George J. Ablah calls himself a “turkey hunter.”
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But what he really looks for are white elephants–real estate projects that most other buyers shun but he finds hard to pass up.
“I buy things that nobody else has figured out how to reuse,” said Ablah, who lives in Wichita, Kan., but works on real estate deals all over the country.
His latest acquisition has already gobbled up millions of dollars of taxpayer money.
Ablah paid $10 million to buy the former Superconducting Super Collider laboratory complex in Waxahachie, Texas.
The 555,000-square-foot office and light-manufacturing complex was supposed to house scientists trying to unravel the secrets of the universe subatomic particle research.
But Congress killed the $10 million advanced science project in 1993. Since then, the Texas General Land Office has been trying to peddle the properties to investors.
Ablah took the bait.
“It’s an incredible facility,” he said. “The government must have spent $20 million just putting in the fiber optics and clean rooms’ facilities that you wouldn’t believe.
“But it’s just been sitting there empty because nobody could figure out how to use it,” Ablah said.
The Kansas investor thinks he has the right idea. With the help of the Dallas office of Grubb & Ellis Co., Ablah has begun marketing the property to companies throughout the country that might be looking for state-of-the-art office and warehouse facilities to use for everything from telemarketing centers to research and development facilities.
He’s bought 50 acres of raw land in front of the complex with hopes of building additional office space.
About 30 miles south of downtown Dallas, the office and industrial complex is just off Interstate Highway 35, Texas’ busiest highway.
“If we find the right user, we could bring 1,000 jobs to the area,” Ablah said.
“My biggest challenge is showing people how close Waxahachie is to the Dallas-Fort Worth area.”
Ablah has had experience with hard sells.
In the late 1970s, he bought $1 billion in real estate owned by Chrysler Corp. almost 800 automobile agencies nationwide.
After the big automaker restructured, Ablah and his partners sold the properties back to Chrysler for a profit.
He also acquired a vacant office building the New York Stock Exchange had built in suburban New York but decided not to occupy because of political pressures to keep workers in the Big Apple.
“I spent $40 million remodeling the building and turning it around,” he said. “We leased the whole thing up.”
Despite his track record, Ablah said, sellers don’t always take him seriously because he’s from Kansas and not from a financial capital such as New York, Chicago or Los Angeles.
“But that can be an advantage, too,” he said.
When Ford Motor Co. closed its Fair Park-area manufacturing plant near Dallas in the 1970s, he bought the sprawling industrial complex and converted it to office space.
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Ablah later sold the East Grand Avenue plant to other investors.
“I’ve been doing this kind of thing for almost 50 years. I’m not so sure that it’s the money that attracts me as much as it is the challenge. The more difficult the deal is, the more fun it is.”
Grubb & Ellis officials hope that Ablah can work his magic on the former super collider complex.
“We’ve probably found the right guy to do this,” said Bob Young, who manages the real estate broker’s Dallas office. “There’s already some activity on the property.
“It’s as unusual an asset as we’ve ever seen,” he said.