Not your average mogul
To Joe Weston, good investments are a tool to benefit the community
By KRISTINA BRENNEMAN Issue date: Tue, Jun 28, 2005
The Tribune
Joe Weston was just a “snot-nosed kid” in the 1950s when he used $2,500 earned from a paper route to buy a duplex in Northeast Portland.
He still owns the duplex, but he’s added a few more acquisitions over 50 years. Nowadays, Weston owns some $300 million in office buildings and apartments from Raleigh Hills to Lloyd Center.
Though he’s chosen to keep his investments low-key, Weston’s signature is on nearly every mortgage in the Pearl District because of his majority investment in Hoyt Street Properties. And his American Property Management Corp. signs can be spotted on 230 buildings throughout metro Portland.
The company, along with Weston Investment Corp., is based at the Northeast Broadway office Weston built in 1967.
But the 67-year-old “one-man band” is far from finished. He’s now developing the 26-story Benson Tower on Southwest Clay Street, 151 units of housing that will be completed in spring 2007. Weston also is interested in developing the former Beacon Building site, at North Interstate Avenue and Broadway, into condos.
“We can bring that area back,” he says.
To Weston, who grew up poor in Northeast Portland and attended All Saints School and Central Catholic High School, being wealthy means something more substantial than “handing out $10 bills or putting your name on a building.”
Each December, he hands over a piece of his property to the Oregon Community Foundation, which oversees the Joseph E. Weston Public Foundation.
Weston Investment then leases back the property, providing an income to the foundation, whose endowment now totals $44.5 million. Weston has donated 90 parcels of land since 1991, including his $6.9 million interest in the Broken Top Golf Club in central Oregon.
This year, the foundation will disburse $1.25 million in student scholarships and nonprofit grants to organizations including Blanchett House, Camp Fire USA, Friends of Children and Habitat for Humanity.
“Other people can support the symphony and opera,” he says. “My real thrust is to help the working poor.”
Weston even presented the book “The Working Poor: Invisible in America,” by David K. Shipler, to his foundation’s board of directors last Christmas.
The commitment to those less fortunate, Weston says, comes from his parents. His dad was a commission salesman, his mom a nurse who donated time to anyone in need.
Weston “comes from a very modest background,” says Greg Chaillé, president of the Oregon Community Foundation. “He was raised with a tradition of giving within his Catholic faith. His faith guides his giving as well. It’s something that is part of his life. As he becomes very wealthy it is an opportunity to be more philanthropic. He’s acquiring it to benefit the community.”
Weston’s two children, Jeffrey, 30, and Tiffany, 27, are well provided for, he says. “I didn’t want to pass wealth from one generation to another. I made that decision a long time ago.”
As he gets older, Weston’s “enjoying life more, participates in lectures, benefit events for the organization,” Chaillé says.
“There is the message that opportunity is out there for anyone; through vision and hard work you can achieve great things. He’s an example of the American dream. For some businesspeople it’s a break from their tough persona at work. He’s giving people an opportunity.”
Today, Weston — whom friends call “a big gruff bear” — lives an unpretentious life in a rented apartment near the Rose Garden and travels on the weekends to his Beaver Lake home.
“You’re not going to see Joe at Bluehour, he’s at Nobby’s,” said developer Homer Williams, whom Weston met 35 years ago at the Imperial Bank.
In those days, Weston was buying apartments and warehouses and running the Portland Real Estate School, which he started in 1959. Industry veterans still come up to him and say, “You were my teacher.”
“He’s a character, but he’s got a good heart,” Williams said of the man he calls Joseph. “He’s done a lot of good things in the community, and people don’t know about it.”
Weston is notoriously thrifty, Williams said: “I can’t get him to buy a first-class airline ticket. I can’t get him not to get to the back of the bus. It means less money to give to others.”
Weston said it’s just not his cup of tea.
“My parents were dirt-poor,” he said. “I’ve never been exposed to private clubs. I’m very happy eating in middle-class restaurants.”
Weston has helped finance various Williams projects, most notably early Hoyt Street Properties buildings in the Pearl District. And contrary to recent reports, the two men said they have not had a falling-out. Weston said he merely decided not to fund Williams’ future projects.
“He’s very talented,” Weston said. “I just elected not to take part.”
Weston retains a majority interest in Hoyt Street Properties — 75 percent ownership — working with the firm on the Metropolitan building and two other condominium buildings in the Pearl.
“It’s been very good to us,” he said of the Northwest Portland neighborhood. “We have to make some major decisions in the next few months on the rest of the land toward Fremont Bridge.”
Nine city blocks remain of the original property acquired to build on.
“It’s a gamble we took, and everything fell into place with the (low) interest rates,” Weston said.
His career has been all about risk — namely, his.
“I’m a one-man operation and not the most patient person in the world,” Weston said.
Williams described him as a contrarian who buys apartments when everyone else is buying office buildings.
“You never know what the guy is going to do,” he said, calling the Commonwealth Building, the Pietro Belluschi-designed stainless steel office tower on Southwest Fifth Avenue, Weston’s “best buy.”
Weston, who plans to renovate the building’s upper-level interior, said he wishes there were 10 more Commonwealths to buy.
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