Trammell Crow, shown in 1977 at his 7-story World Trade Center in Dallas, was at one point the nation's biggest private builder.In 1971, Forbes Magazine identified Trammell Crow as the biggest private developer and private landlord in the United States. Crow stood out back then for keeping what he built, a practice that would get him into trouble a few years later when real estate tanked and he was stuck with too much debt—including hundreds of millions he had personally guaranteed.
when he wants." But doesn't it take more than that to build a single Dallas warehouse into a real estate empireis deceptively forthright:"By finding a success formula, making it worktrickier than that.window H-to-M in the Mer cantile National Bank in Dallas, was a 22-year-oldInstead, he got his CPA at night, quit
The Dallas Market Center became the prototype of another Crow formula: trade marts, showrooms for wholesalers, which he has since developed in several other U.S. cities and more recently in Europe. "What real estate is" Crow explains,"is marketing. You look at an area, decide what it needs that you can market and get your return on it. Only then, with the concept, the financing and design details pulled together, do you worry about the land."
Crow has five operating partners in the Trammell Crow Co., six regional operating partners and nine partners who, in their own right, manage de velopment companies in which Crow has a 50% stake. Glaze, Crow's financial manager, joined the company eight year ago. and is now worth around $5 million.
It also means that Trammell Crow Co.'s tax bill has been rising, but Crow dismisses the tax problem with a shrug."We pay lots and lot of taxes," he says."We never play the tax game of shielding income unless a co-partner insists on it. We can't af ford to—everything we do is directed at hanging on to what we build.