If Donald Koll didn’t create the stereotype of the old-school, risk-taking real estate developer, he certainly helped define it.
Koll, the Orange County real estate icon who passed away last week at the age of 78 after a heart attack, was one of the nation’s most prolific developers—and one of the most aggressive.
“I like to build and have a lot of fun at it,” Koll once told the Business Journal. He jokingly called his affinity for development a “disease.”
That affinity for development—office towers, industrial parks, hotels, golf courses and other projects—resulted in his Newport Beach-based Koll Co. and its predecessor entities building more than 90 million square feet of property in the U.S., Mexico and Asia.
The modern, multi-tenant business park, now a standard sight across the country, largely was forged in the late 1960s by Koll, who also pioneered the use of enlisting corporate backers for projects.
A 1968 deal with what’s now Aetna Inc. to build big business parks is widely cited as the first example of a real estate developer hooking up with a corporate backer.
Koll initially planned to ask for a little more than a million dollars in funding from Aetna. At the last minute, he changed his mind. He went big and asked for $5 million from the insurer. He got it, setting the stage for his first big development push.
“He was never afraid to ask for anything,” said John Hamilton, chief executive of Newport Beach-based developer Hamilton Co. and one of several former colleagues who spoke to the Business Journal late last year for a profile on Koll.
In OC, Koll helped forge the skyline around John Wayne Airport. Business parks he developed in the area, such as the 1.5 million-square-foot Koll Center Newport office complex, still bear his name.
Along with Irvine Company’s Donald Bren and Costa Mesa’s Henry Segerstrom, Koll is considered to be part of a core group of formative developers who’ve shaped modern OC.
“Don was the one that basically came up with the idea for the high-rise (office market) near the airport,” said John Hagestad, managing director of Irvine-based developer Sares-Regis Group, in last year’s profile, which coincided with Koll being honored with a Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America.
“Almost forty years ago when that area was still mostly agricultural in nature, I was telling my team that the area would become the Wilshire Boulevard of Orange County,” Koll said in an email comment for the profile. “I am not sure if they believed me then, but they certainly do now.”
Changing fortunes in the real estate market brought peaks and valleys for Koll and his companies over the years. The ups-and-downs also forged his reputation as a cowboy developer.
During good times, Koll’s companies were known for a “work hard, play hard” mantra. Boozy company retreats in far-flung, sunny locations became industry legend.
Koll used his influence during those times to meet with governors, presidents and British royalty.
In the late 1980s, Forbes Magazine estimated Koll to be one of the 400 richest Americans.
During the recession and real estate crash of the early 1990s crash, development suffered and Koll turned to less glamorous but profitable property management. He soon returned to development.
“The good buildings rent even in the bad times,” Koll, an unabashed optimist, said at the time.
An appetite for risk-taking never left Koll, a former Air Force fighter pilot. Despite a 2005 stroke that limited his public profile, he continued to work for his namesake company through this year, according to friends and family.
“In good times and in bad there are opportunities in real estate,” Koll, a Balboa Island resident, told the Journal last year. “It’s in the bad times that a company’s capabilities are proven.”
His business style imparted lessons to a cadre of former Koll Co. executives who went on to start their own businesses. Koll’s extended influence has gone a long way in making OC a real estate hub, with Newport Beach becoming home to more developers than just about any city in the country.
Koll and his companies “have produced the most talented real estate professionals in the business,” said James “Watty” Watson, one of Koll’s closest friends and chief executive of Aliso Viejo-based real estate investor CT Realty Investors. “You only have to look at the Koll alumni running the major real estate operations today to see Don’s continuing influence on the business.”
Watson worked with Koll when he turned Cabo San Lucas in Mexico into one of North America’s top golf and vacation spots. Koll bought his first property in Mexico in the mid-1980s.
“He was in Cabo San Lucas years before anyone else,” Watson said.
“There was nothing there at the time,” said Hagestad. “Everyone went ‘You’re nuts.’ ”
In 1992, Koll completed Latin Ameri-ca’s first Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course at Palmilla in Mexico.
Work in Caba San Lucas was one of his proudest accomplishments, Koll said last year.
“It helped transform that part of Mexico in a very positive way,” he said.
Koll is survived by his wife Kathi, six children, and 20 grandchildren. Jerry Yahr, Koll’s son-in-law, is managing principal of Koll Co. and will continue to run day-to-day operations of the Newport Beach company, according to family members.
Koll’s funeral will take place Wednes-day, 10 a.m., at Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church in Newport Beach.
