Purchased in an off-market transaction in 2006 in a partnership with Angelo Gordon & Co., Compass Center consisted of a 132,000 sf three-story office building completed in 2001, and 18 acres of excess land.  The seller of the property was a large family office which was intent on selling the entire property to one buyer in one transaction.  The straight-forward business plan for the investment was to sell each of the component pieces of the project - the office building, an adjoining 5-acre parcel, and the 13 acre parcel at the corner of University and SR143 - to separate subsequent buyers.

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Within one-year of the initial purchase, the office building and the adjacent 5-acre parcel were sold in separate transactions that approximately equaled the purchase price of the entire project.  The last piece - the 13 acre land parcel - was brought to the market in the 3rd quarter of 2007, and the sale of this parcel fell victim to the onset of the Great Recession in late 2007/early 2008.  At that point in time, it appeared that the ownership would carry this vacant land parcel for a very long time as the market recovered, particularly for vacant commercial land.

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Based upon prior interest in the parcel from a national off-airport parking operator, I formed a separate partnership which purchased the 13-acre parcel in 2010 at a price that resulted in a positive return for the overall investment - an extreme rarity for this time in the office market/economy.

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This new partnership developed a local original-brand parking operation - Blue Sky Airport Parking, which opened for business in 2010.  This highly successful operation - consisting of 1,600 parking spaces and 24/7 shuttle operations to the airport - was ranked consistently on Yelp as the number 1 parking operation in Phoenix, above all the other national operations. I directed all aspects of the operation of this business, with my nephew John Warren serving as our GM, until the highly successful sale of Blue Sky to The Parking Spot in 2022.  

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Although the experience of operating Blue Sky was completely different from office ownership, I found this to be an essential part of learning customer service and marketing in a brand new way.  Without a doubt this experience and the knowledge gained makes me a better office operator today.