Otis Scarborough: ‘My No. 1 job here is preservation of capital’

Otis Scarborough calls his life a blessed one.

He has been married to his Columbus High School sweetheart, Sandy, for nearly 50 years. His two sons have gone into faith-based work, Bart with Young Life in Athens, and Grant as a physician of a clinic on Second Avenue that works primarily in the low-income community.

For 40 years, Scarborough has been one of the key decision makers at the George C. Woodruff Company, a prominent Columbus real estate and development corporation that has been in business for 100 years.

At the end of the year, Scarborough will retire. At 71, he will move into a new direction. Recently, he sat down with Ledger-Enquirer senior reporter Chuck Williams and chief photographer Mike Haskey to talk about what that looks like.

Here are excerpts of that interview, edited for length and clarity.

Q: When you look at your life, there are a lot of big numbers in it: 71 years old, 49 years of marriage, 40 years with the Woodruff Company. How do you achieve such longevity?

A: I go back to the three things, and I am the farthest thing from a saint that exists. I don’t want to come across as I’ve got the answer and this is the only way, because so many people are trying to end up in this same position: love your wife more today than you did when you married her, two wonderful boys, everybody wants all of that. For us, the anchor has been our faith. As far as between my wife and myself and the boys, and the reason they do what they do, is because of their love for the Lord. The family unit is united through that process, and you just can’t break that down. Now, are we perfect? Do you do exactly right? No, but you have a way to come back together, and when you have grace and mercy, things come back together. That’s our family. That’s what we believe.

Importantly, I think you’re a better employer, I think I work harder because I know when I go home, I have a wonderful situation waiting for me at home. I walk in the house and the first thing I tell my wife is, “Sandy, you take my breath away.” Well, she does, and I tell her that. What a wonderful evening that opens up. She does the same for me. You have to work at it. It doesn’t just happen. We work at that.

Those are the three things that we really believe very deeply: in our faith, the value of the family, and then when you work, you need to do a good job, you need to make a difference.

Q: Both of your sons are in faith-based careers. How did that happen?

A: Well, I think in the beginning my wife really came in to her faith before I did. It was through her relationship with the Lord that she introduced me to the Lord. The boys were coming along at a very difficult time, they were in junior high and high school. They had Young Life friends that picked them up — Jack Key was one of the ones, and Don McKelvey. They took my oldest son ... and they put their arms around him and they absolutely made him feel special and his faith grew from that. It was incredible. At our home, on I think it was Monday night, we’d have a Club over there. There’d be hundreds of high school kids that would come. Through that, Grant, who was the youngest, he was participating in that.

Then we got involved. When parents get involved and the children are involved, it doesn’t become something you do, it becomes a way of life, and so it became a way of life for us. Again, we’ve got as many flaws as anybody has, but that’s our life and we pull together and we support each other and encourage each other.

Q: Obviously, I want to ask you about Grant’s work at Mercy Med. Did you encourage him to do that?

A: When Grant got out of school, he went and worked a little while in Young Life. Then he really had a heart for the underprivileged, the underserved. In fact, one time he even wanted to go down and play the guitar with them under the bridge.

... I did encourage him. I said, “You know, they’ve got plenty of guitar players, but if you really want to help them, maybe you’ll go up in the grocery store and give them food or go to med school and help them do this.” Well, other friends of ours were saying the same kind of thing, and so after two or three years, he came and he says, “I don’t think I want to be a doctor, but I want to help people, and that may be the best way I can do it.” He said, “I’m going to go to med school.” He’d been out of school for three years. He’d gotten out of pre-med and he prayed about going to med school. He went back, took the courses he needed to take, took the test, applied early admission to Mercer.

