.bodytext {float: left; } .floatimg-left-hort { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right: 10px; width:300px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 10px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} Sundays in the Garnaas family used to mean loading the lawn mower into the Dodge Caravan and heading out to the three properties Jon Garnaas purchased in 1989 – the Scandia Building at 510 E. Locust St. and two buildings on Euclid Avenue – to mow the grass and pick up trash.

His son Luke who was enticed into helping out for $20, told his father he should have sold the Scandia Building a long time ago, especially after the Floods of 1993 damaged part of the building.

However, managing these properties was just the start of what would become Ladco Development Inc. in 1998.

Today Garnaas’ company, now under the name LB Group LLC, has grown from two employees – himself and assistant Sherry Stuart – to more than 150 at its headquarters in West Des Moines and a construction office in Kansas City, Mo. The company has had a hand in 45 development projects ranging from health-care facilities to hotels to an entire village, all of which total about 2.6 million square feet. It also has expanded into hospitality management and technology services.

Now when Garnaas, 57, thinks back about the legacy of his work, he sees it as the diversity in the projects he’s developed, which he believes have added an economic and social value to Greater Des Moines.

“You think about economics, but you also just do projects because you really enjoy doing projects,” Garnaas said. “It’s all about relationships and then you get to a certain part in your life and you have the opportunity to look in your mirror and see what’s there.”

Ladco Development Inc. started out as a developer of single-tenant buildings that were built according to the client’s specifications. Often those were health-care facilities, the first of which was an Iowa Health – Des Moines clinic on 86th Street. Today, Ladco’s projects are as diverse as the number of divisions the company owns.

In addition to renovating and finding tenants to entirely occupy the Scandia Building by this October, Ladco’s largest current projects are the Davis Brown Tower downtown, Village of Ponderosa in West Des Moines and a six-building wellness campus in Clive.

However, it still handles smaller projects such as surgery centers and medical clinics – three of which are out of state – as well as office buildings and hotels.

With the addition of three divisions: Ladco Capital Inc. Ball Construction Services LLC and Ladco Asset Management, the company also handles every step of the development process.

The first of these additions after the development company was Ball Construction in 2001. “I wanted to start a construction company to take that risk out of the equation of the development process,” Garnaas said.

Garnaas approached Darrell Ball, who was a principal at Taylor Ball construction, about starting a new construction company at Ladco, which he agreed to do. Later Ladco acquired Kansas City-based Taylor Kelly Construction Co., which was part of Taylor Ball and still manages that office.

Ladco Capital Management was then added to bring equity to projects, primarily through capital notes or real estate equity units. About six months ago Garnaas added Ladco Asset Management, which was formerly under Ball Construction, to focus on long-term management of properties.

“We’ve built these companies by relationships and not transactions,” Garnaas said, “and the relationships are not only enhanced but sustained by having this continuum.”

Other opportunities have led Garnaas to branch out into other industries as well, including hospitality and technology.

After meeting with Paul Rottenberg about building a conference center on the north side of Des Moines, Garnaas helped found Orchestrate Management in 2001 and develop Hilton Garden Inn in Urbandale. Through Orchestrate Management, the partners also founded Gateway Market and Holiday Inn Express & Suites in Altoona and help manage Centro Restaurant, Hotel Fort Des Moines and more.

Through a project with LightEdge Solutions Inc., Ladco built the $2 million Edge Business Continuity Center data center in Altoona last year and started a technology company called LBC Technology, though Garnaas later sold his stake in the business to his nephew Peder Malchow. Ladco still owns the data center and land it’s on.

Throughout his career, Garnaas cannot pinpoint one defining project, but rather says, “each project is just as important as the next one. … What we’re trying to do is still look at what’s coming, what’s in the future and be on the cutting edge.”

The Village of Ponderosa development, for example, was his opportunity to bring a new urbanist community to Central Iowa, a trend that was already taking place in other parts of the country.

Garnaas, who works from the Ladco I building on Westown Parkway, believes that many of his opportunities come from being a part of a thriving environment in Des Moines. “We’re in the right place at the right time,” he said. “The Greater Des Moines metropolitan area has so much opportunity and people are expecting things. The bar has been raised in Des Moines and people for all the right reasons are expecting a certain quality, a certain amount of diversification.”

Though Garnaas has become a well-known figure in Greater Des Moines’ development, he is not a native to the state. In fact, he grew up on a farm in North Dakota. He later sold his interest in the farm for $40,000, which he used to start Ladco.

After Garnaas graduated from St. Olaf College in Minnesota in 1972, his father talked him out of a career in farming. Instead, Garnaas moved to Minneapolis with his wife, Faith, and started a banking career at First Bank. In 1983, he moved to Des Moines with a co-worker who was starting a small holding company, First Interstate Bancorp of Iowa. In 1986, he went on his own to work in commercial real estate development.

“I always have had an aversion to the word ‘deal.’ [My daughter] Courtney, when she was young – we would be sitting at dinner – would say, ‘Dad, did you do a deal today?’ It was one of those, you know what was going through her mind. ‘Can I go to school? Can I buy clothes?'” Garnaas recalled with a chuckle.

Garnaas attributes a large part of his success to relationships, especially with his family. His company’s name is derived from the initial letters of his children’s first names (Luke, Adam and Courtney), and Luke and Courtney both work in the company and are part of the succession plan (Adam is still in college). His wife, Faith, is a 50 percent owner in Ladco Development and Ladco Capital.

But he also has built strong relationships with clients, which he tries to extend to others in the company as well so that the client “is as comfortable in working with four of our people as just with me,” he said. “That’s at tough transition when you start your company just yourself and you think you’re the only guy that can do it.”

Garnaas lives by four words, which he extends as part of the company’s credo: integrity, passion, tenacity and fun. He now includes another philosophy in the mix: “If you love what you do, you’ll never work another day in your life.”

He added, “It’s taken me a while to find that.”