Pick a topic. Chances are, Harry Bookey will have something interesting to say about it.

Music? Bookey’s the kind of guy who gets asked by the symphony director whether Yo-Yo Ma would be a good draw.

Politics? Iowa Democratic Party chairman Gordon Fisher says, “I looked him up at the beginning of my chairmanship; I knew he was one of the wisest folks in Des Moines.”

History? He’s auditing classes at Drake University and hoping to teach in Italy.

Real estate? Now you’re really playing on his home field. Bookey owns and operates BH Equities LLC and BH Management Services Inc., two companies that have had a low profile in Central Iowa but are thriving nationally.

BH Equities buys, refinances and sells properties, with millions of dollars’ worth of deals on the table at any given moment. BH Management Services operates more than 30,000 apartment and condominium units in 15 states, ranks about 30th on the list of the largest U.S. apartment managers and employs nearly 1,200 people.

Bookey also runs a construction services division to handle property renovations. “We typically spend between $500,000 and $2 million on project renovation and repositioning, although we have done renovations for as much as $10 million,” Bookey said. He also has recently started a condominium conversion division; among its current responsibilities are Florida projects valued at more than $120 million.

So it’s clear that Bookey does more than study and think. He takes a lot of action, too.

Always in the game

“I like him because I think he takes risks,” said Des Moines Symphony Director Joseph Giunta, who worked with Bookey and his wife, Pamela Bass-Bookey, to save and restore the Temple for the Performing Arts at 1011 Locust St. “In Des Moines, if you take a really good look at the significant pieces of the puzzle, you’re going to find some of these big things have been done because of one or two individuals, and Harry is one of them.”

Bookey, 56, grew up in a family that owned a Des Moines meatpacking company and also invested in real estate. He started working for his father as a cattle buyer while still in high school and kept at it while attending the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Bookey graduated with honors in 1971, then picked up his law degree there in 1974 after a brief detour to Australia, where he was a management trainee in a department store.

Harry and Pam married 27 years ago – they have three grown daughters – after Bookey had begun his law career with Davis, Hockenberg, Wine, Brown & Koehn. Next he worked on real estate acquisitions as a senior vice president and general counsel to Merit Corp., then he specialized in real estate and other matters as a shareholder in Dickinson, Throckmorton, Parker, Mannheimer & Raife.

In 1991, he decided to go into business for himself. The parent company’s name, BH Companies, would have been HB, but that name was taken, so Bookey reversed his initials and went with that. “I spent a year and had nothing to show for it,” Bookey said. “Then I made my first deal in ’92.”

Through a friend, Bookey found out about a possible purchase in San Antonio, Texas and flew down to check it out. “I couldn’t believe my eyes,” he said. “It was the best property in the area” and it carried a bargain price tag thanks to several years of overbuilding in Texas. Bookey put together a group of investors and bought it.

“Then I asked the bank if it had any other properties and bought four more buildings,” Bookey said.

His career change had come at a good time, and Bookey made the most of the opportunity. “Things were terrific through most of the ’90s,” he said. “In the late ‘90s we were returning to investors two or three times their investment and still owning the properties.”

“I knew he was a good real estate lawyer and a good businessman,” said early investor Arnold Golieb, a one-time KPMG Peat Marwick managing partner in Des Moines who had Bookey’s father as a client. When Bookey approached him in the early days of his real-estate venture, “I invested my own money and money from trusts that I’m a trustee for,” Golieb said. “It has worked out very well.”

Here’s one example of the Bookey approach. BH Equities bought the moderate-income River Oaks Apartments in Kansas City, Mo. for $5.6 million in January 1998. The company spent $950,000 on improvements such as upgrading the pool, playground and clubhouse and began marketing the facility to younger renters. According to the company, net operating income increased to $850,000 from $450,000 in just over two years, and the property was refinanced in October 2000 with a return to investors of 80 percent of their equity.

Golieb, now retired in Boca Raton, Fla., but still connected to Des Moines business interests, said Bookey’s years of work are paying off. “He has built a reputation, so now good opportunities are brought to him,” Golieb said. “If 100 deals are presented, he probably seriously looks at 10 and maybe buys one. He can look at a project and see in his mind’s eye what he can do to refurbish that property, manage it correctly, put in the necessary amenities and get the right management people. He has foresight.”

Bookey has partnered on a number of projects with Sterling Equities, a New York-based company that also owns the New York Mets. “He’s got great integrity, and he has the ability to look at the large picture versus getting involved in small details,” said Richard Wilpon, president of Sterling Equities. “He’s very passionate and he has a high energy level, which you need in this business. You also need a lot of P and R — patience and resiliency.”

No notoriety, please

The Temple project brought Bookey a new level of attention in his hometown, and the ongoing struggle to rebuild the Court Avenue district has kept him in the public eye. When critics say he’s trying to make a financial killing on these efforts, Bookey reacts with a mixture of anger and bemusement.

“I’m working on acquisitions [in other cities and states] worth $50 million to $60 million right now,” he said, opening a folder stuffed with papers. “Here’s a deal in Tampa. I could sign a contract and in 30 days I’d have a much bigger deal than Court Avenue.”

He attributes part of the problem to the cautious Iowa mindset. “In Texas, if Billy Bob has 200 [apartment] units, the thinking is ‘I’ll build 400.’ In Iowa, if Joe has 200 units, the thinking is ‘I’d better go someplace else.’”

Bookey – who regularly hears that Texas thinking when he travels to his company office in Dallas — went to Jim Hubbell, president of CB Richard Ellis/Hubbell Commercial, in January 2003 and suggested they join forces on a major Court Avenue proposal. “I think his motivations are absolutely real,” said Hubbell, who has known him, more or less, since they were kids. “He has plenty of opportunities to be elsewhere, and he is elsewhere. He is absolutely not lacking for things to do.”

Unfortunately, public scrutiny seems to be the last thing Bookey wants. “He does have a bit of a thin skin,” Hubbell said. “Sometimes we’ll argue about whether somebody’s out to get Harry or not.”

If the Court Avenue deal goes ahead – the City Council is scheduled to act on it today (Oct. 25) — Bookey and Hubbell plan to add condominiums, apartments and a jazz club to the downtown mix.

Renaissance man

If the world ran out of real estate to acquire, Bookey would still have plenty to occupy his time.

When Bookey lunches with Giunta, “he asks how much better one musician is than another, why I do something differently than someone else, why one composition sounds different than another,” Giunta said. “Harry has a very inquisitive mind.”

When Bookey lunches with Fisher, “it isn’t long before the talk turns to politics,” Fisher said. “He has advised us on how to run campaigns in Des Moines and statewide, what issues to emphasize or de-emphasize, how to raise money and which people to go to” Bookey not only suggested a new brochure to hand to potential donors, but also helped design and write it.

During a stay in the south of France, he learned about an Italian artist who recreates battle scenes with finely detailed model soldiers. Bookey commissioned a piece that took a couple of years to complete, and now proudly displays the “Battle of Montaperti” in his home. “We’ll give it to the Salisbury House when we die,” he said.

Then there’s the book club he organized, eight years old and going strong, and his own book collection. And the history classes he audits at Drake University and the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School classes he took at Tifereth Israel Synagogue.

“He’s always thinking,” Hubbell said. “He’s already thinking about how to keep the performance space at the Temple busy and what to do with entertainment on Court.

“Harry isn’t going to just sit.”