Jim Sullivan, retail developer and brokerage founder, dies at 74

Jim Sullivan stands with son JJ and daughter Leigh (Courtesy Leigh Sullivan)

Jim Sullivan, who developed retail properties and opened restaurants around Denver and founded the brokerage SullivanHayes during a colorful career, has died.

Sullivan died Tuesday afternoon at age 74 while listening to the Beatles in the hospital, according to his daughter Leigh Sullivan. She said her father was diabetic, and had ongoing health issues and “died of stupidity and deferred maintenance.”

Sullivan filed for bankruptcy midway through his career, and ended his life living at the Four Seasons tower downtown. His work can be seen in suburbs such as Westminster and Denver’s posh Cherry Creek.

“He left his mark on this city,” Leigh said.

U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper said in a phone call that he got to know Sullivan well during Hickenlooper’s days as mayor and governor, when both were part of a monthly poker circle that “was an opportunity for a lot of driven, competitive people to let their hair down.”

“As hard driving as he was in business, and by all accounts he was a hard driver, he had his own code,” Hickenlooper told BusinessDen. “And he was generous beyond what most people would know … Love him or hate him, people respected him because he was straightforward on everything he did.”

Sullivan was born in Chicago in 1949 to a poor working-class family, his daughter said. In the late 1960s, he was drafted into the Army and served in Vietnam. Leigh said he was “highly decorated” and she was in attendance when he later spoke at the unveiling of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Sullivan was at Fort Carson near Colorado Springs when he was discharged in 1970, according to a 2000 profile in the Denver Post, and decided to stay in Colorado. Leigh said he managed a bar in Greeley for a time before deciding to get into real estate.

“I went through old Fortune and Forbes magazines and looked at rich people and saw that most of them made their money in oil or real estate,” Sullivan told the Post in 2000. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to be rich.”

Jim Sullivan in 1968. (Courtesy Leigh Sullivan)

Leigh said her father was “a consummate salesman.” He worked as a broker at Grubb & Ellis before deciding to go out on his own. In 1978, Jed Hayes, a fresh graduate of the University of Denver whose family had worked in real estate in Connecticut, answered a job ad Sullivan had placed in the newspaper.

“I interviewed with him and we kind of hit it off, basically,” Hayes said Wednesday.

Eventually, Hayes said, what was originally Sullivan & Co. became SullivanHayes. The company focused on retail real estate, considered unappealing at a time when Denver was undergoing an office building boom thanks to the oil and gas industry.

“Retail was, why would you want to do that?” Hayes said.

“We were naive and hardworking and lucky — a little of all of that.”

The firm offered brokerage services and property management, in addition to developing and constructing its own projects. Hayes said he was on the brokerage side and more detail-oriented, and Sullivan was a big-picture guy who “loved development and designing and conceptualizing things.”

“He loved making things that were a little unique, that had great taste to them,” Hayes said.

Tom Castle joined SullivanHayes in 1985 and is now a partner at the firm, which Sullivan sold two decades ago.

“He had a vision, and retail was boring. He brought life and enthusiasm and art and beauty into a retail project. It wasn’t just a parking lot with doors,” Castle said.

The firm’s development projects include retail centers at 88th and Wadsworth, and Westminster City Center at 92nd and Sheridan. Sullivan also redeveloped an Archdiocese of Denver property at 2nd and Columbine in Cherry Creek around the turn of the millennium.

“It fits in so well with Cherry Creek, but he did it 20 years ago,” said SullivanHayes partner John Liprando, who joined the firm in 1984.

Sullivan wasn’t immune to market forces. As Denver’s economy faltered with the decline of the oil industry in the late 1980s, so did his finances. He filed for bankruptcy in 1990, listing assets of $51 million and debts of $77 million, according to a 1992 story in the Rocky Mountain News. At the time, he estimated his net worth was less than $1 million, down from $50 million in the mid-1980s.

“I did two tours in Vietnam, and Vietnam was lemonade compared to filing for bankruptcy … I never questioned who I was or what I was about when I was in Vietnam,” he told the Rocky in 1992.

“I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor,” Sullivan told the Denver Post in 2000. “Being rich is better.”

Hayes said he moved back to Connecticut in the early 1990s to raise his family and sold Sullivan his stake in the company midway through that decade. His firm there is called SullivanHayes Northeast, even though Sullivan didn’t have much to do with it, because the brand had built a strong reputation. It’s not affiliated with the Colorado SullivanHayes.

Liprando said he “never saw anybody that could think on his feet like he did.” Sullivan would at times need to go before local government officials to get approvals for the firm’s projects.

“He really thought it was a detriment to think too much in advance about what to say at a meeting, because he didn’t know what way that meeting was going to go,” Liprando said.

From left to right: Jim Sullivan, Jacob Mazin, Jenn Abel and John Liprando (Courtesy Leigh Sullivan)

Sullivan sold SullivanHayes in 2004 to professional tennis player Michael Chang and his family. The company now offers just brokerage services. 

In recent years, Sullivan has been “semi-retired,” according to his daughter Leigh. He and her husband Travis Plakke have run Sullivan Group Real Estate Services, whose services include fee development for clients such as Eagle Rock Distributing Co.

Restaurants have also been a family business. In the 2000s, Sullivan Restaurant Group concepts included Ocean in Cherry Creek North and Oscar’s, a steakhouse attached to the Diamond Cabaret strip club downtown.

Norm Brownstein, founder of powerhouse law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, said Wednesday he’d known Sullivan so long — at least 45 years — that he couldn’t remember how they first got acquainted with each other.

“He was an incredible entrepreneur, restaurateur and developer and he had a very, very keen insight on the future growth of Denver over those many years,” Brownstein said, adding Sullivan had “an incredible Irish sense of humor.”

In a Facebook post, former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb called Sullivan his “dear friend and Chicago running buddy.”

Sullivan was married twice, but single at the time of his death, his daughter said. He is survived by two children, three grandchildren and one great-grandchild named after him.

“He was smart, he was quick, he was a pain in the ass, and if he loved you he would do anything for you,” Leigh said.

She said a non-religious celebration of life will be held. Details hadn’t been finalized as of press time. Her father, who otherwise “planned nothing,” left detailed instructions for it, including that he wants no flowers and that a message from him must be read. Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” will be played.

“He wanted to make sure that the booze is flowing freely and there are good appetizers,” Leigh said. “He wrote this down.”