Colorado Real Estate Journal - September 16, 2015
Creating a great building is a developer’s reward. Creating a great place is his dream. “I love the tangibility of what we do. At the end of the day, I’ve got space, I’ve got volume, I’ve got art,” said McWhinney’s Dean Barber, who, having studied architecture, appreciates how difficult it is to create beautiful buildings. “I love how McWhinney has taken that a step further. It’s beyond just building a great building. It’s creating a great place. Chad (McWhinney) has always had this really strong vision of bringing people together – and the power of bringing people together through real estate. That’s what really excites me day in and day out,” he said. As senior vice president of development management, Barber assembles and leads the teams that carry out all McWhinney developments. Those include places such as Centerra in Loveland, the Crawford Hotel at Denver Union Station and, now, Denver’s historic Dairy Block. "Dean is a very important member of our team, and I often believe he makes the clocks run on time and our projects on budget," said Chad McWhinney, CEO and co-founder of McWhinney. "With his vast experience and knowledge of construction and development, we feel lucky to have the opportunity to work with him. He is best in class." Before joining McWhinney 13 years ago, Barber worked as an architect with RNL and spent eight years with The Neenan Co., where his development work included a number of medical projects. He loved working with physicians, understanding how they work and the complexity of putting projects together. Barber also has developed office and industrial buildings, as well as build-to-suits for companies including Fiberspar, CSG Systems Inc., Crop Production Services and others. He currently is working on a 600-room Great Wolf Resort with a 100,000-square-foot water park in Garden Grove, California. Of all of his projects, one stands out. “I would have to say the Crawford Hotel at Union Station is still one of the most memorable I’ve ever worked on, probably ever will. We had the wherewithal to build what we dreamed, and that’s pretty rare. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime project.” An Aurora native, Barber earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree from California Polytechnic State University and interned at RNL during the summer. He was fortunate to land a job with the company, and fortunate too to learn about effective leadership by seeing how founder John Rogers ran the company. However, “I became very frustrated with the profession,” said Barber, explaining college coursework tends to focus more on theory and history than how to build buildings. Barber took graduate-level construction management classes at Colorado State University and joined Neenan, working on projects in Colorado and Arizona. Company Chairman David Neenan taught him design-build, and also taught him the importance of taking personal responsibility for one’s work. “I’ve been fortunate. I’ve worked with great people,” said Barber, who counts among them Chad McWhinney, and local developers Marshall Burton and John Shaw. Not every deal has been perfect, and Barber has learned a lesson or two along the way. He recalled a project in which a general contractor, who happened to be a good friend, “redirected” funds from a project. Rather than leaving it to the subcontractors to try to collect, Chad McWhinney chose to make them whole at the expense of his own company’s profits, Barber said, “That’s the way Chad approaches things,” he said. “In development you have a lot of challenges to maintain your core values and integrity,” said Barber, who believes staying true to one’s values and surrounding yourself with people who share those values are critical. “My main job is to build teams,” he said. “We are very thoughtful in our partnerships with our architects and our contractors. It’s finding people who have the same core values, who are aligned on where we’re going and are capable of performing,” he said, adding he’s never had to go to court “on anything related to the design and construction of buildings.” Nor has the company missed a schedule or had to go back to investors to ask for more money for a project, Barber said. “Really that is the catapult that’s made us so successful because our investors have a lot of trust in us.” Barber has been married to his wife, Kelli, for 20 years, but their relationship extends much further – they met on the first day of school in seventh grade. They have two children, 16-year-old Mason, and Maelyn, 9, and live in Fort Collins. Barber loves the outdoors – mountain biking, camping, hunting – and being involved in the community. He is taking a year off coaching football, but remains involved with youths and athletics through CHAMP (Character in Athletics – Make it a Priority) as well as this month’s Success Summit for high school and college students.