.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;} It starts out as strictly business, but in the end it’s a lot more than that. x “Just talking about it today, I’m kind of amazed at the emotion I’m finding in the thing,” John J. Clarke said in a recent interview. “Maybe we just haven’t had the time to sit down and go, ‘OK, let’s really talk about what we just did.'”

What he and his father, Lloyd, did was sell virtually all of their family business, The Clarke Cos., to a company owned by those people they’ve known at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church for decades, the Hubbells.

Hubbell Realty Co. purchased a long list of apartment, retail and office buildings in a portfolio valued by the Clarkes at more than $100 million, and now the former owners are deciding what to do next.

The choices seem clear enough for Lloyd. At 78, he keeps plenty busy with civic and church responsibilities in and around Naples, Fla., where he and his wife, Carol, have established legal residence. And in the fall, no question about it, he has to prowl the Iowa landscape for game birds.

For John, at age 50, the next step is a bit trickier. “We rather liked the activity of creating (the company), building it,” he said. “I love the gas of doing it. Meeting in front of city officials, encouraging them to do what we like to do. Identifying the ground, getting it developed … (I like that) probably more than I like the maintenance of it or the management of it.”

In other words, when the noncompete clauses of the sale agreement expire, he wants to start all over again.

Projects in Florida might come first. Then John wants to set up shop in Iowa again. “It will be kind of fun to reinvent the Clarke Cos.,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

From the beginning

Lloyd Clarke met Carol in January 1952 while serving in the Air Force, and they married that August. When Lloyd’s service commitment ended, they moved to her hometown of Des Moines, where her family, the Colbys, already had made a mark.

“I started Clarke Cos. in 1954,” Lloyd said. “There’s a picture of John when he was 2 weeks old, in his mother’s arms while she’s sitting on the foundation of a house we were building in Windsor Heights.

Lloyd’s a very smart guy, very astute in the development business. He knows what he’s doing and studies it well.
– Bill Knapp developer

“He’s been associated with me all his adult life.”

John and his dad each plunked $1,000 on a table in 1978 and became official business partners. The younger Clarke became CEO of the company 10 years ago.

“My first attorney in my business life was David Belin,” Lloyd said, “and he always remarked to me that it is highly unusual for a father and son to be in the same business at the same time and get along well together. But John (his only child) and I, his wife (Jody) and my wife have always believed there are some things we can do very well that no one else can do. We have always looked for ways to do things for the community that no one else can do.”

Those efforts have included building houses for people who couldn’t otherwise afford to own a home, and a facility for abused women and their children.

But to be able to do those things, first they had to create a solid, successful building and development company.

“Lloyd’s a very smart guy, very astute in the development business,” said fellow developer Bill Knapp. “He knows what he’s doing and studies it well. His goal was to be a good developer; I don’t think he cared about being the biggest.”

While working on residential construction projects in Bettendorf and Davenport in the 1960s, Lloyd Clarke was approached by Matthew Bucksbaum, one of the three Iowa brothers who pioneered shopping mall development. The Bucksbaums had to buy more land in Cedar Falls than they needed for their College Square retail center, and they suggested that Clarke buy the extra land and build houses. “He said, ‘we’ll negotiate such a price with you that you won’t be able to turn it down,'” Clarke said.

That project worked out and led to another. “Matthew said, ‘I’ve got another Cedar Falls for you, and all you have to do is change the name to Sioux.'” They flew to Sioux Falls, S.D., where the Bucksbaums were selling a shopping center as part of a much larger deal. Clarke bought 100 acres of “surplus” land and developed a multimillion-dollar mixed-use project called Valhalla.

Over the years, Clarke Cos. also did projects in Minnesota, Illinois, Tennessee and Florida. As the company’s profile grew, more and more companies asked if they wanted to sell all or some piece of the business. Once they sold the Ewing Trace mobile home park to a real estate investment trust. All of the other times, the answer was no.

What next?

“I have had a lot of folks say, ‘John, why in the world did you do it?'” John Clarke said after the sale was announced. His life plan had been to keep running the company from its museum-quality headquarters, the Rollins Mansion on Fleur Drive, until he was tired out. Then, with any luck, some or all of his four children would take over.

It would be like the Colby family trust. John serves as a trustee in that organization, so there seemed to be no mystery about his own family’s future.

Then Jeff Panzi called. “Jeff is a broker with Hubbell who assisted Jody and me with her parents’ estate,” John said. “Hubbell leadership asked Jeff to call, knowing of our relationship, but I told him we weren’t for sale, we were happy doing what we were doing.”

But Panzi persisted. “The Hubbell company approached John and said, ‘You’re the largest multifamily owner/manager in Iowa and we want to be,'” Lloyd said. “They said, ‘We’d basically like to buy everything the Clarke Cos. do and have.'”

It helped that the would-be buyers were so familiar. “I’ve known the Hubbells all my adult life,” Lloyd said, “going clear back to Grover (who died in 1956). I was a competitor of his in the ready-mix business.” Jim Hubbell III runs Hubbell Realty Co. now, and Lloyd said, “It’s difficult for me to even fathom that Jamie can be the age he is, because I remember him as a little boy.”

Setting all that aside, the offer must have been a good one. Serious talks didn’t begin until last October, and the deal was cut in December. It wasn’t formally announced until recently.

After word got out, John heard from a half dozen interests across the Midwest who wanted him to rethink his decision. “John told them, ‘sorry, but we reached an agreement with Hubbell, which we’re going to honor,'” Lloyd said.

Now instead of 50 employees, John is supervising a handful. He continues to supervise the company’s collection agency. The Clarkes also retained ownership of five office buildings in Sioux Falls, which will probably go on the market soon.

Then there’s the Rollins Mansion, built in the mid-1920s at the same time as Salisbury House. The Weeks family built Salisbury, and the Rollins family, with a fortune made in the men’s and women’s hosiery business, built a house with one more room than Salisbury but half the square footage.

Potential buyers for the mansion are lining up. “We’ve had two inquiries through Hubbell brokers, and two to me directly,” John said. Ideally, the next owner will continue to make the building available for charitable events. That has been another part of giving back to the community.

Beyond business

Lloyd Clarke has spent his life buying and building, but when he sums up the biggest transaction of his life he hardly sounds like a businessman at all. “I think there’s some spiritual force at work that causes things to happen in a certain way,” he said. “I’m totally convinced this is part of God’s plan.”

“Lloyd is a very religious man,” said Michael Reagen, former president of the Greater Des Moines Chamber of Commerce Federation, the forerunner to today’s Greater Des Moines Partnership. Lloyd Clarke brought him to Des Moines and later lured him to Naples to become the chamber president there.

“He’s a very devout Episcopalian. He has acted as a consultant pro bono advising churches in Florida about buying land, investing money,” Reagen said. “He has helped bishops turn some churches around.

“I care for him very, very much.”

As for the sale of his company, Clarke didn’t talk to Reagen about it until the past few months. “I think clearly it was an emotional thing, and in a sense a great accomplishment,” Reagen said. “Lloyd felt it would anchor his primary family for the rest of their lives.”