the retail
business that he parlayed into
a very successful career and he
shared his knowledge with me,”
Meranski said.
“He taught me a lot,” he said.
Two lessons stood out: Timing
was important and you don’t
want to take on too much debt.
Weingarten also offered
Meranski a right of first refusal
when he sold properties.
“He would carry back some of
the debt to make it easy for me
to get financing,” Meranski said.
As he bought more centers,
he targeted properties that were
too small to catch the eye of
institutional buyers.
“We also started to look at the
secondary, or tertiary, markets,
and bought properties in places
like Sterling, Trinidad and Fires-
tone, where your only competi-
tion was from local buyers,” he
said.
Today, he fields a lot of ques-
tions from people seeking
advice on how to get their foot
in the door and keep it there.
“We have no secret sauce,”
Meranski said.
“Most of it is common sense.
Don’t overleverage, control your
expenses and treat your tenants
fairly.”
Also, you can’t invest
“scared” money, he said.
“By that I mean you have to
know your strengths and weak-
nesses and you can’t be afraid to
walk away from a deal, or sell
a property if the time is right,”
he said.
He said a “comfort zone” for
Western Centers is to control
about 1 million to 1.5 million sf
of space.
“We like to balance life and
business,” Meranski said.
“We’ve found if we get bigger
than that, we don't really know
all of our tenants and what their
needs are,” he said.
He also has a crackerjack exec-
utive staff in place, including
Brian Pesch and Corey Wagner.
“I’m very blessed to have
Brian as a COO,” Meranski said.
“He really runs the company
and does an outstanding job,”
Meranski said.“That pretty
much gives me the freedom to
do what I want.”
Outside of real estate, he is
an investor in an online, addic-
tion recovery, live video website
called In the Rooms.
It provides free videos to
every kind of addiction, from
drugs and alcohol, to overeating
and gambling.
“I think these are issues that
touch everybody in this country,
either directly or indirectly,” he
said.
“Ultimately, I think it could
be worth a fortune,” Meranski
said.
However, he is having
ongoing discussions with his
partners, who have more than
30 years of experience in the
mental health field, on what
direction to pursue with the
company.
“We’ve talked about whether
it should be a for-profit organi-
zation or it if is better to turn it
into a nonprofit organization,”
Meranski said.
Meranski also is a big fan of
all sports, both as a participant
and a spectator.
“I love to golf and go to Flori-
da to fish,” Meranski said.
“I’m also very passionate
about playing basketball,” he
said.
His daughter, Meryl, 30,
works with him at Western
Centers.
“She’s a very big part of the
operation,” he said.
Joel, 26, “wanted to get out
on his own and build his own
career, and I encouraged him
to do so,” as a broker, his father
said.
While Joel has occasionally
done deals with Western, such
as bringing tenants to the Hemp
Centre, the vast majority of his
brokerage transactions have
nothing to do with Western
Centers, he said.
“I would like to think that he
will come and join our firm at
some point. But right now, he is
really enjoying the peer pressure
of having the need to produce
and being around a lot of very
successful brokers.”
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