Doug Compton wants a Wal-Mart at Sixth Street and Wakarusa Drive.

But not just as a shopper, Lawrence resident, or an interested observer of the unfolding debate about development in the northwest corner of town.

The Lawrence developer owns the land where the retail giant wants to open a second Lawrence store, adding to its stable of 4,750 worldwide.

With neighbors fighting the proposal and city officials circling the wagons to battle it in court, Compton finds himself in an all-too-familiar position — at odds with many in a town he professes to love.

“We’re usually attracted to projects that other people don’t want, the more difficult projects,” said Compton, whose 6Wak Land Investments LLC partnership bought the 52-acre site that includes 17 acres for Wal-Mart after a Kansas City-area developer backed out. “There are a lot of deals out there, but the ones that take a lot of patience, and long-term care are usually the ones that we do …

“It’s definitely more interesting, and it definitely tests your patience and your desire to be in the business we’re in.”

As president of First Management Inc. and managing partner of a handful of other companies, Compton leads a growing business empire that has branched out of Lawrence and into four states.

The sheer size of his holdings — nearly 2,300 apartment units, more than a dozen commercial centers and buildings, a handful of farms and hundreds more acres of land ripe for development — have focused the eyes of an often-skeptical public on his dealings. And while the developer generally tries to avoid the limelight, he is not afraid of controversy.

Offending sensibilities

Charles Jones, a Douglas County commissioner, recalled that Compton once uprooted a state-champion bald cypress tree from a vacant lot in east Lawrence to make way for new construction. And a dilapidated home next to a historic mansion once fell victim to an unexplained fire before it could be incorporated into one of Compton’s new apartment complexes.

Lawrence developer Doug Compton, behind a push to put a second Wal-Mart in Lawrence, says he takes criticism as part of his business. Compton says he tries to find a happy medium with neighbors whenever developing properties in a new town.

“He seems to have a talent for offending the public’s sensibilities,” said Jones, who is reviewing Compton-led plans for opening 800 acres of vacant land southeast of town for new homes and businesses. “Doug always seems to be at the heart of controversy. Whether that’s his nature or the nature of his projects, I’m not sure.”

Compton said it was simply the nature of his work that sometimes makes him a lightning rod.

“Being in the real estate and development business, that means change,” he said. “And nobody likes change.”

Friends and business associates said they consider Compton among the hardest-working and most conscientious people they know. Critics don’t discount his energy, but often question his ways of getting things done. Both sides agree on this: Compton has had a large hand in shaping the face of the community.

“He’s had a big impact,” said Bobbie Flory, executive director of the Lawrence Home Builders Assn. “As we look around Lawrence, we can see Doug’s fingerprint.”

¢ 6News video: Developer sometimes at odds with town he loves¢ Developer drawn to ‘difficult projects’ (10-5-03)¢ Developers to revamp vacant building (9-30-03)¢ Prairie Park neighbors hesitant about growth (9-18-03)¢ City renews Wal-Mart stance (9-13-03)¢ Disputed housing complex approved (6-26-03)¢ More stories about the proposed Wal-Mart

Compromise

A Lawrence city commissioner from 1993 to 1995, Compton has shown a willingness to compromise, if that’s what it takes to get a job done.

A classic case began early last year, when Compton proposed rezoning agricultural land on the southwest corner of Sixth Street and Folks Road.

Nearby residents wanted the land to remain open space or, if it were to be developed, single-family homes. But Compton wanted to build apartments — 120 of them.

For nearly a year, both sides dug in, unwilling to bend.

“Doug certainly has an image that precedes him,” said Steve Wilson, treasurer of the Quail Run Neighborhood Assn., which was formed to challenge the project. “The neighborhoods around Lawrence are very suspicious of developers in general, but Doug specifically because he’s one of the biggest.”

And Quail Run residents were able to block Compton’s project because surrounding landowners signed a “protest petition” that required the Lawrence City Commission to muster a 4-1 “super majority” vote for approval. At the time, a 3-2 vote was the best Compton could hope for.

‘Anger on both sides’

Then-Mayor Sue Hack tried mediating — to no avail.

“There was a fair amount of anger on both sides,” Hack said.

But over time, Wilson said, the combatants began to wear down.

“I think both sides realized we weren’t going anywhere,” Wilson said. “It didn’t benefit either side to continue digging in. The neighbors were certainly not going to give in. And Doug’s not the kind of businessman who backs down.”

The final proposal called for about three dozen single-family homes around the periphery of the property, transitioning to fewer than three dozen apartments on the interior — away from the neighbors.

In June, members of the neighborhood association appeared before the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission to support the project they once bitterly opposed.

“It was a rather lengthy process and it was certainly frustrating for both sides,” Wilson said. “In the end, I think Mr. Compton was genuine in his interest to work with the neighbors.”

Lawrence developer Doug Compton feeds one of his two zebras at his home. Compton's family is host to many animals, including bison and camels.

Value of compromise

Compton saw the value of such compromises years earlier, when he served as a city commissioner. And he heard plenty about the effects of ill-advised developments as he led city efforts to create a comprehensive drainage policy to prevent the rise of flooding problems across the city.

But such lessons from his past don’t make it any easier. They certainly didn’t for the project at Sixth Street and Folks Road.

“We went through 16 different site plans on that 20 acres — 16 in two years before we finally found one that I think’s acceptable to all the neighbors and to us,” Compton said. “We had to find a middle ground, and that’s probably the toughest thing we do every day.”

The issue went down as a mixed grade for Compton in the eyes of city neighborhood organizations.