... He said, “I can make money and give my money away, or I can give myself away.” He chose to give his self away. He is the happiest guy in Columbus, Ga. This is so good, I gotta tell you this: There’s a wise man once said, “Learning the art of living is learning the art of giving.” That’s a great quote. When you learn the art of giving, you’ve learned the art of living, and you’re the happiest living person in the world when you give, when you’re generous. Not only is Grant generous, and Bart, but our community’s generous. When we start talking about Columbus, Ga., there are two things that have to be in place for anything to happen: leadership and generosity. You have to have both.

Q: Do you see both of those here?

A: Oh, yes. I’ve had the best seat in the house. I’ve been here for 40 years. I’ve watched us go from a military/textile town to an international city that now is becoming a cultural center in the South. We’re better than we’re perceived to be. One thing that I’m working on is, I want to stand on the rooftops and say, “Look, this is the most incredible place in the world to live.” We have art, theater, music. We have all these programs. The university is incredible today.

Q: Well, I know you were just involved in the event to kick of the construction on the Bo Bartlett Center at CSU.

A: Exactly.

Q: Obviously, that’s personal as well, because Bo is your brother-in-law. What were you thinking a couple of weeks ago during that ceremony?

A: I had goosebumps the other day. Here it finally came, but it took two things. Leadership, Sonny Candler from Atlanta and Helen Hobbs from Columbus were the primary leaders, and Phil Tomlinson and Jimmy Yancy got involved. Then the whole community started wrapping its arms around it and it is a reality. All good things take time, but it was a wonderful experience to see that happen.

Now, having said that, we already had a great art department — Joe Sanders, the leadership of Richard Baxter with the program is outstanding. The Bo Bartlett Center is just one more wonderful arrow in the quiver of already an incredible art school, already an incredible music program, already an incredible theater program, and we’ve got the Springer and the (Columbus) Symphony (Orchestra) and museums. You add all of that up, we’re not a fountain city.

Q: What are we?

A: We are a cultural center. ... When I came along, everybody wanted to leave Columbus because there was nothing to do. ... Now they want to stay here, culturally, from the standpoint of so much happening. Think of the Steeplechase, that Mason Lampton did. Think of what Cecil Cheves did bringing the Soldier Marathon in. Think of Whitewater, that John Turner did, that creates activity, culture with arts and the theater and the music. We have students ... Now you’ve got to get your mind around this — this is so exciting — we have students from 50 different countries that have come to study at Columbus State University. Name 50 countries.

Q: Obviously, you know Bo Bartlett’s work intimately and have watched it develop over the years. When you see Bo’s paintings now, what do you see?

A: Chuck, Bo doesn’t paint. He tells a story. And that’s why Andrew Wyeth said the next Andrew Wyeth is Bo Bartlett. That’s where Bo is in the art world. He is a hero in Philadelphia. You go out of Columbus, Ga. ... Phil Tomlinson took him up to the Philadelphia Museum and they attacked him. Phil Tomlinson said, “I thought it was Elvis coming in there.” If you look at the painting out here (in Scarborough’s office), I’ve got a book on most of his paintings. It’s not a painting of a person — it’s a story painting. There’s something happening, and you look at it and the longer you look at it, you say, “Wow, this is something special.”

Q: You’re very proud of Bo?

A: Oh my goodness! Columbus, Ga. is very proud of Bo. Bo has reached an international level. Think about this: Betsy Wyeth wanted a painting done of Andrew Wyeth. She chose Bo to do it — hangs over their bed.

Q: That’s a high compliment.

A: That’s as high as it gets. That’s as high as it gets.

Now, think about it. We already have a fabulous art school — Joe Sanders does a great job out there. You bring Bo Bartlett in, and guess what he does? He’s not some high and mighty person. He goes out with the homeless and he puts on art classes. He goes in to the school systems and teaches them to paint. He goes out and takes people who can’t afford to do anything, and brings them in, and we have him in Columbus, Ga.

Q: Let’s talk development for a minute. You, over 40 years of developing at the Woodruff Company, what development or what project are you most proud of?

A: Well, you have to start with the way we went about it. George and I met daily, almost, if we were in town. We had two criteria on every project that we did, or we wouldn’t do it: ... it had to make good business sense, it had to be good for Columbus.

