Duo retires after 35 years in housing development
Developing housing can be a career filled with ups and downs, riding the booms and busts of a local economy. And it’s an industry that holds long working relationships.
For two Calgarians, the past 35 years have been more up than down. Mike Butt and Paul Funk, both 75, are taking a bow from the Swan Group after three and a half decades, thousands of housing units, and plenty of laughs. Butt contracted as general manager, while Funk was the prime consultant and marketing director for Calvanna Developments, owned by the Swan Group.
They say it’s time to put aside the daily grind for a more leisurely approach. Both are considering a boat cruise in Europe with their wives, for instance. And Funk plans to spend more time volunteering at the Alberta Children’s Hospital.
They first worked together when Funk was an owner of Horizon Village Corp., a company that introduced 55-plus condo living to Alberta in the early 1980s and also had projects in British Columbia and Manitoba.
Butt left Alberta for Arizona following the housing crash in the early 1980s. He returned to Alberta on Funk’s invitation to manage projects in central and northern parts of the province. Shortly after returning, Butt moved to Nanaimo to head up a housing project at the Golf and Country Club.
They secured the land, began servicing it, then ran into financing difficulty, as much of Horizon Village’s capital was tied up in a tower project in Edmonton.
Casting a look around for a financing solution put the pair in touch with Calgary developer Richard Li, who was involved in single-family housing at that time and shortly after founded the Swan Group. Li was looking to step out on his own with multi-family developments, and he liked the look of the project and the pair. The Nanaimo project regained its footing and they were back in business.
“I went from being afraid of walking into the clubhouse to people buying me drinks,” Butt says. “Richard and I did that first project together in Nanaimo, and finished that project and made a lot of nervous homeowners, who had made deposits, happy.”
The Nanaimo project wrapped up successfully at the end of the 1980s, and Funk and Li continued working together on a project in Calgary, in Edgemont.
“I made a deal with Richard that I was ( his company’s) prime consultant and would do all their marketing, which is how that first project started, and that went very well,” Funk says. “And from there on, we just kept going for 30 years with the same concept. We knew the 50-plus market very well, and felt that we couldn’t have a better partner than Richard.”
Butt was back in Calgary, run- ning another company, when he crossed paths with Li again.
“I want you to join me,” Butt says Li told him.
“We (Butt and Funk) wanted a good person like Richard to do projects with, but we wanted to keep our own independence, as well. Richard made a really good offer, so we went forward. Overall, we did thousands of units, and we got into the assisted living business as we went on.”
To begin with, Li had long been interested in building something for seniors that went beyond the Calvanna assisted living concept. He hired Butt to spend a year investigating the opportunities and doing market research with an eye to building one.
The shovels on their first project never even hit the dirt before selling out under the trio. It was a plan for condos and assisted living in Valley Ridge, near the entrance to the community. They worked with an architect experienced in assisted living, and drew up plans.
“Just weeks before we were ready to start our own marketing to raise money with investors, we got a phone call from the B.C. teachers’ pension fund, and they said they’d like to buy it. And they did,” Butt says.
Then Li decided he still wanted to build and run an assisted living project. Selling to the pension fund brought in short-term funds, but he was interested in some longerterm returns, too.
Swan Group went on to develop such projects as Whitehorn Village Retirement Community and its current project, Swan Evergreen Village. These projects allow people who would like to invest in real estate but don’t want to manage tenants or deal with the physical upkeep of a property an opportunity to buy into a large project.
With Funk and Calvanna, Swan Group did projects in Riverbend, Hawkwood, West Hills, Okotoks and others.
“We’ve been lucky with Richard, and not just that we met him at the right time,” Butt says of the partnership.
“For different reasons, we were (all) needing someone to work with. Where he’s been excellent is he has the money to do it. He can pay the trades on time, he can go through the rough times, he can do the things that a lot of developers could have trouble doing, and some did. To his credit with the homeowners, if there was something that we did wrong and needed to be fixed, he fixed it.”
And Li made it easy to do business, Funk says.
“He’s probably one of the most honourable people I know."
Overall, we did thousands of units, and we got into the assisted living business as we went on.