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Conlon’s American Dream
by Abdon M. Pallasch
 Just
17 years ago at age 20, Sean Conlon arrived in this country and stayed
in the basement of a cousin who put him to work as a custodian of some
rental properties the cousin owned. Now at 38, he is a rising star in
the real estate/development business in Chicago.
"I love watching jets,” Sean Conlon says, following a white
line down the blue Chicago sky on a cool October afternoon. “I always
imagine they’re going somewhere exotic, but it’s probably
just…Cleveland.”
Few would have thought the poor boy from a big family in Rathangan would
ever have landed at this destination, atop the six-story roof of his own
building just west of the Loop, surveying the city skyline, with cranes
building it ever higher, some of those projects his.
Few but Conlon himself, who always said he was going to be a millionaire
someday. Going to Kildare town with his dad to enter the bank and deal
with checks that had bounced – Conlon resolved that would never
happen to him.
But it wasn’t easy. Just 17 years ago at age 20, he arrived in this
country and stayed in the basement of a cousin who put him to work as
a custodian of some rental properties the cousin owned.
“He felt I’d make a great janitor,” Conlon said. “I
thought I could be something more.”
Now, at age 38, he’s jetting off to California to attend Oprah’s
fundraiser for Barack Obama or off to Dublin to appear on The Late Late
Show with Pat Kenny.
“Ya looked great on the tele tonight,” the Irish customs
officer delaying him at the airport told him after the show in September.
Conlon came to the United States in 1990 from London, where he spent a
year after dropping out of college in Dublin. He shared a flat with 14
other young Irish men, some of whom worked, others of whom drank too much.
They would tease him when he put on a suit to go to interview for bank
jobs. He’d come home to find them lying about the house having lost
another job from not showing up to work and telling their family back
home in Ireland, “Yeah, it’s racism. No jobs for the Irish
here.”
That galled Conlon, he told attendees at a symposium on the success of
the Irish in America at Chicago’s Irish American Heritage Center.
Yes there was anti-Irish sentiment in England but it could be overcome
with hard work. Conlon got hired at a Middle Eastern-owned bank but just
could not get his head around finance.
One night after his rowdy roommates had scattered broken car mirrors up
to the front door of the flat and sent Conlon to answer the door when
the police came, the irate patrolman gave Conlon some sound advice.
“He said, ‘You don’t belong here with this crowd. I’m
going to be back here again next week. Don’t be here,’”
Conlon recalled. He took the advice.
Conlon came to Chicago and kept up his cousin’s flats by day and
studied real estate by night.
He got in on the ground floor of a trend that swept Chicago’s gentrifying
lakefront neighborhoods – tearing down small homes and replacing
them with three-story condominiums. He was a pioneer and hero for developers
– but the Grim Reaper to traditionalists who didn’t want to
see their neighborhoods change.
“I got to know every inch of Lakeview,” he says. “I
knew every lot size, every lot’s zoning. I had done my homework.
I was in the right place at the right time.”
Every night and weekend, he would try to talk people into selling their
homes, so he could tear them down and build condos. His closeness with
Irish immigrant carpenters and other tradesmen was key.
“One time, I jumped over a fence and fell into a big snowdrift,”
Conlon recalled. “The woman who owned the place wasn’t too
happy to see me but I did eventually talk her into selling me her house.”
He hooked up with Koenig & Strey and was selling millions of dollars
of real estate a year. He got married and divorced – working too
many hours to attend to a marriage.
By 2000, he started his own real estate firm, Sussex & Reilly, with
six people. It grew to 300 people with $500 million in sales.
“He was a man on a mission,” said Jim Kinney, president of
competitor Rubloff Residential Properties. “If I knew [how he did
it] I would only be hiring superstars.”
A natural-born salesman with a reassuring smile, Conlon “treats
the guy at Starbucks with an equal amount of respect as he treats his
banker,” says his business partner, Tim Sullivan. “Nobody
has the social skills of Sean. He’s got an unbelievable ability
to engage people. He’s great at building long-term relationships.
Even if the deal doesn’t go through, he’ll still send ’em
a bottle of wine or something.”
Conlon bought Near North National Title after former owner Michael Segal
went to prison. He started Conlon & Co, his holding company. Among
its concerns are Connaught Real Estate Finance, a $100 million fund that
lends money to developers.
He opened a Ralph Lauren on Armitage. He and a partner are building vacation
homes in Michigan. He’s working on a resort in Colorado.
One of his most successful ventures is Conlon & Co. Ireland, an office
in Dublin that advises European investors where to put their money in
American projects. With the Euro-to-dollar ratio as good as it has ever
been for Europeans, a lot of them are looking to invest here, he says.
Much of his job in this struggling real estate market involves holding
the hands of his nervous investors and project partners assuring them
that everything will pick up again and to stay the course. He has mastered
the art.
“If people didn’t panic and took the long view, everything
would be fine,” he says. “I’m buying a lot of stuff.
By the end of next year, we’ll be out of this.”
Conlon’s cavernous modern office in a rehabbed warehouse features
exposed brick and wooden support beams. He sits behind a desk that 50
Titanic passengers could have floated on to safety. On it sits, among
other stacks of paper, a picture of a fairly intact Irish castle that
needs a bit of work. Is he thinking of buying it?
He smiles.
He’s thinking of trading up from his place in Carlow alright.
If only his father could have lived to see his success.
“He instilled in me that you can be anything you want in America,”
Conlon recalled. He proved his father the busdriver right. Some of his
five siblings have come to join him, including brother Kieran who helps
run the company.
“I think my story has captured people’s imagination because
I’m an average person who did something pretty amazing because I
believed I could,” Conlon said. “And honestly, I believe somebody
getting off the plane today has the same opportunity. If you want it bad
enough, you’ll make it happen. Hard work will get it done.”
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