I grew up in Des Moines, Iowa, with my mom, a schoolteacher. My dad was in California, a siteman for a Holiday Inn franchise. He was a bit of a playboy. In his third marriage, he moved to Florida in 1967, and I came here when I graduated college.
I moved to Florida for opportunity. Des Moines was kind of an ideal place to grow up, but I didn’t think it was a place of great opportunity for me.
I always had a business. Mr. Johnson, my eighth-grade history and Constitution teacher, said, ‘You have too much energy. You need to go do something useful.’ So I got 23 lawns that I mowed — together with my paper routes.
I went to the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce because I wanted to get away from Des Moines and go to the East or West Coast. So I went to Wharton because I thought it was the best business school in the United States — still is, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Of course, I ran into Donald Trump. He was a big presence, even then. He transferred in from Fordham his junior year. I was a freshman that year. So I knew who he was; he did not know who I was. … Donald Trump was as obnoxious then as now.
I had a job offer from Home Federal Savings and Loan in Des Moines for $5,600 per year. I used that to leverage my dad for a job in the real estate business in Florida. I got $5,600 a year and a white 1970 Chevrolet pickup truck.
It was the coolest job of my life at that point. I got huge amounts of responsibility — building the pool, building the revetments, doing the landscaping. … I ended up grinding a lot of slabs and patios because the concrete set up so fast since it was so much hotter.
My dad got bored and optioned up some land at the north end of Longboat Key at $25,000 per acre on the bay, $75,000 per acre on the Gulf. He and I built our first homes together in 1969. My dad and I learned to be real estate developers at the same time.
I met my wife on a blind date, but I knew her parents long before I knew her. … I have worked with my wife Charlene for 46 years. She is senior vice president for design. We have non-intersecting magisteriums. Charlene does design, planning and amenities; I do land, finance, entitlements and operations. We work together with my sons too.
I think we have built 124 communities. I am proud of each one of them. They are not the same — some are inexpensive and some expensive — but they all expressed my best effort.
We do a little bit more than $1 billion per year in annual sales. We’re in Manatee, Sarasota, Charlotte, Lee and Collier counties. We have a new acquisition in Hillsborough.
I have built about one out of every 11 homes in Bradenton, and they are good homes. We sell a lot of homes as referrals.
Mostly, I sell to ‘move-downs’ — people from Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York. I build ‘jewel boxes’ — fairly small room count, lots of housing amenities. This is builder lingo. Fifty-seven percent of our buyers do not have a Florida address at the time of first purchase. Then about 23% are from Sarasota and Manatee counties, and about 20% are from elsewhere in Florida.
Naming a neighborhood is by far the hardest thing we do — the very hardest! I want it to have a connection to the community, or a connection to the history, or a connection to the physiographic resources — the trees, the escarpment, or the river view, lakes, or a natural feature. It’s very hard and very subjective, and we work terribly hard at it.
I really enjoyed the Florida Legislature. I had not been to Tallahassee before I was elected, but I learned ‘inside baseball.’ The Florida Senate was a little town with 24 voters. I was in the House from 1974 to 1978, and the Senate from 1978 to 1986.
My most lasting achievement is the Florida wetlands law. Previously, our wetlands management was only for ‘waters of the state.’
Look at Florida from an aerial view. Take a close look at Pinellas County or Broward County. There are no wetlands in the urban areas. Water runs onto the roofs, streets, lawns, and washes through the stormwater system and into the bay — pollution of phosphates and nitrates, with no habitat for whatever lived there before. It’s simply a monoculture: People and concrete.
No one in Sarasota or Bradenton or anywhere really wants to have more real estate development. But when I moved here, there were 9 million people in Florida. Now there are 23 million. So growth pressure is the issue in our state. ... I’ve been a believer in using the resources of the state and the resources of private enterprise and the resources of public charity to preserve land.
I consider myself a traditional conservative, in the framework of the ‘former Republican party’ — in the fashion that George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan or Mitt Romney are conservatives. Maybe it would be better to say that I am a libertarian. I believe in free markets, free people and limited government.
Almost everyone who comes to me gets a book. I have a lot of people who are members of my book club.
I give away about $5 million per year. Well, what is money for? I do not live an expensive lifestyle. We have lived in the same home since 1987. I drive a six-year-old car with 155,000 miles. … Mostly I’m good at making money, but I’m not sure that’s what I’m for.