Page 46 —
COLORADO REAL ESTATE JOURNAL
— May 18-May 31, 2016
which he didn’t like.
In 1976, he went to work for
Gov. Dick Lamm to focus on
health care issues.
Part of his job was to oversee
nursing homes.
“We worked on ways to
improve care at nursing
homes,” he said.
Most of the nursing homes
were “adequate,” but none of
them were very good, he said.
He also got a look at the
worst ones, where residents
were being overmedicated,
strapped into chairs and often
lived in overcrowded, squalid
conditions.
“They were just being ware-
housed before they died,”
Schonbrun said.
“They were run by nasty
people and they were
gloomy,” he said.
“Thinking back, I think part
of my inspiration for Balfour
was to not be like that. At the
same time, I did not want to
be part of a revolution and
end up being a despot like
(Fidel) Castro.”
He also was the chairman of
a clean air quality committee
spearheaded by Lamm and
Denver Mayor Federico Peña.
“When I came here, there
was this terrible gray cloud
and through our efforts we
helped clean it up,” he said.
“I’m very proud of that.”
After three years with
Lamm, he was recruited as
the No. 2 person at National
Jewish Health, with the under-
standing that he would be
groomed to replace the aging
president of the hospital.
“National Jewish is one of
the best research and teach-
ing hospitals in the country,”
Schonbrun said.
“It was the No. 1 respiratory
hospital in the country,” he
said.
After about two years, the
president and CEO had a heart
attack and decided to retire.
Schonbrun was tapped to
replace him.
“I was only 31 when I got
the job,” and the trustees
thought it was vey likely that
he would spend the rest of his
career there.
“I told them they should
expect me to stay there for five
years and maybe 10 years at
the outside,” he said.
Instead, he spent 13 years at
National Jewish. He still has
ties with National Jewish, as
he has been on the board since
2006.
His next stop was at Blue
Cross, which recruited him,
but it wasn’t a good fit.
“At that time, and I don’t
know what it is like today, it
was very bureaucratic. It was
far more bureaucratic than
National Jewish. It was even
more of a bureaucracy than
the state government, which is
saying a lot.”
He left to become a budding
venture capitalist in Palo Alto,
California, marking one of the
few times he has left Colorado
during the past 42 years.
His charge was to raise
money for companies that
could find better ways to man-
age diseases that were effec-
tive both in terms of care and
cost.
“I found some really exciting
programs, but I could never
get the venture capital funds
excited enough to fund them,
so I started looking around the
corner,” for another job.
In the mid-1990s, he moved
to Miami to join a friend who
was the president of Vitas, a
national, for-profit hospice
system.
Just joining the company
was a sea change for him, as
far as his perspective on a for-
profit business.
“It’s worth noting I was a
child of the ’60s and I thought
all business was bad,” Schonb-
run said.
“A good thing was to work
for nonprofits and the govern-
ment, which I had done,” he
said.
But working for the hospice
company and to some extent
working as a venture capital-
ist, changed his mind.
“I realized that making
money and doing good were
not mutually exclusive,” he
said.
Vitas hired a new president
and he left the company.
He moved back to Colorado
and decided after working for
a for-profit company and as a
venture capitalist, he wanted
to grow a company from
scratch.
“I just wasn’t sure in what
field it would be,” he said.
While working at Vitas, he
moved his mother from a
senior center in Boulder to one
in Miami.
He now brought her back to
Denver and put her in Shalom
Park.
He realized that in every
center he had been in, some-
thing was always lacking.
“The Miami center looked
nice, but the level of care
wasn’t as good as in Boulder,”
he said.
“The Shalom center had the
best educational programs,
but the food was about what
you would expect at a college
dorm.”
He realized the needs of
aging, wealthy baby boomers
weren’t being met by most
facilities.
And, unlike the previous
generation, which grew up in
the Depression, baby boom-
ers weren’t adverse to spend-
ing money, as long as they
felt they were getting a lot of
value for the money.
He believes he has achieved
those goals at Balfour, where
residents dine on gourmet
meals, they have their choice
of 300 activities a month and
free transportation whether
they need to see a doctor or
are in the mood for a shopping
spree at Cherry Creek.
He also hires top people
from hotels.
“I recruit the top people
from the hospitality industry
and pay them very well,” he
said.
At Balfour, he also can
indulge his longtime passion
of good architecture.
For example, he hired
renowned architect Robert
A.M. Stern to design the Bal-
four center in Riverfront. That
development was delayed by
the Great Recession and he
later brought in Klipp Archi-
tecture to refine the design.
“I will never do cookie-cut-
ter designs,” Schonbrun said.
The design of every center
must be tailored to the city
and site. Also, the interior
must be as inviting as the exte-
rior.
The interior design is impor-
tant even to the color of the
paint. He said many centers
paint their walls a drab white
or grey, so as not to offend
anyone. But his centers don’t
shy away from brighter colors,
which he thinks brightens the
mood of the residents.
Going forward, he envisions
opening other Balfour Senior
Centers in “super” high-
income ZIP codes, across the
country.
“I am more inclined to open
them in the Western states,
probably focusing on Califor-
nia, than on the East Coast,”
he said.
When not working, he
spends a lot of time with his
twin 12-year-old boys who
he has with wife Susan Jeroe,
who is the general counsel for
Balfour.
“I spent a lot of time shut-
tling them to skiing, soccer
and basketball games and
things like that,” he said.
As a family, they also like to
travel outside of the country
once a year and he hits the
gym three times a week.
