Two Generations
| Yesterday we spoke with a Top 100 leader who's been in real estate for thirty years and a few sprouts who've been at it for thirty days. |
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We snapped Jack McKinney of J.F. McKinney and Associates at his Wacker Drive office. Jack started JF in 1990 with just one building owned by Sam Zell's partnership. Now, it leases 19m-SF of downtown office space, plus some suburban properties. Its portfolio includes a lot of what Jack calls ?high-anxiety projects,? buildings like Block 37, the Sullivan Center, 300 N. LaSalle, and the now-on-hold 444 W. Lake. |
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Jack once worked as a salesman for IBM but moved to real estate because he had always liked hanging around construction sites when he was a kid. (Plus, triple-net is, like, three time cooler than Internet.) Also, he didn't think he had the capital or smarts to start his own computer firm. Jack spent almost nine years at LaSalle Partners during the 1980s and about 11 months at Equis before starting his own firm. A Southsider, born-and-raised, he calms his nerves by attending up to 80 Sox games a year and being ?a notoriously aggressive driver? of his Porsche 911. |
