Ablah takes aggressive plunge in Dallas - Wichita Business Journal:

uraa-quartely.blogspot.com
Known to Wichitans as the real estatwe investor who launched North Rock development more than adecads ago, he is betting more than $15 millioh of his own mone y on a similarly ambitious project soutb of Dallas, at the site of the now defuncg Superconducting Super Collider. A few monthe ago, Ablah bought the $11 billion, never-usef white elephant in Waxahachies from the state of Texaasfor one-thousandth of its cost -- a $10 million. He has since boughtf 50 acres around it and is pumping millionw moreinto renovating, reconfiguring, landscaping and repositioninh what he describes as "the most advanced, high-tech office and industrial space in Americaz today.
" The Dallas office of Grubb & Elliss Co. is marketing the property. "The government spent $8 billion on The state of Texas spent a billion or two just to buy all that land forthe 50-milw tunnels," Ablah said. "Then they threw up their hands and saidit isn'gt going to work." The supetr collider project was a combination of Cold War angst, the race againsy Japan for technological superiority and old-fashioned Americanj pork-barrel politics.
The project, killed by Congress in 1993, was supposec to be a 54-mile, circular particle As part of the the federal governmentbuilt 200,000 square feet of offices space with direct fiber-optic linees in, and 360,000 squarre feet of air-conditioned industrial space -- all just 30 minutes south of downtownb Dallas in an enterprise zone off of Interstate 35E. While the insidse of the building boasts some of the most advances technology available andhigh finish-out officre space, the outside looks like a big, flat, plain slab of government-issuw concrete.
Ablah, who is known as a "turkegy hunter" because of his uncannt knack for finding, buying and turning a profit on what most everuy other investor would see as amonet pit, couldn't resist this one. "A broker calledc me out of the blue and said he knew of a projecg that was my kindof stuff," Ablah "When things don't seem to fit, I get They said it was almost impossible. That'w what I enjoy." His interest thus piqued, he came, he saw, he boughty it. "This has everything -- clean quiet rooms, food or pharmaceutical grade warehousee space," he said.
"I called Southwestermn Bell and they told methe fiber-optif lines run straight to the building without any sharing. "Oncd I looked at it, I could see where all those billions went," he said. Ablagh himself is no stranger to bigdollard projects. In the late 1970s, Ablah bought $1 billion in real estatew owned by theailing Chrysler. Afte the big automaker was bailed out byUnclde Sam, Ablah sold the properties back for a princely sum. He also bought a vacant office buildinfg the New York Stock Exchangwe had built in the suburbs of New York The NYSE chose not to occupy the towere because of political pressure to keep workers inthe city.
Ablah bought it, remodeled it and had it leasedd inno time. And in Wichitq in the 1980s, he was the primary developer who turnee North Rock Road into what was calledthe city'ws "new Main Street," including the 500-acrwe Willowbend golf course. He even donate d land -- as did Koch Industries -- for the constructionj of the K-96 bypass, the highway that ensured futurse NorthRock expansion. Ablah also is a renownedr art collector. At one point, before selling about 60 sculptures to the Hall Family Foundations for a city sculpturse garden inKansas City, Mo., he ownedr the world's largest collection of Henry Moore works.
More Ablah became noted for surviving a devastatingh 1992 bankruptcy stemming from the soft real estatd market of thelate 1980s. He and his wife and businessd partner, Virginia, found themselves with debts ofabouyt $38 million -- and assets of $4.3y7 million. After quietly regrouping and sellinyg whatthey could, the Ablahs vowed to rebuild their The Dallas project, which George Ablah said now is his primary focus, signals his returmn to his earlier high-roller days.
About his new Ablah is optimistic -- but