John O’Donnell, a pioneering Newport Beach real estate executive whose companies oversaw a massive industrial development push from Alaska to Mexico over a 40-year period, died last week.
He was 83.
O’Donnell was the founder and chairman of O’Donnell Group, a developer that, through various iterations, developed or acquired some 25 million square feet of industrial and office properties over the years.
A good portion of those projects were in Irvine, with a development push in the mid-1980s that helped shape the business community in the city.
Other locales where O’Donnell played a big development role included Cerritos, Temecula and Rancho Cucamonga.
Development was only one of several sectors of the real estate business where O’Donnell achieved success.
He moved from Ohio to California at age 12, joined the Air Force and served four years in Korea, and later graduated from the University of Southern California.
He joined brokerage Coldwell Banker in 1959, and was the company’s top salesperson by the mid-1960s.
“He was a winner from the day he came into my office,” John Parker, the late chairman of Aliso Viejo developer Parker Properties, told the Business Journal in 2010.
Parker at the time ran the local operations of Coldwell Banker, now known as CBRE Group Inc.
O’Donnell started his own development business, the O’Donnell Co., as the 1960s came to a close.
Within a few years he had built close to half a million square feet of industrial space in Montebello, and was later instrumental in transforming the rural area of Dairy Valley into the City of Cerritos.
Branching Out
He soon began building in Alaska, becoming one of the first industrial developers to support pipeline oil activity there.
He sold off those developments in the late 1970s, before oil prices fell, pushing down the value of real estate in Alaska.
Another outpost of O’Donnell Co.’s: Silicon Valley, where a development push in the early 1980s was well timed with the technology expansion in that region. Washington State and Mexico also were big sources of business for the company.
O’Donnell was also a pioneer in financing his projects, according to those who knew him. His firms were among the first development companies to use institutional partners for their projects.
His businesses raised about $625 million over the years from institutional investors, including Newport Beach-based Irvine Company and major pension funds.
Like other notable area developers, such as Donald Koll, O’Donnell set up other profitable business lines that helped his firms survive down real estate cycles.
He founded O’Donnell Property Services in 1986, and the property management company grew to more than 125 employees within a decade.
O’Donnell “was my mentor and friend—he taught me how to run a company with a soul and purpose, in addition to being profitable,” said John Combs, the founder and principal of property management firm RiverRock Real Estate Group in Newport Beach, who previously served as CEO for O’Donnell Property Services.
O’Donnell Property Services was acquired in 1995 by the commercial real estate services subsidiary of Insignia Financial Group for undisclosed terms. It had managed and marketed over 26 million square feet of industrial properties throughout California by then.
“He successfully developed best-in-class buildings that customers wanted to locate to because of location, design, amenities and top-level service,” said Combs, who went on to take on executive roles at Insignia following the sale.
O’Donnell Group returned to its development roots after the 1995 sale, and built or acquired some 10 million square feet of space in Irvine over the next decade, among other activities.
All in the Timing
Good timing played a key part in the company’s success, O’Donnell told the Business Journal in a 2010 interview.
Developers survive in tough markets by “getting buildings up, and by knowing when to get out,” said O’Donnell in the interview, which occurred just before he received a lifetime achievement award from the University of California-Irvine’s Center for Real Estate, part of the Paul Merage School of Business.
An example of good timing for O’Donnell took place in the 1990s, when he sold off a portfolio of buildings to institutional investors prior to the savings and loan debacle.
A similar move occurred in 2006 and 2007, when O’Donnell Group liquidated much of its holdings just before the last big real estate crash.
In 2010, the company re-emerged, along with a new real estate investment trust, O’Donnell Strategic Gateway REIT Inc., which invested in industrial properties.
One of John O’Donnell’s three children, Doug, has served as chief executive of O’Donnell Group since 1996, and headed up the REIT.
Another son, David, heads up another real estate development company that builds industrial buildings in Mexico.
John O’Donnell was an honorary trustee and chairman of the International Council of Urban Land Institute, for which he was a trustee for 18 years.
