Photo: Tony Blake, a founding partner of V/T Commercial of Burlington. Photo: Baldwin Photography.
by Joyce Marcel, Vermont Business Magazine In a small state like Vermont, knowing people is the key to being successful. And that, in a nutshell, is the business philosophy of Tony Blake, a founding partner of V/T Commercial Real Estate in Burlington.
A colorful raconteur, Blake, now 70, began his career in the restaurant business. In other words, he has long been attuned to meeting people and making them feel “met.”
“If you think about restaurants, they’re really a public type of business,” Blake said in a recent interview. “A successful owner-operator needs to be visible. He needs to be agreeable to the customer. He has to say, ‘Hey, how are you? Nice to see you. How’s your meal, good? Can I get you anything?’
“You need to make them feel like, ‘Yeah, he remembers me. He knows me,’ so they want to come back. I did a lot of that. And as a result, I got to know an awful lot of people. In a state as small as Vermont, who you know can be as valuable as what you know. At least that proved true for me.”
After Blake, then in his 30s, sold his five restaurants — “two I made very good money on; one I literally broke even on; and two damn near broke me” — he went into commercial real estate and never looked back.
“Tony is the consummate professional in our business,” said one of his partners, Yves Bradley. “He’s a nice person. He’s a funny person. He’s creative. He’s sensitive. It is an incredible pleasure and, frankly, a wonderful experience, to work with him on a daily basis, to have the ability to run things off him and be his partner. I feel fortunate every day.”
V/T Commercial Real Estate is a company composed of five partners who operate as independent contractors.
“Believe it or not, that makes us the biggest commercial real estate firm in Vermont,” Blake said. “We have no paid employees. I manage the office and do what minimal administrative work needs to get done. But with the internet and computers, we don’t really need much of a staff.”
Blake said quantifying his business revenues “is a little bit like hugging a cloud — I can see it, but I can’t quite put my arms around it.” But he estimates last year V/T Commercial made between $45 million and $50 million worth of transactions.
“Obviously, we don’t bring in that amount of money,” he said. We real estate folks work on a commission basis. We get paid a certain percentage of a sale or a lease. So, is our revenue the amount of the commissions we earn or is it the number of transactions we make?”
V/T Commercial is specifically designed as a partnership, Blake said.
Photo: Commercial real estate brokers of V/T Commercial left to right: Yves Bradley, Tony Blake, John A. Beal, Linda I. Letourneau and Bill Kiendl Courtesy photo.
“You still get to take your commission on a sale or lease,” he explained. “But it drops a certain amount of money to the bottom line. Over time, that bottom line gets shared among the people in the office. It gives much more of a team synergy. We all root for one another. Maybe I have a bad month, but somebody else has a great month. Good, I’m happy for them, because I’m also happy for me. It’s worked beautifully.”
The point, he said, is to choose your partners wisely.
“Get somebody who’s a good producer, well-connected and make sure you get along with them,” Blake advised. “A part of our goal is to make sure we are all fun to work with. It’s going to sound a little crude, but most real estate is, ‘You eat what you kill.’ What that means is, ‘I don’t care what anybody else gets, I have to worry about putting food on my table.’ Well, is it not better to eat what everybody kills? You all share, to a degree.”
Living in a small state like Vermont has given Blake the chance to work with some large national companies, among them IBM, Kaiser Permanente, Verizon Wireless, the University of Vermont, AIG Insurance, AT&T, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Unilever USA, GE HealthCare.
Blake is a founding member of the Chittenden Commercial Real Estate Association and sat on its board of directors from 1996 through 2004. But he may be best known for his work in the disability community. For the past 17 years, he has served as a volunteer ski instructor at Adaptive Ski and Sports in Waitsfield. The program means the world to Blake.
“An adaptive is a program that focuses on getting folks outside,” Blake said. “We will work with any type of disability. I’ve skied with autistic folks, Down syndrome folks, paraplegics, quadriplegics, folks with cerebral palsy, people who are blind or deaf — you name it. It’s a wonderful program. I’m addicted to it. If I didn’t work in commercial real estate, I’d be at Adaptive Ski and Sports full time.”
Photo: Tony Blake and another coach assist a Vermont Adaptive skier get ready for a day at Sugarbush North in mid-March. VermontBiz photo.
Blake doesn’t so much have clients as he has friends for life. Since the 1990s, he has been the primary leasing agent as well as a close friend of Steve Kidder, who owns many businesses, including the Kidder Newhouse Building in Williston. Kidder has nothing but praise for Blake.
“Tony is the son of a doctor, and he has a doctor’s compassion,” Kidder told me. “He’s very good with people. He’s very patient. He’s a very honest, straightforward, sensitive guy. He’s donated lots of his time to many worthwhile causes. His firm is very well-respected in the higher end of commercial real estate in Chittenden County. He’s extremely generous and very likable, very patient, very knowledgeable. You couldn’t ask for a better person.”
This kind of praise is echoed by another of Blake’s friends, Scott Rieley, owner and developer of the Finney Crossing Commercial in Williston as well as several hundred multifamily residential units. Rieley has been a friend and client of Blake’s for more than 10 years.
“He was a customer of ours when we owned a couple of ski shops, so I met him because of his love of skiing,” Rieley said. “As my business progressed, I ended up owning property on both the residential and the commercial side of the market. Tony operates on the commercial side, and our interests are aligned. We started working together on different properties that we had an interest in purchasing, and the relationship developed from there.”
Rieley called Blake “an incredibly diligent and responsive guy.
“If I was interested in a piece of property or asked him market-driven questions, he would get back to me very quickly with good information,” Rieley said. “It’s not always what I want to hear, but it’s good, solid information that helps me work on my business. He’s a good friend, and we continue to work together to this day.”
Blake currently serves as the leasing agent for Rieley’s Williston development.
“Our business is either developing properties or acquiring properties,” Rieley explained. “We don’t sell; we tend to be long-term owners. Most recently, Tony has managed the leases for three buildings we constructed. We have two multi-tenant buildings there as well as a single-tenant building. Tony managed the leases for all of those properties. The buildings have quality tenants. And that’s a testament to him doing his job well.”
There are only eight firms doing commercial real estate in the Burlington area, and they appear to be as much collegial as competitive. Bradley, as an example, worked at Pomerleau Real Estate for 17 years before moving over to V/T Commercial.
“The way we ran our business was that we saw people from other firms as colleagues rather than competitors,” Bradley said. “We’re all working together to get deals done. At the end of the day, you’re not really representing yourself, you’re representing the clients. If everybody keeps that in mind, there are a lot of deals to be made.”
Bradley considered Blake a mentor when he worked at Pomerleau.
“Tony was very good to me,” Bradley said. “He became, over time, my go-to person for questions about deals or real estate. I knew that I could always get a thoughtful and well-considered answer from Tony.”
Residential real estate may have reached a crisis point in Vermont. But commercial? Not so much.
The commercial market can be broken into three basic segments: industrial, retail and office, Blake said.
“Of those segments, the industrial market drives the economy,” he said. “Those are manufacturers or wholesalers or distributors. That portion of the commercial real estate market will also drive retail and office, which ultimately helps drive the residential market.”
To illustrate how the industrial market drives the economy, Blake cited IBM moving to Essex Junction in the 1960s.
“Think back to when IBM came,” he said. “It changed the area of Essex Junction, which really didn’t have much going on there. At its peak, IBM had about 8,500 employees. This spurred the growth of Essex. A lot of service industries arrived with IBM, whether it was restaurants, grocery stores, CPAs or lawyers who needed to set up practices there. That also drives the office market, because there are a lot of spin-off or subcontractors for businesses that do work for IBM. That in turn also drives the housing market. It is all a matter of supply and demand.”
The largest part of Blake’s work, by far, is leasing commercial space.
“Seventy-five percent of what we do is leasing,” Blake said. “Probably 25% is sales, because with commercial real estate in Vermont not a lot of sales take place. Most of the commercial properties are owned by a select few developers. Mostly what we do is commercial leasing. We can be busy with that, regardless of whether there’s a big inventory or not.”
The state currently has a 2.5% vacancy rate for industrial real estate, Blake said. Retail appears to be holding its own. And office space?
“If you want office space, what would you like?” Blake said. “We’re giving it away. We can’t find bodies to put in the offices, because everybody now wants to work remotely. COVID really did a number on switching that market around.”
The Vermont economy is faltering now because of the state’s severe housing shortage. Even if out-of-state businesses were interested in locating here, they would have difficulty finding affordable housing for their employees.
“We have to find a way to bring more business that will offer better-paying jobs, or we need more remote workers coming to Vermont,” Blake said. “Right now, we’re sort of stalled.”
That is not to say that Blake’s business is stalling.
“No, not at all,” he said. “The beauty of the profession that I’m in — and I tell people this regularly, when they say, ‘Well, how are you?’ — I say, ‘Well, last year we had the very best year we ever had, by far.’”
That might be because V/T Commercial does not own or manage any commercial properties.
“We are purely brokers,” Blake said. “That’s it. Our services are in most demand when the economy is really good; that’s because people are growing, and they need things. And when the economy is really bad, the landlords and the banks are calling us up and saying, ‘Help!’ We get busy in those two periods.”
Early Life
Blake was born and raised in Villanova, PA, just outside Philadelphia, the second son of a doctor and a special-education teacher. Though Blake’s parents taught him little about business — “I would tell you that most of the doctors I know, including my dad, are some of the worst business people I’ve ever met,” he said with a laugh — they instilled in him a belief that helping others can bring not only financial rewards, but spiritual rewards as well.
“My dad was a good old-fashioned Yankee doctor, originally from Waterville, ME,” Blake said. “He’s one of these guys who would get up at six o’clock in the morning, make his rounds at the hospital at 6:30, see patients and then do house calls. He’d get home at eight o’clock at night. My mom was working with mostly Down syndrome kids. I was brought up in that atmosphere. It was never preached to me, but it’s something I think that was embedded in some fashion or another.”
When Blake was 10, his father taught him to ski in the Poconos. His love of skiing has remained with him all his life.
Although his parents never demanded that Blake take jobs while he was in school, in high school he began working as an orderly at the hospital where his father worked.
After high school, Blake chose to attend the University of Vermont. He cites two major reasons for that decision. The first was purely social: UVM enrolled more women the men, and the legal drinking age in Vermont was 18. The second was that the school had a pre-med program, which seemed appealing to Bake at the time.
In the end, he majored in communications and won numerous awards at graduation.
“Not to be boastful or anything, but I was the outstanding senior in my major,” he said. “I was in a fraternity and named the outstanding Greek male. And I was named the outstanding senior male in my graduating class. So, it was the trifecta, and I never told my parents about any of it until they showed up at graduation. That was my payback to them, to say, ‘Hey, I did OK. Despite the partying, I did OK.’”
He went straight from being an undergrad to living life as a ski bum. When asked why, he began his story the same way a lot of people from that era begin theirs: “Well, it was the ‘70s.”
“When I graduated in 1975, a lot of my peers did the same as I did,” Blake said. “They decided that Vermont was a great place to live. What fun it could be. Back then there wasn’t the pressure that I see with the younger generation now. Now, they get out of school and have to find a well-paying job. Back then it was, ‘Let’s go out and have some fun.’ You don’t have a lot of responsibility. You’re not married. You don’t have a house. All you’ve got to do is get some food in your belly and a roof over your head, and everything’s good.”
But being a ski bum didn’t sit well with Blake, so he took a job managing a restaurant in Middlebury.
“I had worked in restaurants while I was in college,” he said. “So, I had a bit of that type of background. And I ended up managing a restaurant that was just being built, which I eventually owned. Fast forward, I ended up owning, collectively, five different restaurants in my prior life.”
Life in the Fast Lane
Blake was first hired to manage a place called the Rosebud Café, whose name was undoubtedly inspired by the film “Citizen Kane.”
“It was ground zero in downtown Middlebury,” he said. “I was 23 years old. The guys that built it already owned two restaurants in Burlington, and they were in the process of redeveloping what is now known as the Ice House on the water.”
Those developers were becoming overextended.
“The bank said, ‘Look, boys, you’ve got too many things spread out. You want to get some more money to do this renovation? You need to get rid of something,’” Blake said. “So, they came to me and said, ‘Do you want to buy the Rosebud?’ They opened in April of 1976. By June of 1976, I owned it. And the way I owned it was the bank let me assume their loans. I’m 23. The bank would never do that now.”
Blake owned and operated the Rosebud until 1980. Then he moved back to Burlington and opened an eatery called Sneakers Bistro & Café, in Winooski.
“It’s the only place I opened that’s still around today,” he said. “But I had a restaurant on Church Street. I had two other restaurants in Winooski, but one burned down before it opened.”
Blake stayed in the restaurant business until his early 30s.
“Unless one is an owner of several operations and has a good management hierarchy established, it is a very tough business,” he said. “It is very hands-on. It’s a young person’s business in that it requires very long days, late nights, often a transient staff, low margins and generally an unhealthy lifestyle.
“It can be a volatile business in countless ways. It is also a very social business. It’s sort of like having company at your house seven days a week. You have to always be at your best and make your customers feel wanted. That can be tough when your dishwasher or prep cook doesn’t show up for work.”
The hours were long, he said.
“I had restaurants that varied between breakfast, lunch and dinner,” he said. “Depending on which one was at what time, I could be working anywhere from five o’clock in the morning to three o’clock in the morning. Straight out. Then you’re around alcohol and people who are partying. I’m not saying that’s true of all restaurants today, but back then it was. And it was just not a healthy industry to be in. One day I looked, and I had five restaurants. I said, ‘OK, that’s enough of this.’ And I got out.”
One good thing about the business: Blake met his wife, Sara, at one of his restaurants, Sneakers, in Winooski.
“She is an absolute saint, having been in education for close to 30 years,” Blake said. “She is now the literacy coordinator for the Colchester School District. She is so dedicated to her profession, which as we all know has been exceptionally challenging over the past three years. We’ve been married for 33 years, and I consider myself to be extraordinarily lucky that she came into my life. She brings me up when I am down and adds a spark to each of my days.”
The couple have two adult children.
Larry and the Brothers Daryl
Blake’s transition to commercial real estate came as a result of his restaurant involvement and, also, something to do with “The Bob Newhart Show” on television.
“The opening scene was filmed in East Middlebury,” Blake said. “Rich Feeley, who was a very successful commercial real estate broker, started something called Atlantic Lodging and Restaurant Brokers because there was an influx of people coming from down country as the result of ‘Bob Newhart.’ It was like, ‘Oh, let’s move to Vermont. We can buy an inn. What a great way to make a living!’ So, he brokered the sale of my restaurants for me, and said, ‘Tony, what are you going to do now?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know.’”
Blake had a real estate license, but it had never been activated.
“I said, ‘What are the risks? I don’t know anything about it,’” Blake said. “Rich said, ‘Yes, you do. You have bought, operated and sold businesses. You understand business. You don’t realize it, but you know what you’re doing. Get a phone and a desk and go do it.’ And that started me.”
Blake calls Feeley his mentor.
“He was mine and many others, including my eventual long-time partner of over 35 years, Bill Kiendl,” Blake said. “Coburn & Feeley Real Estate was truly the first commercial real estate firm in Vermont. Rich and his partner, Tom Coburn, established the business in the early 1980s and set the tone for commercial real estate brokerage in Chittenden County.”
Like Blake, most of the brokers came out of prior business ownerships.
“When I first started with him, his team included a former general manager of a ski attire manufacturing business in the Northeast Kingdom, a former travel agency owner, a former member of an employee-owned construction company and a former sporting goods store owner,” Blake said. “All of us had some sort of prior business background, but not necessarily a real estate brokerage background.
“Rich recognized that understanding business and people were traits that translated well to commercial real estate. He knew that commercial real estate was the ‘business’ side of transactions; it was strictly dealing with other businesspeople and professionals. Therefore, coming from a business background was an important ingredient in becoming successful in the commercial real estate business.”
Blake and Kiendl began to build V/T Commercial in 1986.
“Certainly, I wanted to make good money,” Blake said. “But commercial real estate has got a pretty long gestation period between the time you get going and the time you actually start making money. The residential market tends to be a lot quicker. The sales of houses seem to happen a lot faster. The average gestation period for a commercial real estate transaction is usually six months, but oftentimes a couple of years.”
Blake remembered one project that took seven years to complete.
“We handled the sale of the Pine Ridge School on behalf of what was then the Chittenden Bank,” Blake said. “That was a private boarding school for kids who were dyslexic. It hit the skids and was foreclosed on. It took me seven years to sell that campus. Seven years! The payoff was good, but seven years of work and not knowing if you’re going get be successful or not?”
Blake liked the business because there were fewer emotions in the mix.
“As we got closer to 1990, there was quite the upheaval in the banking world,” he said. “Banks were foreclosing on a lot of commercial properties. At one point, we had a listing of foreclosed properties from what seemed like every single bank in the Burlington area. But I was starting to realize that commercial real estate was a ‘non-emotional’ business.”
Blake also liked commercial work because it kept him centered in the Burlington area.
“Rather than driving around the four corners of Vermont with somebody from Connecticut who wants a bed and breakfast up in Newport, this work kept me more centered in the Greater Burlington area, where I actually had a lot of good contacts as a result of being in the restaurant business,” he said.
The ABCs of Commercial Real Estate
Commercial real estate brokers are licensed by the state of Vermont.
“We’re under the same umbrella as residential brokers,” Blake said. “It’s the same license that renews every two years. As a broker versus just a salesperson, I’ve got to do 24 hours of continuing education credit every two years. We have to adhere to all the rules, regulations, ethics and everything else that any other broker would be held to, but the type of work we do is completely different than the residential brokers. The state is focused on making sure the residential brokers are being ethical and doing everything the proper way. But we’re so small, we sort of fly under the radar. They don’t pay a lot of attention to us. With leasing, what are you going to do wrong? You’re going to discriminate with leasing? Of course not.”
Blake’s big national clients came as a result of big changes in the industry 30 years ago. It started with a call from a commercial broker he knew in Connecticut who was handling leasing for Kaiser Permanente, a large health care company.
“They had a whole bunch of doctors’ offices up here in Vermont and throughout New England,” Blake said. “They owned the practices, and they owned the real estate. And they wanted to get out. This friend calls me up and says, ‘Tony, I need your help. We have a dozen of these offices in Vermont. We don’t have anybody from our firm licensed in Vermont. Can you help?’”
In a 12-month period, Blake sold approximately a dozen different medical office buildings and medical practices in Vermont for his friend.
“They said, ‘You did an unbelievable job. Would you mind handling the Northeast for us?’” Blake recalled. “And I said I’d love a job like this. The beauty with a job like that is that I know there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. In other words, normally in real estate, you have to find the product, determine the market and then go out and either sell it or lease it. Here, the product was being handed to me. I knew what I had to do.”
Long-time client Unilever is another good example.
“We know up here they own Ben & Jerry’s and Seventh Generation,” Blake said. “But Unilever is a British-based company that owns massive amounts of other big companies. Nationwide, what happens is large commercial brokerage firms, national ones, submit bids to a company like Unilever. Now, Unilever is not in the real estate business. They don’t want to be in the real estate business. They’re in the business of selling ice cream. But they need space, right? So, they say, ‘All right, so-and-so, you can manage literally all of our properties throughout the United States.’”
Unilever contracted with Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real estate company with offices throughout the United States.
“But they have one account manager who is responsible for overseeing their portfolio of leases,” Blake said. “So, you have a Ben & Jerry’s scoop shop on Church Street in Burlington. The lease is coming up in nine months. What do you want to do about it? ‘Oh, we want to renew it.’ OK, we’ll take care of that for you. Where I’m going with this conversation is that Vermont being Vermont — and this is one of the strong benefits of being in a little state — doesn’t have a single one of these commercial brokerage firms. They come to us and say, ‘We need help because we’re not licensed in Vermont, and we don’t know your little market.’ So that’s why you see some of the corporate clients we have. That’s the result of that type of work, which is really good work. It’s bread and butter for us.”
Blake has represented Ben & Jerry’s for the past 25 years.
“Whenever they have to renew their administrative headquarters, which is 65,000 square feet, they say, ‘Hey, Tony, the lease is coming up. Can you help?’” Blake said. “And I say, ‘Yeah, we’re delighted to.’”
Another example he gave was the $1.2 billion sale of IDX in 2006.
“Do you remember IDX?” Blake said. “It was a medical software company in South Burlington. They sold to GE Healthcare. Part of that sale required that GE Healthcare buy the buildings as well as the business. But GE Healthcare does not want to own property; they only want to lease. And they owned property in South Burlington to the tune of about 300,000 square feet. Guess who gets the phone call. ‘Hey, Tony, can you sell these buildings for us?’ Well, sure. They say, ‘We’ll lease them back.’ I say, ‘Will you sign a 10-year lease?’ They say, ‘Sure.’ OK, that’s a very sellable product.’ What was sold was the IDX campus, and GE Healthcare went from being an owner to being a tenant.”
The Vermont Conundrum
Commercial real estate drives the economy, but Vermont is short on commercial real estate — especially industrial space. Something has to change, Blake said.
“I know we don’t want to be like Connecticut,” Blake said. “We don’t want to be like everybody else. And I get it. That’s why I live here. But it’s a chicken-and-egg thing. We’ve got a severe housing shortage. Attracting companies from out of state right now is a real challenge. You don’t have the employment base. We don’t have the housing to support it.”
The conversation then turns, as it inevitably does when talking about development, to Act 250, the state law designed to mitigate the effects of development through an application process that addresses the environmental and community impacts of projects that exceed a threshold in size.
“Act 250, for all of the good it has done over the decades, has stifled speculative commercial real estate development throughout Vermont,” Blake said. “Its grueling, time-consuming and expensive permitting process has controlled growth, but not always in the way it was intended. The vast majority of commercial real estate developers recognize that taking on a project that may take years to get permitted and built is not only very expensive, but also represents a high level of risk.”
Some commercial developments, such as Technology Park in South Burlington, got their master umbrella Act 250 permits in hand, then slowly built out development as the market dictated.
“This method, while perhaps a bit less risky, requires a developer to have significant financial holding power and patience,” Blake said. “The fact remains that Vermont is simply not a business-friendly state, and it is a constant challenge to get businesses to move and/or grow here. A business such as Ben & Jerry’s is still headquartered here only because it was a requirement of the sale to Unilever that the company maintain its base in Vermont.”
Vermont has a hard time competing with other states, Blake asserted.
“Coupled with the costs of doing business in Vermont, including a declining skilled labor force, an aging population and a high cost of living, we struggle to compete with other northeastern states in attracting business,” Blake said. “Vermont is really a service-oriented state. It’s not a manufacturing state. COVID may have helped us somewhat in that it brought an influx of people wanting to enjoy a better and safer lifestyle. Remote working has definitely benefited the economy. Nonetheless, we still lack a solid commercial base in our state, which directly impacts the property taxes that we all pay.”
Blake referenced his friend Rieley’s commercial development in Williston, Finney Crossing.
“It took over 10 years to get permitted and built,” Blake said. “The developers had to have the vision and the financial wherewithal to speculate that when it was eventually built, the market for it would still be there. Fortunately, it has worked out well and now houses some very successful businesses, including LL Bean, Healthy Living Market, Xfinity, Jersey Mike’s and Men’s Wearhouse, among others, as well as a hotel, a free-standing restaurant and over 400 residential units.”
Blake thought it might be an exception to the rule.
“In other words, if I got call today — and this happens, by the way, regularly — from somebody from out of state and they say, ‘Hey, Tony, I need 50,000 square feet of warehouse; let me know what you got,’” he said. “I say, ‘Well, number one, you’ve got to get in line. Number two, we don’t have it. It doesn’t exist.’”
They say, “You have all this land up there. Why didn’t somebody build the warehouse?” Blake added.
“And I say, ‘Well, the reason somebody didn’t build it is because it’s going to take probably three years to get permits — if you can find the land. And it’s going to cost a small fortune.’
“They say, ‘Well, we don’t want to wait three years.’ So, they end up over in Plattsburgh, NY, where they’re welcoming people to come in and the buildings already exist.”
This is the Vermont conundrum, Blake said.
“We battle over this all the time in this state,” he said. “We want to protect our beautiful little state. We don’t want to overdevelop it. We don’t want to become like everybody else. On the other hand, what does it do to our workforce, especially to our youth? My two kids are perfect examples. My 26-year-old works in New York, and my 31-year-old one lives and works in Boston. They can’t find good-paying jobs here. They say, ‘I love it up here. But hey, Dad, you know what? I can’t find a good job.’”
Industrial space, especially, is at a premium.
“There’s a growing demand,” he said, “and COVID actually made it even more so, when you think about it. Now everybody orders online. Things have to be stored and distributed. Well, if the companies can’t find a place to store all their stuff, business is going to be pretty difficult. So, they look for places up here, and we don’t have it. The industrial market right now — speaking primarily in the Greater Burlington area, but it’s true throughout the state — has got a historically low vacancy rate. But in my personal world, one cannot hang a price tag on lifestyle, which is one very big reason we all live here.”
What of Residential Offices?
One question many people ask is why, if there are so many vacant office buildings, can they not be turned into residential spaces. Blake offered a good explanation.
“Some of the office buildings are doing that, but you’re seeing it more in the hospitality industry,” he said. “Older motels, let’s say, and hotels have been converted into residential housing.”
Office buildings are different.
“They aren’t quite as well-equipped,” Blake said. “If you think about it, when you go into an office building, typically there are communal restrooms. And most office buildings, if they’re reasonably new — and I’m wanting to say anything from 1980 on — are going to have a central core in their building. The bathrooms are stacked one upon another on each floor. The elevator? Same thing.
“So, to convert that into residential, we have to get water and plumbing to all these various other places in the building that now don’t have it. It’s cost prohibitive. In a hotel, if you think about it, every room has got a bathroom. You can maybe combine a couple of rooms together and make a kitchen and a bathroom and a couple of bedrooms and living area. That’s an easier conversion than to do it out of an office.”
Does the pressing need for more commercial space mean expansive changes for the construction industry? Blake is unsure of how it will play out in the future.
“From the commercial real estate perspective, I have been working with the developers of Finney Crossing,” Blake said. “That’s a mixed-use retail area. We’ve been very successful in filling up the property as they develop it. But their cost of construction has just been going through the roof. And that is driving up rates in terms of what a landlord needs to get to try to break even.”
The market will have a hard time supporting the high rents that a developer will need to make a profit on his investment.
“That’s not just true with this project; it’s true with office buildings,” Blake said. “The rental rate for a lot of the office buildings in our market has not gone up significantly in 10 years. Yet the cost of retrofitting the construction of new space and everything else has now risen above what these landlords are able to justify from the tenants. There’s a real juggling act going on. I don’t see that changing for a while. Maybe — and I’m not wishing this — but maybe a recession will drive some prices down. I don’t know. But a recession also says people aren’t going to be looking for space to occupy.”
Adaptive Sports
Business may be one thing, but Blake’s heart is also deep into his involvement with adaptive sports.
Everybody has some kind of disability, Blake said, whether it be physical or mental.
Photo: Tony Blake and another coach assist a Vermont Adaptive skier get ready for a day at Sugarbush North in mid-March. VermontBiz photo.
“When I’m training volunteers, one of the first things I do is have them all line up,” he said. “Usually there’s a group of, say, 20. They might be UVM students, they might be retirees. And I’ll say, ‘Every time I mention something that matches something with you, I want you to take one step forward.’ Then I’ll say ‘OK, how many of you wear glasses? Take a step forward. How many of you ever broken a hand or broken a bone? Take a step forward. How many of you have ever had an operation? Take a step forward.’ By the time I’m done asking these questions, every single person will have taken a step forward. Because every one of us has, at one point in time — or even currently — some sort of disability. The idea is that we’re all the same. We all have our issues, so let’s make it work for everybody. It’s a great program.”
Adaptive sports aren’t only for winter; they go year-round.
“In the winter, we have our base at Pico Mountain down near Killington,” he said. “In the warmer months, we have two programs, one at the Waterbury reservoir and one up here on the lake where we do adaptive paddling, adaptive kayaking, adaptive canoeing and sailing, plus biking on the bike path. With our veterans’ program, anybody who’s a veteran, regardless of whether they’re injured or not, can participate with us in a variety of things, from ice climbing to hiking to camping. It’s an amazing program. It’s absolutely phenomenal.”
Organizing Brokers
In the early 1990s, Blake was part of a group of six commercial real estate agents who founded the Chittenden Commercial Real Estate Association.
“It was, and still is, a marketing collective, where members gather several times a year to share listings, haves and wants; listen to speakers who have relevant issues regarding the commercial real estate world; and socialize with our commercial real estate brethren,” Blake said.
On the CCREA website is a list of 45 members, including the Greater Burlington Chamber of Commerce. That seems like a lot of commercial real estate agents for Burlington, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.
“The membership roster does include some of our associate members, who comprise businesses and organizations that have a great deal to do with commercial real estate, but which are not active in the brokerage world,” Blake said. “Developers, appraisers, banks, for example. On the list of brokers that actively pursue and participate on a full-time basis in commercial real estate, there are around eight firms. Of those firms, there are fewer than 20 people who can honestly say they work full-time in the industry and make a living off of commercial real estate brokerage.”
Unlike residential real estate agents, commercial brokers do not subscribe to the multiple listing service, or MLS. Therefore, the CCREA offers an important service.
“Our world is 180 degrees different from the residential real estate world, and most of our properties are not necessarily appropriate to share with the entire real estate world via MLS,” he said. “Up until the founding of CCREA, there were no means by which to share and cooperate with others in our profession.”
The CCREA is a casual and social organization with minimal dues, Blake said.
“We focus on current commercial real estate issues, continuing education for commercial real estate licensing, having speakers whose jobs have relevance to ours, etc.,” he said. “We typically meet as a group about eight times a year, and we rotate who hosts the meetings. We usually meet at a property that one of our members is promoting, which gives us the opportunity to visit and tour a property while also sharing important issues at hand. It’s a good group of dedicated commercial real estate practitioners.”
The Future
The future looks bright for the commercial real estate industry in Vermont; it would look even brighter if there were younger brokers eager to step in and take over, Blake said.
Photo: Tony Blake, a founding partner of V/T Commercial of Burlington. Photo: Baldwin Photography.
“I’m seeing the challenge now, right in front of me,” Blake said. “Here I am, 70 years old, I’ve been doing this now for 37 or 38 years. I started in my 30s. A lot of my clients from back in my 30s have either retired or they’ve passed their portfolio on to somebody younger. It’s a great opportunity now. As these portfolios get transferred to sons, daughters, heirs, whatever, there’s a changing of the guard. It’s a perfect opportunity for somebody in their late 20s or early 30s to get involved.”
However, the younger generation will face the same challenge Blake must contend with: that long gestation period before commercial real estate brokerage pays off.
“You’re not going to start in commercial real estate and expect to be making much money for at least the first couple of years,” Blake said. “In fact, it could be longer than that. The youth today are coming out of school and they’re hitting the ground running. Whereas I came out and I hit the ground and said, ‘Wow, this is fun! How am I going to make money?’ There wasn’t that urgency. Now there is. To appeal to somebody graduating from college and say, ‘You can be your own boss, you can have these wonderful, flexible hours, you can drive around and get to know people,’ they answer, ‘How much money am I going to make?’ ‘Well, the first few years you’re going to make hardly anything.’ And they say, ‘OK, thanks very much.’”
Blake understands why the youth today, with large college loans to pay off, might feel this way. But he still faces the challenge of finding the next generation to take over his business. It isn’t a lack of young people that is the problem, he said; it’s that long payoff time coupled with a plethora of opportunities in other fields.
“Take the internet, for example,” Blake said. “As much as we all rely on it, it has sped everything up so much. And there are so many opportunities, which is great. I think if the internet were around when I graduated, I would have been overwhelmed with opportunity and wouldn’t have known what to do.”
As for Blake’s future plans, his life is so seamlessly wrapped around his friends, his family, his commercial real estate business and his adaptive outdoor work that it would be hard to know where to trim it down.
“I’m going to work on slowly taking the foot off the accelerator,” he said. “That’s why I’d love to find somebody younger to come join the team. My wife is a teacher; I will parallel her retirement. That is probably a couple of years off. But I don’t think I’ll ever stop. Sometimes on the letterheads of attorneys you’ll see ‘Bob Jones, of counsel.’ It means Bob Jones has retired, but he still might have his finger in the pot a little bit. It could be ‘Tony Blake, of counsel.’”
He has spent his life in many aspects of one thing: the service business.
“We don’t have physical things that we sell,” he said. “I’m selling my services. Even though I didn’t end up being a doctor, at least I’m going to have the opportunity to work with people and help them. I don’t mean this to sound sappy, but I get satisfaction out of walking out of a closing with everybody having a smile on their face, shaking hands and maybe giving each other hugs. It’s rewarding. I get a feeling of self-satisfaction. That’s about how I would sum it up.”
Joyce Marcel is a journalist in southern Vermont. In 2017, she was named the best business magazine profile writer in the country by the Alliance of Area Business Publishers. She is married to Randy Holhut, the news editor/acting operations manager of The Commons, a weekly newspaper in Brattleboro.
