Reprinted from Inside Business, December 1997:
by Paulette Culbert
Some have called it crazy. Gil Granger, Williamsburg mayor and entrepreneur, calls it kismet.
Just over a year ago, a squirrel got into his modest Williamsburg office and tore things up badly. The squirrel chewed the window sills, scattered papers, trashed the desk, then curled up and died where no one could find him, leaving a foul odor as his final calling card. Despite months of fumigation and cleanup, the whole building had to be renovated. As Granger set up his new office, he found the remains of the squirrel in a box of books, among them, the marginal remains of Donald Trump’s best seller, The Art of the Deal.
Meanwhile, Granger had attended a charity golf tournament where he purchased at silent auction a free weekend at the Omni Hotel in Richmond. Not much for vacations, it wasn’t until the next July that he and his wife, Connie, could schedule their trip. While lounging around the pool, Granger began to read Trump’s book.
While walking the streets of Richmond, Granger noticed signs offering the famed John Marshall Hotel for sale at public auction. He remembered fondly the childhood visits he had made to the hotel on numerous family trips to Richmond. At the same time, the tale of Trump’s purchase of another grand old hotel, the Commodore in New York City, was running through his mind.
“And that,” as Granger loves to say with relish, “is how one golf tournament, a dead squirrel, and Donald Trump together inspired me to purchase the John Marshall Hotel.”
Granger’s family-owned corporation placed the top bid on the hotel on Sept. 30, and closed on the deal Oct. 16.
Don’t be misled by Granger’s seemingly casual approach to doing business. This 62-year-old politician, retired accountant and self-made businessman, has been acquiring property at the rate of at least one per year since the early 1960s. He owns more than 100 buildings in Hampton Roads, among them the Ramada Inn on Richmond Road in Williamsburg, the building that houses the Yorktown Pub in Yorktown, two hotels and part of a third in Virginia Beach, as well as a radio station. But at $3.016 million, the John Marshall Hotel is his most ambitious purchase yet.
The hotel is located in the heart of the business and convention district at Fifth and Franklin Streets and includes an adjoining 20,000-square-foot exposition center and a five-story parking garage. When it first opened, just one day before the infamous stock market crash of 1929, it was the largest hotel in Virginia. Over the years, the John Marshall has been the scene of countless gala celebrations and played host to such celebrities as Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor and past Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
The hotel’s most recent owner, Lloyd U. Noland, Jr., chairman of Basic Construction of Newport News, succumbed to competition from the newly opened Marriott Hotel in May 1988 and closed the hotel, according to news reports at the time of the sale. Vacant since then, the property’s retail stores have remained open, and Basic has kept the building maintained and repaired. Still, skeptics feel Granger and his family face serious challenges in restoring the huge hotel to its former glory and competing profitably with other hotels, all before Richmond commits to plans for an expansion of its convention center.
But Granger doesn’t see obstacles, he sees opportunities, and “when they knock, it’s up to you to open the door or they will pass you by.” He loved the gracious old hotel and hated the idea that someone might purchase the property for the land alone and raze the building. Granger sees the reopening of the John Marshall as a chance to create several hundred jobs and to promote Richmond’s economic vitality. As Granger puts it bluntly, “Why take this risk? The city of Richmond needed it done, and I think I know what to do with it.”
Gil Granger is a friendly gentleman, forthright and approachable, who seems too large for the simple, cramped office he maintains in one of his Williamsburg buildings. Yet he’s comfortable amid the stacks of books and papers that cover his desk and side tables. Plaques from community groups grateful for more than 30 years of combined service line the walls.
He also is chairman of the Peninsula Mayors and Chairs, which will be meeting in December with legislative leaders from the General Assembly. They plan to discuss how such issues as reductions in personal property tax and the King William water project will affect regional communities.
But the trappings of office seem unimportant to Granger who, though always neat and handsomely dressed, would never be found in a $500 suit. Some political critics have accused him of buying his clothes at Kmart, but Granger fires back good-naturedly, “Kmart’s in the county. I shop at Roses in Williamsburg.”
He’s known as a savvy negotiator who intuitively thinks “out of the box,” and his family and colleagues have come to expect the unexpected. Robert Magoon, architect and chairman of James City County’s Board of Supervisors acknowledges, “Gil frequently brings surprises, as he did with the purchase of the John Marshall. He may look casual on the outside, but his mind is always working. He has had so many successes, it would not be smart to count him out now.”
Williamsburg’s mayor is elected by its five city councilmen, and Granger’s election was not unanimous. One councilman declined to be interviewed for this article. But Channing M. Hall, Williamsburg attorney and city coun- cil member, believes Granger’s financial skill and accounting background have been good for Williams-burg. “We have a large surplus of funds in our treasury and Gil is part of the longstanding tradition of fiscal responsibility in the city. He is a proven negotiator, which helps us with city purchases.”
Before pursuing his own plans for the John Marshall, Granger admits that he sought the counsel of his family and that without their support he never would have pursued the deal. Family comes first to Granger, and any discussion of business inevitably leads in that direction. But for a man whose dining room table is a conference table, family and business are fundamentally intertwined. Granger’s three grown children have settled in Williamsburg and all have their individual business pursuits. Yet, on occasion, they do business jointly as a family corporation that draws on their individual areas of expertise.
