The Deal Maker
Colorado's economy has always been on a roller coaster of booms and busts. Shopping center developer Jim Sullivan has taken the ride himself.

Denver developer Jim Sullivan smiles at the unveiling of a model of a monument to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in City Park. Sullivan, who is raising funds for the statue, declared bankruptcy during the real estate bust of the 1980s but has come back stronger than ever in the boom of the 1990s.

It's all there, the story of Colorado in the 1980s and maybe the story of Colorado since the beginning, too.

Thousands and thousands of neatly typed pages outlining the huge mess. A two-foot stack of grief that traces the steep rise and spectacular fall of James Michael Sullivan, shopping center developer.

It's all there, collecting dust in the federal bankruptcy court's warehouse in Lakewood. The list of creditors (80 in 10 states). An accounting of a lavish lifestyle fueled by risky deals ($22,737 in monthly household expenditures). A list of personal property (gold Rolex watch, a Sears washer and dryer, four beds, five lamps ... ).

And there are, of course, the numbers. Very large numbers that couldn't be reconciled.

Property: $221,666. Debts: $77.3 million.

"I don't know who was dumber: them for loaning, or me for borrowing," Sullivan says of the banks he did business with. "I used to think I was a developer. What I realized I was one day was a professional money-borrower."

He was not alone.

The dominoes fell quickly after 1984, when plunging oil prices and layoffs in other industries burst the speculative bubble of Denver's booming real estate market. By 1987, 29,000 jobs had vanished and unemployment topped 9 percent. Colorado became the foreclosure capital of the nation, a place where the only sure jobs were in bankruptcy court or with U-Haul.

Booms and busts. Gold, silver, farming, coal, copper, uranium, oil shale, real estate -- in Colorado, history teaches that what goes up inevitably comes down.

Another Colorado deal maker: Barney Ford

"Nowadays, you can't tell people that it's going to happen again," says historian Tom Noel. "But you know it is."

You couldn't have told Jim Sullivan that in the 1980s either.

In the years before he filed for bankruptcy, Sullivan was among the highest of fliers. He had amassed 2.5 million square feet of commercial space. Earned more than $1 million a year. Won and lost tens of thousands gambling in Vegas, dropping $20,000 just a few months before going under. Driven a turbo Porsche and lived in a sprawling mansion next to the Denver Country Club.

"I was living within my means," Sullivan says. "I wasn't living outside my means. I didn't have an expensive lifestyle. The most extravagant thing that I had was I owned a Rolls Royce. And it was the cheap one -- it was the sedan."

He's not joking.

It was all so intoxicating -- especially to the son of a salesman who grew up in Chicago and Iowa in a family that paid cash for everything and got by paycheck to paycheck. Sullivan was 15 when his father died, and the getting-by got harder.

"I had friends I grew up with whose parents had big houses and nice cars and they always seemed to be pretty happy. Want is a horrible thing. I decided early on that I wasn't going to die wanting anything," he says. "The great American dream is becoming wealthy, becoming a millionaire. Becoming a millionaire is something that I pursued with all my heart. That was my undoing as well."

After two tours in Vietnam, Sullivan got out of the Army while at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs. In 1970, Denver was a "a young, open town," so he stayed, finished college and plunged into the real estate business. In 1978, he set up his own shop on Larimer Square with $5,000 and a borrowed typewriter.

"It didn't take much to be a developer back then," Sullivan says. "You had to have a set of b---- and a good idea. Banks were loaning 110 percent. I never understood for the longest time what that meant. I grew to realize it after I was already deep into debt. At one time, I owed $249 million."

Bankers would cold-call him wanting -- almost begging -- to put money in his hands. One came to his office with an unsolicited $100,000 check. A bank that denied Sullivan a credit card gave him an $18 million real estate loan six months later.

By 1985, the recession was gutting other developers, but the cash kept flowing to Sullivan and his company, SullivanHayes. His projects were profitable, and he was being hired to run shopping centers that had been repossessed by banks.

"Their bones were glistening in the sun every day when I drove to work. I pumped my chest up a little bigger and said, 'I don't know what we're doing right, but we're doing something.' I thought that I was bulletproof."

Four years later, Sullivan couldn't get a loan anywhere. He started losing tenants. Some moved to shopping centers that had failed and were being rented at half the price Sullivan needed to cover his loan repayments. Others shut their doors, owing Sullivan money.

"I never felt comfortable foreclosing on these people, taking their houses and everything else," he says. "I always tried to work things out.

"One woman told me she had cancer and was dying and she asked me to let her out of her lease. I said sure. Then I find out she was laughing about doing that to me. We went after her." The ruse still angers him. "I mean, cervical cancer she supposedly had."

Sullivan went belly up in November 1990, and his case began inching through bankruptcy court. He became embarrassed, then depressed, a 6-foot-2-inch bundle of defeat. He ballooned to 270 pounds, couldn't sleep at night, couldn't get out of bed in the morning.

"There was a time when I thought it would be a lot easier to just jump out a window," he says. "I remember going to see my mom and weeping. I remember wanting to crawl into her lap and have her rub my head and tell me it was going to be OK.

"I sat in a deposition for four days with 10 lawyers. And they were saying, 'In 1983, you got a check for $22,000 and we can't find a record of it. What happened to it?' I started out pretty flip: 'How do I know? Millions of dollars go through my hands every day.' Well, after about the 35th time that they asked me about a payment, I really started feeling bad that I had been so cavalier."

He was accused of hiding assests. Legally, he didn't have much. His home and its contents had been in his wife's name since their wedding in 1984. What cash he once had was gone.

In the end, Sullivan's settlement paid 22 unsecured creditors $356,005 -- less than 1 percent of what they were owed. Lawyers got $115,178. His share of SullivanHayes wasn't touched.

"The bankruptcy court allowed me, as it allows everyone, a fresh start," Sullivan says.

He's made the most of it. Real estate is back again in Colorado, bigger than ever. And at 49, Sullivan is once again a major player, building projects and, of course, borrowing money.

"There is only reward if you have risk," he says. But, he adds, "Once you have a piano dropped on your head, you tend to look up more."

Sullivan's current debt: $45 million.

A baby grand hanging over a party that has no end in sight.

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