Q: Would you pass on projects that made business sense but were not good for Columbus?

A: Absolutely. We didn’t chase anything that we didn’t think would make Columbus, Ga., a better place to live. Now, don’t misunderstand me. We’re not the savior of Columbus, but for us it was important. ... I’ll give you a good example. The Landings shopping center, on Airport Thruway, that had just gone down the tubes. If I could show you the before and after pictures of that, it would just stun you. We bought that and we fixed it up and we brought it back to life and it’s just changed that whole area, on Airport Thruway.

Q: It’s one of the destination shopping places in the city.

A: Exactly, and so yes, it was a good deal, business deal. You have to make money to pay your people, but it was good for Columbus, Ga. We bought all the land out on Double Churches Road and on the lefthand side, where we originally built Hamilton Station, we’ve renamed it The Pond. We built the office park where Merrill Lynch is, and we built the houses back then, across the street. We did a 60-acre development for commercial. That was 1983, we started that project. It was just such a wonderful thing, for that area. Those are the kind of things. Lakeside Village, we’re very proud of Lakeside Village. It has some of the nicest multifamily projects.

Q: Where is that?

A: That’s out, if you go out Manchester Expressway and the bypass. You know where the bypass ends?

Q: I remember when the only thing out there was Beaver Run.

A: Beaver Run. George had that property. My father worked here, before I did. We really as a family go way past 40 years. ... I used to fish in those lakes out there with my mother, when I was in high school. We saved that, and we never forced a deal. If it wasn’t ready to be developed, we didn’t develop it. That deal came along just in time, and the only sad thing I have is really not sad. ... We planned that project ... and (George) says, “You know what? Y’all are going to start developing that thing the second I die.” When he passed away, we started developing it, and we finished it, and it’s just been a home run, a wonderful success story. I would give anything, and maybe he is looking at it, but I would give anything if I could get in the car with him and ride out there, because he would be so proud.

Q: How patient do you have to be to be a good developer?

A: Patience is a good word. Endurance. You have to be able to stay under control, because things change on you that you didn’t know were going to change. When you deal with a project that takes a year or five years to do, a lot can happen, Chuck.

You’ve got to have a team around you, and that’s one of the strengths of this company. We put a team around us that have different levels of expertise and different things. It’s like riding a horse or riding a bicycle — you’re coming off, it’s just a question of when you’re going to hit that railroad track and fall off or when is the horse going to spook. But you’re coming off. Well, in the real estate business, if you do enough, something’s going to happen that you didn’t know was going to happen. There are going to be difficult times and there will be issues that you’re going to have to deal with. It isn’t a business that you blame people. It isn’t a business that you say, “Who did that?” Or whatever. What it is: “Here’s where we are now. Let’s all talk about this and what are we going to do to fix that.” Every time, we got it out of the ditch. Unbelievable.

Q: Is that timing?

A: I think, when you hear real estate, you hear location, location, location. Location is very, very important, but to me, timing is more important. If you get into a situation, interest rates run up to 21 percent, you can be in the best location in the world and you can’t do much.

... The reason we are a hundred years old, in my opinion, is we are family, for one. Two, we realize that leverage and overextending yourself will kill you at some point. We would never do that.

Q: Debt. When you said leverage, you’re talking debt, right?

A: You have to be careful. We have a rule here, that we want to stay at 50 percent debt level. Most conservative people would say an 80 percent debt level is a good debt level. It’s a very conservative debt level, but when the market drops 35 percent, you’re under water. We wanted to stay at a much lower debt level, and George did too. My No. 1 job here is preservation of capital, No. 2 job was making money. We wanted to be sure that even in bad times we could take advantage of that, in the sense of going out and buying things. We also wanted to be sure in good times that we didn’t smell our own perfume and think we were some hotshot and go out here and get ahead of ourself and get too much debt. Does that make sense?

