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Parker Properties Patriarch Stepping Back

John Parker, a 77-year-old development veteran, is taking a step back from the family-owned company he founded.

Parker said he’s staying on as chairman of Aliso Viejo’s Parker Properties LLC, but is set to turn over more responsibility to his son, Vice Chairman Russ Parker, and his son-in-law, Chief Executive Lee Redmond. The senior Parker said he’ll spend a couple of days a week at home.

Another management change: The family, for the first time, has tapped an outsider to serve as president. Kevin McKenzie in April joined the company after a four-year stint with Newport Beach-based Buchanan Street Partners. He also was named a partner of Parker Properties.

The move signals the company’s expansion beyond office development.

“It’s a young man’s game,” John Parker said. “To stay competitive, we need good people in all the spots.”

At Buchanan, Mc-Kenzie helped developers find investors and lenders for their projects. One client was Parker Properties.

McKenzie helped the company get funding to buy some buildings in Valencia. Parker Properties spruced up the buildings, leased them and sold them to San Francisco-based McMorgan & Co. last year.

McKenzie and the Parkers first met in the 1990s, while he worked for Boston-based pension fund adviser AEW Capital Management LP. AEW funded development of a few buildings at Parker’s Summit Office Campus in Aliso Viejo, with McKenzie weighing in on key decisions.

“We kind of have been dating for the last five years,” John Parker said of his company’s history with McKenzie.

Attracting money partners will be one of McKenzie’s responsibilities at Parker Properties. He’ll also play a role in acquisition, development and management, McKenzie said.

He’s not concerned about being the only nonfamily partner, he said.

“If I didn’t know them so well it would be a huge issue,” McKenzie said. “That they brought me in as an equal partner in the company is a tremendous statement.”

The company’s biggest project in Orange County is the Summit, which eventually should total 1.7 million square feet of office, hotel and retail space. So far the company has built about 960,000 square feet there.

In summer, Parker Properties is set to break ground at Summit on two four-story buildings totaling 260,000 square feet.

The elder Parker said his company is set to expand beyond development of office campuses. It plans to buy existing properties and renovate them, as it did with the 180,000-square-foot project in Valencia, and plans to develop medical offices.

Parker has formed a venture with Atlanta-based Health-America Realty Group to develop medical office buildings.

The partners will look at developing such offices near shopping centers. They’ll also mix shops with medical offices where appropriate.

Most retail space next to doctors’ offices tends to be “dismal,” McKenzie said.

The partners currently are working on a project in Jacksonville, Fla.

John Parker has been a real estate player here since opening Coldwell Banker’s first OC office in Newport Beach in 1962. His biggest client then was The Irvine Company.

Parker marketed the Irvine Co.’s then-proposed Newport Center and later a slew of its commercial and industrial projects.

“You can look at John as one of the fathers of Orange County real estate,” said Steve Case, senior vice president, leasing, at the Irvine Co.

Parker has survived several real estate cycles since then. He founded Parker Properties in 1974. In 1980, he formed Equidon Companies with a partner, which later was shuttered.

During the 1990s, he teamed with his son Russ to develop the first phases of Summit.

In 1999, the senior Parker won the University of California, Irvine, Graduate School of Management’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

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