To follow the intricate associations of the Granger family, it helps to have a “road map.” Daughter Gilinda Rogers owns FM radio station WPTT, a local cable news television station, and www.BestofRichmond.com, a Web page development firm. She also is the public relations person in charge of publicity for the John Marshall Hotel. Second daughter, Ann Ewell, and her husband, Roger, own SAE Enterprises, a hotel management company that runs the Williamsburg Ramada Inn, owned by her father. They now also have shouldered the responsibility for opening and running the John Marshall. Greg Granger is a paralegal and owner of AM radio station WMBG. He handles leases and real estate for both he and his father. Connie Granger, Gil’s wife, owns an antique business, Attic Collections, in Williamsburg and handles the billing for her husband’s real estate leases.
Gil Granger was born in Charleston, S.C., but his father was a salesman who moved the family frequently to such cities as Charlotte, Tampa, Roanoke and Philadelphia. They always stayed at fine hotels and took every opportunity to stop at one of their favorites, the John Marshall. As a youngster looking for amusement, Granger would wander about the hotel, tag along with the maids and learn how the hotel worked. The Grangers might drive 30 miles out of their way just for a slice of the famous John Marshall Pie, a delectable cream confection.
Granger came to Williamsburg in 1953 to attend William and Mary and fell for both the small town with one traffic light and fellow student, Connie Hill, to whom he now has been married for 40 years. Following a stint in the Army and one year in Atlanta working for the CPA firm Price Waterhouse, the Grangers and their 1-year old daughter returned to settle in Williamsburg.
“Growing up in so many places, I knew I wanted roots,” Granger says emphatically “and I found them in Williamsburg.” In the years since his arrival, Granger has committed himself to his adopted city. He formed a CPA partnership, Granger, Lent and Hawthorne, from which he retired in 1981. Unbeknownst to some, Granger worked as executive advisor to the Williamsburg Pottery, recently stepping down after 35 years. He is perhaps best known for serving on Williamsburg City Council from 1976 until 1988, when he lost his bid for re-election. He ran again successfully in 1996 and has served proudly as mayor for “one year, four months and 20 days,” he says with an accountant’s flair for numbers.
In the mid-1980s, Granger ran unsuccessfully for State Senate against Bob Fears. Eldest daughter Gilinda Rogers calls it a low point for her father, but Granger used the time to reflect and refocus. According to Rogers, “He considers failure to be very valuable, and experience the best teacher.”
Loyal to each other, yet fiercely independent, the Grangers are an enigma to outsiders. Sometimes they even take each other by surprise. Not known for keeping secrets, Gilinda was purposely kept out of the loop on the John Marshall purchase until she was quickly summoned to Richmond by her brother one afternoon. “Bring your camera,” he prompted her mysteriously. There she found her family gathered before the hotel, while her sister Ann pronounced grandly, “Look what we bought!”
Then there’s the baseball team.
In 1984, Granger took a trip to Philadelphia on personal business. While there he called the owner of the Peninsula Pilots and struck a deal to purchase the team for $160,000. Rogers laughs out loud at the memory of her mother discovering the sale when a newspaper called to inquire.
“It had been a life-long dream of my father’s to own a baseball team, but he had never told any of us. Dad doesn’t talk about his dreams, he just makes them happen.”
Granger describes those baseball years as fun. “More than going to the games, I enjoyed watching the team grow. We took season ticket sales from 25 to 1,000 and paid attendance went from 25,000 to 70,000. We never had a winning season, but I still enjoy seeing some of our players play in the World Series.” Granger sold the team, by then called the Virginia Generals, in 1988 for $600,000. He declined a previous offer of $1 million from a buyer who wanted to move the team — he didn’t want to be remembered as the man who sold baseball out of Virginia. (Though the team ultimately did move.)
Quick to laugh and poke good-natured fun at themselves, the Granger siblings acknowledge an unconventional upbringing that taught them to be self-reliant and confident.
“As children, none of us ever got a day’s allowance,” explains Greg. “We had to work for all our spending money. I did odd jobs, painting or carpentry at Dad’s rental properties while my sisters learned to handle leases or do advertising and marketing. But Mom and Dad would buy us stock for our birthdays. Eventually, they let us help by relating names like Hershey, Kellogg’s and Milton Bradley to things we recognized. I used the stock dividends as my spending money then and I still do. My parents created in me an interest in the market and helped me learn. I still have some of those stocks today as part of my own portfolio.”
Steve Ewell gives his father-in-law credit for respecting their decisions and letting them learn from their mistakes. “Ann and I have almost free rein in running the hotel. He gives nothing away but the opportunity.”
Rogers agrees. “Don’t think for a moment that Dad has given us these businesses,” she pronounces with a chuckle. “We had to learn the business elsewhere before he would sell them to us — at the going rate. We make mortgage payments to the bank just like everyone else.”
Granger has an unabashed enthusiasm for life. “I make it a point to enjoy everything,” he says with a wide smile. He sees failure as a possibility — but not an option. Ann Ewell, who sees herself as “the voice of reason,” explains their plans to get the hotel ready for business. “Rather than gut the building and begin a nine- to 10-month renovation, we want to start small, take our time and do it right. We’ll open 10 rooms on the third floor first, then move to the second floor and continue refurbishing floor by floor.”
At the time of purchase, Granger and his family had planned to have the John Marshall ready to open by Thanksgiving, but given extensive work on the sprinkler system and other safety concerns to meet building codes, the group now predicts a “holiday opening.” Rather than dwelling on slipped deadlines, they see only progress. Ann Ewell is quick to proclaim, “Business is already booked, furniture is in, and staff has been hired. Two restaurants are being leased, one to provide room service and cater banquets. That’s still a lot closer to being open than anyone else would be.”
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