Q: When you came back in ’08 and shut it down, that was a preservation move. That was self-preservation, right?

A: No question about it. Everybody just said, “Look, we got this going on out here, we got this going on over here.” Shut it down. We don’t know what’s going to happen. “What do you mean shut it down?” Shut it down. Then we waited, we felt what we were doing, we looked at our debt structure, we looked at our loan structure, and then we very easily started moving back in to it. Actually, from ’08, during that period when everybody else was really tanking, we actually were sliding back up the scale, because we had the courage. I don’t mean courage — and listen, we’ve made plenty of mistakes. We haven’t always pulled the right trigger.

Q: You made the right decisions at the right time.

A: The key to this is making the right decision at the right time. You want to try and do that at least 80 percent of the time.

Q: You and George Woodruff Jr. complemented each other, right?

A: We complemented each other, but we always talked about all that all the time.

Q: What’s Mr. Woodruff’s legacy?

A: His legacy is he was an incredible leader in this community, not just in the real estate business. If you asked most people, they would tell you he almost singlehandedly brought Pratt Whitney in to Columbus. He loved the city, that’s one reason that we made that as one of our criteria on developing. He worked the chamber. Anything they asked him to do to help bring industry to Columbus, he was always doing that.

Q: You followed suit as well, right?

A: I chaired the Development Authority for 10 years. I was on the chamber board. I was involved in any and everything to do that I could to help, but ... I had the privilege of watching George and Bill Turner and Jimmy Blanchard and Jimmy Yancey and Danny Amos. I got the privilege to watch them do everything they could to make Columbus what it is today. To work with them on all of that was just an honor for me.

Q: Was that another education?

A: For me, it was. Yeah, they were good. Most of what few skills I have, I studied them, I learned from them. I wanted to emulate their qualities, and George Woodruff was full of them — Bill Turner, as I mentioned. I hate to name people, because the list ...

Q: You brought up the chamber. Is the Chamber of Commerce still relevant?

A: I think very much so. Now, the Chamber of Commerce, you could get 10 different answers on what is job No. 1 for the Chamber of Commerce, just like you could for what’s job No. 1 for the U.S. Government. ... With the chamber, back when we were so involved, job No. 1 is get jobs. ...

Q: Is that recruiting industry?

A: Recruiting industry, working with industry and trade, working with the Georgia Power Company. We would fly, if we heard of any industry that was thinking of moving south, we would fly there. Jimmy Yancey, Jim Blanchard, George Woodruff, Bill Heard. I would go on some of the trips. We’d bring them here, take them to the Big Eddy, take them to George’s house. We went after jobs. ... As time has progressed, the chamber has expanded in to all kind of different programs. They’re wonderful programs, but job No. 1 is still getting jobs. It is still relevant, very relevant. I think Brian Anderson is doing an excellent job.

Q: Why is this such a philanthropic community?

A: I just think we have the greatest people. You know, it’s in your heart. There’s so many people in the world that have everything they want, won’t give a penny away and they’re miserable. I have come to this conclusion — it’s taken me a long time — but there’s no greater joy for my family than to go do something, go give something to somebody that didn’t expect it, and nobody knows we did it. There’s no greater joy for our family than to do that. You want joy? Joy is different than happiness.

Q: How so?

A: Well, happiness, I get a new car, I’m happy. Joy is a deep inner feeling of — just, golly! — I did something for you, I don’t want anybody to know I did it. It helps you over a tough situation, and boy, I just am full of joy. It’s a very thin line between the two. Mine will last forever, yours will last until you have to go to the mechanic.

Q: Is joy grounded in faith?

A: Is joy what?

Q: Is it grounded in faith?

A: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I know I’m going — I don’t have any doubt about it. You can’t take that joy away from me. You take happiness away from me, but you can’t take joy away from me.

This story was originally published November 27, 2016 at 1:11 AM with the headline "Otis Scarborough: ‘My No. 1 job here is preservation of capital’."