Graaskamp Alumni Share Memories and Lessons Learned From James Graaskamp

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What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, goes the old cliché. In the case of James Graaskamp, it was a truism that helped legions of college students to grow stronger as well.

Such was clear at the Graaskamp Center dedication ceremony April 25 and 26 in Madison, where over two hundred alumni, board members and other professional and personal Graaskamp fans convened to pay tribute to their late friend and teacher.

Graaskamp became an icon in his field due to the clarity and insight he brought to the fields of real estate feasibility analysis and development. But because he conducted his life’s work from the confines of a wheelchair, his impact went far beyond the classroom.

James Graaskamp

Bryant Wangard (B.S. 1977; M.S. 1979) is now a partner in Wangard Properties of Minneapolis after serving as co-founder and president of TOLD Development, based in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Back in the mid-'70s, however, he was an undergraduate who took at job as one of Graaskamp’s aides and in doing so, secured a ringside seat to the professor’s private life.

As it stood, it wasn’t very private. Graaskamp, paralyzed from the neck down as a result of polio as a teen, required several assistants at all times for matters both personal and professional. “I probably shared a thousand meals with him,” Wangard told the crowd assembled in the Fluno Center auditorium. “I traveled around the country, to business meetings, on fishing trips. I got to be the fly on the wall.”

In return, he received room and board, and a salary that paid for tuition. “It was a great gig for a kid.”
Through every challenge, Graaskamp maintained a sense of humor, Wangard said. At 6’5” and 272 pounds, he was a massive man who once bet his aides that he could lose 50 pounds over the summer. “What’s he going to do, run it off?” quipped Wangard. “But he proceeded to starve himself moderately through the year, and finally plateaued at 230 pounds.”

Bryant Wangard

At that point, determined to win his bet, Graaskamp took a diuretic that helped him to lose the final ten pounds. “He was a clever, devious man,” Wangard said. “Rumor has it he had the same bet with the next bunch of guys.”

Arun Bhatia (M.S. 1974), who left Bombay, India in 1973 to study at UW-Madison, called Graaskamp “the best teacher I ever had.” For over 30 years, Bhatia has been one of New York City’s most successful real estate developers, builder of such luxury high-rises as The Stanford, the Strand, and the Dunhill, all in Manhattan. His encounter with the Graaskamp style came right away: “ ‘Anyone who’s not an optimist, get the hell out of my class!’ ” he recalls Graaskamp telling his introductory real estate students.

"He also said, 'As a developer, if you just compete on price, you'll go bankrupt. You have to compete on quality,' " he recalls. "I follow that in my business."

During the New York City real estate bust in the early 1990s and then again after 9/11, Bhatia got nervous, but found himself reassured by Graaskmap's words. “I had one or two projects I thought would be a problem," he said. "But I remembered what he said and kept faith in myself, and was able to successfully turn things around."

Optimism was no guarantee of success, however. From Graaskamp, Bhatia also learned how to do the math. He found himself dreaming of constructing 35-story skyscrapers every time he’d pass a disheveled building or unused parking lot. Then he’d stop himself short. “I learned to resist the ‘weakness to build,’ ” he said. “You’ve got to have discipline. Not every property lends itself to what you think.”

 

 

Arun Bhatia

 

The approach has yielded many successes and a few surprises. In 2001, after being approached by Manhattan Marymount College, in need of more dormitories but with no expertise in producing them, Bhatia crunched some numbers and discovered that there was a win-win solution for all: The Capri, a 47-story skyscraper just nearing completion. He decided to sell the first 32 floors at cost to the school, and sell or rent the luxury condos at the top. (The Capri’s sales motto? “Luxury Begins with Altitude.”)

When James Graaskamp died, Bhatia remembered, thousands of his students all over the world held a synchronous toast in their professor’s honor. “We were sad,” he said. “But we all realized what an honor it had been to study with him.”

He repeated himself. “It was an honor.”

The final panelist was Stephen Jarchow (B.S. 1974, M.S. 1979), who first met Graaskamp as a high school kid selling Cokes at Camp Randall Stadium. “I knew him as a guy with a gift for gab, who was fun to talk to,” Jarchow told the crowd. “Then I took a real estate class and there he was.”

Jarchow eventually graduated with degrees in law and real estate. He worked in real estate but then got sidetracked into movie production, and now is chairman and CEO of Regent Entertainment, which in 1998 produced the Hollywood hit “Gods and Monsters.”

As with Wangard and Bhatia, Jarchow didn’t just find Graaskamp an intellectual giant, but someone who inspired them, by virtue of his example, to persevere through their darkest moments. “What was fascinating about Graaskamp was not only his gaggle of students, but also his enthusiasm and energy,” Jarchow said. “I never saw him down.”

“When things went badly [in my life], I would take comfort from this.” At one point, facing a financial disaster, he called Graaskamp for advice. “Well, Sport, it sounds like you’re having an adventure,” Graaskamp responded.

In May, 1988, Jarchow got the call that Graaskamp had suddenly died. He had been planning a trip to Madison to teach in Graaskamp’s class, but now his visit was of a different nature. He wound up spending time with Jean Davis, Graaskamp’s companion, and later decided to compile a book from Graaskamp’s papers and notes. With help from a a $10,000 Urban Land Institute grant. The result, "Graaskamp on Real Estate," was published in 1991 by the Urban Land Institute and remains a must-read for any Graaskamp fan.

“It gave me the opportunity to re-read, to restudy,” Jarchow said, adding that writing the book was a “cathartic process.”

Stephen Jarchow

How did Jim Graaskamp do it all—teach, travel, research, consult, mentor—in the face of such personal difficulties? Jarchow recalled his long-ago conversation with Graaskamp. “He viewed it as his adventure,” Jarchow said.

More than once, Bryant Wangard has asked himself similar questions. “Was Graaskamp’s handicap a good thing or a bad thing?” he still wonders. The truth, he said, is that everyone benefited from it, in one way or another.

“He focused on succeeding,” Wangard said. “After succeeding, he focused on us.”

 

James Smith, managing principal of Kensington Realty Advisors (B.A. 1975, M.S. 1977) moderated the panel. He is shown with a copy of Stephen Jarchow's book, "Graaskamp on Real Estate."