“Chronologically, the calen-
dar tells me I am 67, but inter-
nally, I think of myself as 39,”
he said.
“Back in the day, I played
a lot of tennis and was pretty
good, but I haven’t played
much tennis the past 10 years,
so I plan to get back to that,
too.”
One thing he doesn’t plan
to do is abandon Balfour for
another career choice.
“If you looked at my
resume, I would look like a
real job hopper,” Schonbrun
said.
“I love what I do. And I
think we are only in the sec-
ond or third inning of this
industry. I think it is about
to really take off. I’m going
to keep doing this until they
carry me out.”
s
Schonbrun
in Colorado, NAIOP is consid-
ering creating a national event
in which the winner would
compete against teams from
other chapters, according to
Bisacquino.
Kathryn Spritzer of the city
and county of Denver’s North
Denver Cornerstone Collab-
orative chaired the 2016 Rocky
Mountain Real Estate Chal-
lenge.
This year’s judges were:
Doug Bakke, CBRE Inc.; Dean
Barber, McWhinney; Karen
Blumenstein, Flower & Stone
Ltd.; Tracy Huggins, Denver
Urban Renewal Authority; Jim
Neenan, Prime West Cos.; Dan
Metzger, Brue Capital Part-
ners; Ashley Powell, NAIOP
corporate chairman, of Ben-
tall Kennedy; Rebecca Stone,
OZ Architecture; Mary Sulli-
van, HFF LP; and Rick Wells,
REGen LLC. Leanne Toler of
Stifel Financial Corp. coordi-
nated the judging process.
s
RMREC
National Society of Professional
Surveyors has become the suc-
cessor to the American Soci-
ety on Surveying and Map-
ping, thus changing what this
type of survey is called. An
ALTA survey will comply with
the minimum standard detail
requirements for ALTA/NSPS
land title surveys adopted by
the American Land Title Asso-
ciation and NSPS, the latest
version of which has an effec-
tive date of Feb. 23, 2016.
Some surveyors will quote a
much higher price for an ALTA
survey than for an improve-
ment survey plat, although the
level of accuracy in the bound-
ary measurements is likely to
be much the same. The dif-
ference lies in the information
that is provided on an ALTA
survey, which is greater than
that required in an improve-
ment survey plat. An ALTA
survey will (or should) iden-
tify each title exception from
the title commitment and will
indicate whether the excep-
tion is shown on the ALTA
survey, or does not affect the
surveyed property, or affects
the surveyed property but is
not capable of being shown. An
ALTA survey may also contain
over a dozen items of addition-
al information (e.g., addresses,
flood zones, gross land area,
topographic information, cur-
rent zoning classification, exte-
rior dimensions, square foot-
age and height of buildings,
substantial features, parking
spaces, location of utilities
and adjoining owners). When
ordering an ALTA survey, the
surveyor will ask you to check
the items in Schedule A of
the minimum standard detail
requirements that you want the
survey to show.
Trap:
Even if
a buyer does not want to pay the
additional cost for an ALTA sur-
vey, a lender may require it, as
may the title insurance company.
Although the title commitment
usually will state that the title
insurance company requires an
ALTA survey in order to delete
standard exceptions 1 to 3 (the
so-called “survey exceptions”),
in fact title insurance compa-
nies often accept an improve-
ment survey plat. A lawyer is
generally much happier when
the client orders an ALTA sur-
vey rather than something less.
Who, the buyer or the seller,
orders and pays for the new
ILC or new survey? This is a
negotiated item, but I see that
the buyer pays for the new ILC
or new survey more often than
the seller. Sometimes, however,
the seller agrees to split the cost
with the buyer or at least agrees
to reimburse the buyer its cost
if the deal falls through. That
is fair, since the seller receives
some benefit from the new ILC
or new survey and the buyer
gets none if the property is not
purchased.
Section 9.2 of the contract
has a provision that allows the
buyer to change the type of
survey it requires, if “there is
no additional cost to seller or
change the new ILC or new
survey objection deadline.” It
also allows the buyer to waive
the new ILC or new survey
if “done prior to seller incur-
ring any costs for the same.”
Tip:
The buyer might want to
modify the contract to change the
type of survey or waive the new
ILC or new survey if it agrees to
reimburse the seller for any addi-
tional cost for the change or for
the cost the seller expended before
the waiver.
Sometimes, the surveyor cre-
ates a new legal description
for the property, as happens,
for example, when the seller
is to convey only a part of its
property to the buyer.
Tip:
You should always confirm that
the title company will insure a
newly created legal description.
Tip:
When a legal description is
revised, but is intended to describe
the same property, consider recit-
ing the old description, preceded
by “also described as.”
Also, have
the title insurance policy reflect
that the new legal describes the
same property as does the legal
contained in the vesting deed.
Tip:
With a new legal description
derived from a survey, obtain a
“survey” or “same as survey”
endorsement (ALTA Form No.
25-06) for the title insurance pol-
icy.
That endorsement insures
any loss or damage “by reason
of the failure of the (property)
to be the same as that identi-
fied on the survey.” Also con-
sider the matters discussed in
the fourth article in this series,
“Defining the property.”
In the next article we will
set out some tips and traps in
reviewing a survey.
s
Law
ʻThinking back,
I think part of
my inspiration
for Balfour was
to not be like
that. At the same
time, I did not
want to be part of
a revolution and
end up being a
despot like
(Fidel) Castro.ʼ
