The Deal Maker

The Deal Maker

By Sean Roth

Real Estate Editor

There is a group of about 15 entrepreneurs in Sarasota-Manatee who set the bar in real estate development. An almost all-male cadre, the players are high profile, prolific and construction and regulation savvy. They are politically active - most have major projects on the line and others are current and former politicians - and they use partnerships to share the risk.

Ron Allen, 44, is a member of this club.

As president of NDC Construction Co., Allen lives the dual life of a numbers/resource-driven construction company executive and the more visionary world of a developer. He counts among his business partners: Bradenton lawyer Edward Vogler III, Jane Smith, retail giant Benderson Development Co., Dr. Mark Kauffman, David Band and former state Senate president John McKay.

A number of Allen's key developments are in the central downtown core of Bradenton. Allen is part of the team that owns the 100-year lease on the Riverfront (former Sandpile property) and the old City Hall building. In Lakewood Ranch, Allen partnered with McKay to create the successful 60,000-square-foot Medical Office Building I connected to the Lakewood Ranch Medical Center; the partners are now building a duplicate building on adjacent property near the hospital.

As for NDC Construction, Allen and Executive Vice President Gary Huggins consistently generate annual revenue in the $40 million to $50 million range.

The company, one of the largest construction firms in Bradenton, has tended toward fairly iconic buildings, working on projects such as the $22-million Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine campus in Lakewood Ranch, the City of Bradenton's $8-million City Centre, Manatee County's $19.2-million administrative complex, the $33-million Lakewood Ranch High School, the Pittsburgh Pirate's $5-million training facility and the $14.7-million J.P. Igloo Ice & In-Line Sports Complex.

"I love putting deals together; that is what drives me," Allen says. "Being able to chase and put the deal together. That is what excites me."

At the same time, NDC Construction balances large-scale commercial work with projects for nonprofit and community organizations such as the Salvation Army, including its worship center, gymnasium and Bradenton Village, a HOPE VI site built to look like New Orleans-style tomehomes.

NDC is currently tapped to build the $5.5-million 500-space judicial center parking garage in downtown Bradenton.

"I think people would really be surprised how diversified Ron (and NDC) is," says Richard Fawley of Bradenton-based Fawley Bryant Architects Inc. a firm that has worked with NDC on at least six different projects. "They are into management, development and construction. He is part of several different partnerships with a lot of major players."

And the company manages about 8,000 units for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Fawley says.

NDC Construction is part of Pittsburgh-based National Development Corp., which also runs the property management company, NDC Real Estate Management Inc.

Allen's father, one of the three founders of National Development Corp., helped him get his start. The company had a no-nepotism policy, which the partners waived to give the 24-year-old Allen his first job in the industry.

"The truth is I was the only child (of the founders) who wanted to go into the business," Allen says. "There is really no school you can go to, to learn how to be a developer."

The catch: Allen could stay with National Development Corp. for only two years.

In the 1970s, another developer defaulted on several loans to construct several beach projects in Manatee County. Mellon Bank turned to National Development Corp. to complete the work, so the development company opened its first satellite office outside of the Northeast, in Bradenton.

In 1984, Allen, whose sole experience was a degree in business administration, moved to Bradenton to work for Richard Olson, owner of Westco Builders, a subsidiary of National Development Corp.

"He taught me so much," Allen says of his now-retired mentor.

For several years, the Bradenton office was run out of the Pittsburgh corporate office, while Allen's activities in development (finding land, arranging financing, marketing and putting the whole development together) continued to grow. He worked on mainly condominium projects.

The two-year requirement was never enforced.

In 1997, Westco Builders was renamed NDC construction and local control was suggested. Huggins joined the company, from a much larger construction firm in Fort Lauderdale, and he and Allen became the firm's executives.

Allen now runs the company's Florida subsidiary NDC Corp., and as the founders near retirement, NDC Corp. has been split into four pieces and sold to each regional president.

"I'm about halfway through a five-year process of acquiring the region," Allen says.

Staying on top

Asked how he copes with the multitude of tasks he faces on a daily basis, he says: "I have a group of good people in the organization that take the daily burden off me.

"The last thing people want is for me to physically build their building," he adds. "That is really what Gary Huggins and his group handle on a day-to-day basis."

The best example of his role now involves the Manatee County judicial center parking garage construction. Within a year, construction will be underway on the garage, the judicial center and the state Department of Transportation's roadway work on Manatee Avenue.

"Our end of the project is only expected to take seven or eight months," Allen says. "But traffic is going to be a severe challenge."

He has met for the past several months with builders on the other projects to find ways to ease the crunch.

From the sixth floor of the SunTrust Bank building in downtown Bradenton that he shares with McKay, Allen has a clear view of the fast changing downtown Bradenton market. McKay, Band and Allen purchased the SunTrust building, 1001 Third Ave. W., in June 2003 for $7 million.

"We are seeing much more pedestrian traffic (in downtown Bradenton)," Allen says. "In 1984, the city just really rolled up at five. The level of activity we are seeing now is just enormous. The most important thing for downtown now is the grocery. Hopefully with all the new residential units we should also be able to get some chain restaurants downtown. Bradenton will never be a Ybor City but it is coming along."

Aside from the Sandpile property, the most hotly watched piece of land in Bradenton is likely the old city hall building, which NDC Construction demolished late last year. The property, at Manatee Avenue West and 15th Street, was purchased by an investment group of Allen, Band, McKay and Chip McCarthy last year for $2 million. They plan to build a large office and condominium project.

As for how Allen became plugged into his high-profile development partners, he chalks it up to hard work.

"This goes along with our development style," Allen says, "We tend to focus on the individual project and getting that right and less on growing."

Fawley says it was Allen's consistency and work ethic that has led him to partner with some of the region's largest developers.

"It takes hard work and credibility," he says. "You don't start out with the big deals. They just evolve over time. Just like him we started out doing porches; it's the nature of the beast you just follow through and make sure everything is done correctly. Ron is a facilitator ... he knows what it takes to get things done."

Mike Kennedy, executive vice president of WilsonMiller Inc., sees it more simply.

"He is just one of those people that seems to be able get a project done successfully," Kennedy says. "I have worked with Ron on some projects that had seemingly impossibly difficult schedules, and NDC was able to meet schedule."

McKay says Allen has a unique gift of being able to envision a site's possibilities.

NDC Construction's fluctuating revenue, which dropped from a high of $80 million in 1998 to the $47 million range in 2004, is dictated by the booking of a few exceptionally large projects, Allen says.

"We want to stay in the $40 to $50 million range," Allen says of the company that employs 50. "It has been our business philosophy that if we get much bigger we are going to have to make some pretty big drastic changes in the way we do business. We are comfortable making the returns we want to make; doing the quality we know we can do."