“All I know is what I’ve heard from people in Quail Run: It started off rough, but ended up better than they expected,” said Caleb Morse, president of the Lawrence Association of Neighborhoods. “I wish it had started that way.”

Bottoms Up

Compton got his start in Lawrence as a student at Kansas University, earning a bachelor’s degree in general studies in 1982. Soon after graduating he bought a bar, the Bottoms Up, from former KU basketball star and NBA stalwart Paul Mokeski.

“I got a loan — $20,000 from a bank back home,” said Compton, who grew up working on farms around Wellington.

It wasn’t long before Compton — son of a Boeing engineer — would see his business career take off. He bought a second bar, The Mad Hatter, before opening a Benetton apparel shop on Massachusetts Street.

By the end of the 1980s, Compton had started what would become a thriving real estate and development business, one that would allow him to shed his retail holdings. He closed the decade by teaming up with former KU basketball coach Larry Brown to open Park Plaza, a shopping strip at 27th and Iowa streets that includes Marling’s Home Furnishings.

The company slowly grew to include about a dozen employees, and Compton — who had slopped hogs, run combines and baled hay on family farms to get through school — wasn’t about to hide behind a desk.

“When I first started, Doug was the one out there running the snowplows to clear all the parking lots,” said Sheryl Krzanowsky, now regional manager for Compton’s property-management and construction businesses. “He’d work every piece of equipment. He was always out in the middle of it.”

Compton said if he had his way, he’d still be doing it.

“Now I can’t,” he said, sitting in an office conference room surrounded by drawings, blueprints and plans for more than a dozen projects. “So much of my time is consumed by all this, I just can’t.”

Growing portfolio

Compton’s holdings — either on his own or through a handful of partnerships — include 2,297 apartments, townhouses and rental homes, most of them in college towns. His Lawrence complexes include Highpointe Apartments, Chase Court and Parkway Commons, which account for 460 of the 1,034 units he has in town.

Even critics of some of his most contested projects give Compton the nod on his follow-through.

“In his favor, he does landscaping,” said Marci Francisco, a former Lawrence mayor and longtime member of the Oread Neighborhood Assn., which represents neighbors near the KU campus. “The project on 11th and Mississippi is a reasonable one. It does look nicer than some other apartments.”

Compton’s commercial properties include several strip commercial centers and free-standing buildings, including four in downtown Lawrence and a couple of car washes. Among his partners are Larry Brown and Danny Manning, who led Kansas University’s basketball team to its last national championship before moving on to success in the NBA, then returning to KU basketball this year.

His only hobby

Such basketball connections — Compton is a fixture behind the KU bench at Allen Fieldhouse and often follows the team on the road — allow the longtime booster to escape the pressures of the business world.

“It’s like the only hobby that I have,” Compton said. “I don’t play golf. I don’t really play any other sports. I don’t gamble. … (The basketball) kind of gets in your blood.”

Through Brown, Compton became friends with Quin Snyder, basketball coach at the University of Missouri. Compton is godfather of Snyder’s son, Owen.

Compton has a basketball hoop outside his house — and a larger, southern-style mansion still being built — on a 40-acre lot north of Free State High School. The image of a Jayhawk is burned into the pavement.

Inside his horse stables, Compton hangs vestiges of KU’s 1988 title run — signed photos and mementos from Brown and Manning, back when they were just friends, not business partners.

The mansion is in Bauer Brook, a 160-acre residential subdivision that has seven lots, including Compton’s own at the end of the cul-de-sac. His 40-acre site already includes a guest house, garages, stables, barn, buffaloes, zebras and other exotic animals.

“It’s absolutely fantastic,” said Maryan Tebbutt, whose family once owned the land. “When this place was first built years ago, it was the biggest and grandest of any of the farms in the area. I knew he would do something special, but I wasn’t so sure it would be as magnificent as this.”

The main house, a southern-style mansion, remains a work in progress more than two years after construction began. Compton keeps a close eye on everything his name touches, whether its the progress of craftsmen bending rails for the home’s grand staircase or the attorneys fighting to get Wal-Mart’s plans approved.

Looking ahead

Compton says he aims to slow down in the years ahead.

“I think the easiest thing we’ve done is to get where we’re at,” he said. “I think one of the hardest things we have in my business right now is to take care of it. And that’s what we focus on more than anything every day is to take care of what we have.”

During the past six months Compton has sold 550 apartments, including Gateway, Heatherwood Valley, College Station and Regency Place complexes in Lawrence. He said he planned to focus more on out-of-town projects, such as the 201-unit Grindstone Canyon complex recently built in Columbia, Mo.

In Lawrence, Compton said he intended to concentrate on projects already in the works:

• Sixth Street and Wakarusa Drive, where he’s pushing to start construction of a Wal-Mart store.
• Sixth Street and Folks Road, where the homes and apartments are pending.
• Vacant land southeast of Lawrence that formerly was owned by Farmland Industries. His 180 acres, most of it southeast of Kansas Highway 10 and O’Connell Road, is expected to include a grocery store and other “neighborhood” shopping opportunities, plus apartments, duplexes and several hundred single-family homes.

Compton, 43, said the three projects would keep him busy for the next five to seven years — and put him in position to retire within 15 years.

“I’ll be sitting at home with my wife and kids, and I’m going to be enjoying what I’ve done the last 15 years,” he said. “I think I’ve been blessed and I’m very fortunate. Sometimes it’s overwhelming how well things have gone, and I would say we’re lucky to be where we’re at.”