Business Hall of Fame: Douglas E. Price III and Karen M. Fanger

It could have become a parking lot. Not more than a half year ago, the vacant Rockefeller Building at 614 W. Superior Ave., built 1903-1905, was in total decay. Picture: broken glass, cut cables, debris everywhere, dangling wires, asbestos, ruined or stolen marble and bronze fixtures. Vandals took what they could carry, and it was said the rats were some of the biggest Cleveland has ever seen.

The general rallying cry called for the 17-story office building to be torn down, marking the end of the structure built by Cleveland industrialist John D. Rockefeller that’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A later owner renamed it the Kirby Building; Rockefeller bought it back. Investors and developers came and looked ... and left.

But not CEO Douglas E. Price III and Karen M. Fanger, the president and chief operating officer of The K&D Group, based in Willoughby and with an office in Terminal Tower. Just the estimate of $100 million in renovations limits a lot of real estate investors and owners, but the two business partners purchased the property in April from a Florida lender for $5.3 million (after a previous redevelopment attempt failed) and sent eviction notices to the rats.

“It’s basically a brick shell. The Rockefeller Building is our biggest challenge we have ever done,” says Price, who gives 2030 as a targeted completion date for a possible 265-unit apartment complex. “When we get the Rock done, it will be our crowning achievement.” 

That’s saying a lot, considering K&D Group owns 43 properties in Cleveland and Akron. Of the 32 building conversions in the city (nine are historic conversions), K&D Group is responsible for one-third, according to Price. Not bad for visionaries and former spouses who began their business in 1984 after watching a television infomercial about real estate investment and a $20,000 home equity line of credit.

Price and Fanger were the only company employees at first, buying an eight-unit apartment building in Mentor. Fanger says over the years she’s done “all the jobs from HR, banking, payroll and maintenance.” She calls K&D Group, “the largest privately owned and operated development group in Greater Cleveland,” to be “a true bootstrap American dream.” 

 “The Rockefeller Building couldn’t be in better hands than K&D. It will be preserved and repurposed,” says Michael Deemer, president and CEO of Downtown Cleveland Inc. “When we talk about converting historical spaces for new uses in the city, K&D leads the way. I also appreciate the business model they created. They combine vision with a very strong practical business sense that allows them to see opportunities others don’t. And they deliver results when others struggle. It’s impossible to imagine Downtown Cleveland without K&D’s work over the past 20 years.”

(Price is chair of the Downtown Cleveland Inc. Board and the Downtown Cleveland Improvement District Board. Fanger is the past chair of the Downtown Cleveland Inc. Board and the Downtown Cleveland Alliance board.)

The long list of K&D Group's real estate rental properties is a who’s who of successful projects. Think Terminal Tower (acquired in 2016), 55 Public Square, Leader Building, Halle Building, Hanna Annex, 668 Euclid Ave. and Stonebridge Waterfront/1500 Detroit Ave. Recently, the company also completed a $40 million conversion of the 127-year-old Electric Building on Prospect Avenue.

Deemer says the 2014 conversion of the former East Ohio Gas Co. building into Residences at 1717 was “one of the first mid-20th-century buildings in the country to be converted from office space to housing.”

“We saved a lot of history and created a lot of memories for people in this city. It’s been rewarding,” says Price, a native Clevelander, who shifted his focus to the urban core from a more scattered Northeast Ohio approach. “It’s the old buildings that exist and have been repurposed. People can come and enjoy that architecture that we probably will never see again. It’s what makes Cleveland, Cleveland.

“Karen and I both have spent a lot of time trying to improve the Cleveland environment,” he adds. “A lot more things are happening over the next few years and we are very excited about that.”

Fanger describes herself as “really a private and modest person.” But she also has a reputation for being a good listener and for the ability to bring people to a consensus. She, too, has a current professional business agenda.

“There’s nothing more I’d love than to see some of the apartments be converted into for-sale condos. That’s a dream of mine,” says Fanger, who says she and Price could have “picked up, lived anywhere and made tons of money in any other city. But we are Clevelanders and chose to stay here and put our money into the city.”    

“K&D is also a family business. We both have kids in the business who are very involved, and now we have grandkids. That adds a whole new element to the business and our lives,” says Price. 

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