Bridges to somewhere

Real estate developer Jim Bridges financed the first phase of his first project, a shopping center he built in 1975 in a small west-central Georgia town, with $500 on a Visa card.

The development included a Colonial Food grocery store. It held special significance for Bridges not only because it was his first, but it was in his hometown of Manchester — population less than 3,000.

The project was a success. It was the first achievement in a 40-year real estate career where Bridges has now built more than $700 million worth of projects. But Bridges, 66, isn't done.

While he normally seeks to avoid the spotlight, his firm, Sarasota-based Jebco Ventures, is directly in it. The company currently has at least $100 million in projects in some form of proposal or development in and around downtown Sarasota. The list includes the Q, a residential project with 39 two- and three-story townhomes on Ringling Boulevard; an 18-story, 200-room Embassy Suites hotel on Tamiami Trail downtown, a $50 million project across the street from the Ritz-Carlton, Sarasota; and a 40,000-square-foot Walmart Neighborhood Market on Bee Ridge and Beneva roads.

“He's a go-to guy if you have property in downtown Sarasota you want to develop,” says longtime Sarasota commercial real estate broker Ian Black. “Sarasota is fortunate to have a guy like Jim who sticks with the program despite the challenges in getting a project out of the ground. That's rare.”

Winning formula
While the focus for many is on what Bridges will do next, that project back in Georgia, the year before Jimmy Carter was elected president, was a precursor of what was to come. It's where Bridges shaped the core of his winning formula: Work alone, mostly, and take thoughtful and reasoned chances.

“Unless you take legitimate business risks, you will never get to the next level,” says Bridges. “You will never end up doing anything.”

The second part of the formula, generally not entering projects with financial partners, runs counter to the standard real estate developer's playbook. One reason developers find partners, of course, is more financial backers in a project spreads and mitigates risk.

But Bridges has mostly shunned partners, save for the occasional real estate investment trust or a well-heeled individual with whom he has a good rapport. Bridges instead says he's backed most of his projects with his own money, usually 30% or more of the total cost.

He finances some equity investments and projects through banks and other lending sources. The loans he takes out, he says, are a combination of personal guarantees or collateral. He says the ratio has leaned more toward collateral over guarantees in recent years. “It depends on the type, structure and amount,” says Bridges. “Every deal is different.”

The Embassy Suites project, for instance, is a combination of what Bridges calls “a substantial amount” of his own money and a Synovus Bank loan.

The solo approach is costly, but it comes with big benefits. Not using other people's money to build a project, says Bridges, gives him marketplace credibility. “When it's your money,” says Bridges, “it's your money.”

The strategy also provides Bridges a level of control and flexibility he couldn't get any other way. That goes from architect selection to the color of a bathroom wall. “I have to be in a position to make decisions spontaneously and quickly,” says Bridges. “This gives me the chance to do that.”

'Hands on'
Flexibility is essential to Bridges because his business model is to chase need. “I develop wherever I think the best product is for the market at the time,” Bridges says. “I'm a hands-on guy.”

The model has enabled Jebco to complete projects for a cross-section of demographics and socioeconomic groups. On one side, for example, he's built Family Dollar stores. He also recently developed a $5 million retail complex for Goodwill Manasota on U.S. 41 in north Sarasota, a strip mostly devoid of new commercial projects.

Goodwill Manasota President and CEO Bob Rosinsky is impressed with Bridges' creativity and his ability to follow through on every commitment. Rosinsky cites Bridges' tenacity, too, in how he worked out a parking issue that could have been problematic. “Jim is among the best developers we've ever worked with,” says Rosinsky. “Way beyond that, he's one of the nicest, forthright people I know.”

On the other Jebco development spectrum are entities like the Palazzi al Mare, an $11 million luxury condo project on Lido Key near downtown Sarasota. The project translates to “Palaces by the Sea” in Italian.

Bridges has also built several condo projects on Golden Gate Point, a cluster of condos and homes on the Sarasota bayfront. One Golden Gate project is Vista Bay Point, a two-building, $22 million complex he built in 2005 with units that sold for $1 million to $2.5 million. Another Golden Gate project, in the development phase, is The Allure. Plans for that project call for 12 luxury townhomes at around 4,000 square feet each. Pre-sales began in early March.

“My projects are not cookie cutter,” says Bridges. “We try to have a lot of creativity and make them unique.”

Not all of Bridges' projects, or attempted projects, have been triumphs. A proposal he recently submitted to the city of Sarasota to possibly build a Hampton Inn on State Street, at the site of a potential new parking garage, was one rejection. Bridges is diplomatic on the denial. Says Bridges: “It's always disappointing when you can't do a project you believe in.”

Ups and downs
Bridges has had relatively few other disappointments in his career. It began in 1971, before the small shopping center he built in rural Georgia. Back then he worked for Housing Systems, an Atlanta-based apartment developer. Bridges scouted land for the firm, going into small Alabama towns.

He went out on his own in 1975 with Jebco, which stands for his initials: James Edward Bridges Co. He's since built or developed retail projects from Walmart to Starbucks to OfficeMax. In 1999 he developed the Phoenix, a $55 million, 27-story condo tower in the trendy Buckhead section of Atlanta. He also developed a 220,000-square-foot logistics facility for construction equipment firm Caterpillar in Griffin, Ga., outside Atlanta. His projects in Georgia, overall, span from Atlanta to Augusta.

Jebco was so big in the mid-1980s, doing around $50 million in projects a year, that Bridges hired internal construction employees for the first time. So some subcontractors became staffers — a decision Bridges would later regret, when a recession blew through the Southeast in the early 1990s.

Jebco Ventures, which had more than 75 employees at one point, was down to eight by the mid-1990s. The boom and bust experience humbled Bridges. But he also turned it into one of his greatest business lessons: He will now only do a deal where he has two legitimate exit strategies and he isn't over-leveraged.

“It just means that when we make a dollar we get to keep a little more,” Bridges told the Business Observer in 2004. “In this business, as any developer will tell you, if you do a bad deal it destroys three good deals.”

Nearing the twilight of his career, Bridges hopes he won't have any more bad deals. In addition to lessons learned, he emphasizes return on cost and return on equity for every project. That keeps him focused on the endgame. “You're going to make some mistakes,” says Bridges, “but you learn not to ever make the same mistake twice.”

One of the biggest obstacles Bridges faces, more pressing even than navigating local and state governments, is finding downtown Sarasota land priced right for projects. That hunt is partly what motivates him to keep going.

“I have such a passion for real estate,” Bridges says. “I look at real estate on the weekends. I enjoy Mondays when I get back to work.”

Lessons Learned
Jim Bridges first got into real estate scouting land in Alabama for an Atlanta-based apartment development firm in 1971. Now the CEO of Sarasota-based Jebco Ventures, Bridges has since built at least $700 million worth of projects, from a Starbucks to high-rise condo towers. Here are some of the key lessons he's learned in his career: