Pete Gentry is a partner with the recently established CLC Associates and CLC Realty companies located in the Salisbury Lakes office complex on Salisbury Rd.
What does your company do?
“We have two businesses. We started out with CLC Associates, a licensed mortgage broker business. We did that with the idea that eventually we would form the real estate business because I’d been doing commercial real estate for about three years prior to this. Then we formed CLC Realty in late August. With those two organizations we do commercial and residential mortgages, home mortgages, and loans. We’re a broker, we put a borrower with a lender. We’re involved with things all over the county.”
Who’s with you?
“The company consists of Tom Frohne, Susan Turney and me.”
What did you do
prior to this job?
“I had been in IT. I graduated and worked for IBM in West Virginia and Florida. I’ve been a corporate IT director for Tree of Life in St. Augustine and I was IT director for a few years for the ATP Tour in Ponte Vedra. I was also IT director until 2000 for Bombardier Capital Mortgage company on St. Augustine Rd. So I’ve got a lot of corporate management background.”
What is the advantage of having both businesses?
“Sometimes we see advantages and some opportunities that cross. If we’re working a real estate deal and a person needs to borrow money to buy the property, we don’t have to go find a mortgage broker to help them out because we can do it. There are some opportunities I think in working one off the other and that is why we formed both companies.”
What do you like
best about your job?
“It’s a lot of fun. Every deal you work on is a little bit different and it’s fun putting them together and negotiating between buyers and sellers. The people you work with are very interesting, especially in commercial real estate. Each one of them have their own set of challenges, but when it works and you finally get something put together that satisfies everybody, you get a since of satisfaction out of that. It also works at a pace that is easy to keep up with.”
What is most challenging
about your job?
“Commercial real estate is not easy. There are a lot of contractual and legal things you get into that are unique on every deal. The challenging thing is that you can work and work and work and you think you have it, and then it falls apart in the end and that’s the end of it. Then you just go onto the next one. You can’t let it drag you down because they don’t all succeed. It takes a willing buyer and a willing seller to make a contract.”
Why did you decide
to start the company?
“For two reasons. We needed work and this was something we could do on our own and I’d worked for myself in the past. We thought that the three of us together could do better than the three of us separately, so we complement each other and support each other. We’ve known each other for a long time, and know how each other thinks, so we thought we’d give this a try. All three of us are used to working with executives and business and we have a good business savvy, so I think it makes us uniquely qualified to do a lot of commercial mortgages and commercial real estate.”
Is the company involved
with downtown development?
“We are really involved in the Springfield area. We have also started in some property management as of the first of the year. One of the properties we’ll be managing is 140 W. Monroe St. right on Hemming Plaza. I’ve been downtown for the last two years before I came here, so I’m well acquainted with downtown and I’m active in downtown activities.”
Are you involved
in any organizations?
“Several. One is dhe Deerwood Kiwanis Club where I am the current secretary-treasurer and a past president. I’m also a past president of the Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP) and on the board of directors of the Downtown Council. I’ve been a member of the Downtown Council for almost four years.”
Personal
The Purdue graduate was born in Kansas but grew up in Detroit. He has lived in Jacksonville for 30 years and now lives on the Southside.
— by Carrie Resch