SPORTS TOO NICE TO BE SUCCESSFUL?

A FEW YEARS AGO, IN THE WAKE OF YET ANOTHER MEG ABUCK real estate deal closed by New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, a journalist questioned the almost frantic manner in which the flamboyant entrepreneur had begun to amass properties.

The exchange, according to those present, went some-thing like this:

“Damn, George, are you trying to buy up all the land there is?”

Steinbrenner huffed at the suggestion of such greed. “Of course not,” he replied, “I just want that property which is next to mine.”

Sitting in his LBJ Freeway office, Dallas millionaire Donald Carter stirs his morning coffee and gives a smiling nod to the humor of the anecdote-and sees where the conversation is headed. No, he quickly volunteers, any comparison of his own recent real estate quest and that of trie New York Yankee owner is unjustified,

It just seems that for the past few years the man best known as the owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks has been trying to keep up with the Steinbrenners of the business world. Since 1991 his Carter-Crowley Properties, Inc. has accumulated more than 3 million square feet of Dallas office space-rivaling the holdings of the high-profile Trammel Crow Company in its heyday-and he’s still in the market for more.

That, of course, has raised eyebrows throughout Dallas’ financial community. Why would Carter, a white-haired 62 and comfortably worth in excess of $200 million, be moving so aggressively in this relatively new business venture?

Certainly, he already has enough to keep him busy. There’s Home Interiors and Gifts, Inc., the family business which Carter’s late mother, Mary Crowley, launched in 1957 with a $6,000 bank loan and built into one of the largest direct sales home furnishing operations in the nation (with 2,000 employees, 50,000 displayers, and annual revenues estimated at $500 million). There’s Lady Love Cosmetics, the Moody-Day Construction Company, H.I. Productions (which deals in offshore and inland drilling). Eagle Freightways (which now has 100 trucks and 400 trailers operating out of 12 terminals along the NAFTA highway), Dallas Woodcraft (the nation’s largest ready-made picture frame manufacturing company), Carter Air (which manages the company planes, including the DC-9 which flies the Mavericks to road games), and a couple of automobile dealerships. He is in partnership with the Mesquite Rodeo’s Neal Gay, supplying stock for rodeos nationwide, and has co-sponsored an Indy race car with International Batteries. To occupy those moments when he’s not making money, there are the amusements of wealth like his 1,700-acre C Lazy U Ranch in nearby Denton County, his collection of antique cars, and his fast boats and planes. And, of course, there are the Dallas Mavericks.

Thus, the speculation surrounding Carter’s recent real estate activities has changed with each new acquisition. When he bought his first North Dallas building, the experts assumed he was doing nothing more interesting than securing new office space for his own multi-faceted business operations. Then, after a half dozen more purchases of what Realtors term Class A properties, the best guess was that, as the on-going controversy over a new arena for his Mavericks continued to stir at City Hall, he just might be stockpiling potential new locations to serve as a home for the Mavericks and the National Hockey League Dallas Stars.

But as the buying spree continues, the explanations for Carter’s new acquisitions have become more simple, more businesslike; Donald Carter, it seems, has just found another professional challenge, a new way to add to his considerable fortune.

Which, of course, begs the age-old question posed by those who never understand what motivates the rich. What drives this former high school dropout with the country twang and Cutter Bill outfits who, some insist, has always seemed genuinely embarrassed about his staggering financial good fortune? And if he really is embarrassed, why does he continue to wheel and deal?

Carter smiles and shrugs. “I have enough money. Truth is, I’m worth more than I ought to be. But I love to see things happen in Dallas and I’m glad that I’m in a position to see that they do.”

What he set out to do with the launching of Carter-Crowley Properties, Carter says, was to help stabilize Dallas’ commercial real estate industry. That he’s made a handsome profit along the way is, to his way of thinking, a bonus.

Not that he wants to always be the point man in civic business ventures. When, for instance, the idea of an Indy-type race track for the Dallas area was first tossed around, Carter embraced it enthusiastically but stood in the wings while other investors offered their plans. He quietly secured a parcel of suburban land that he felt would serve as a good track site and was ready to push the idea forward himself had others not been successful. “It was just a good idea, something good for the area,” he says. “Someone needed to get it done, but it wasn’t important to me that it was Don Carter who did it.”

“My business philosophy has always been the same. If it is not illegal or immoral and will put people to work, I’m interested.” He puts heavy emphasis on the phrase “put people to work.”

He leaves it for others to say, but the truth appears to be that Donald Carter is not so much bent on new additions to his own financial portfolio as he is sharing with others.

At heart he is still the blue-collar kind of man who likes to talk business at the kitchen table, who believes that if you’re dealing with the right kind of people, a handshake is as good as a signed contract. He’s a deeply religious man whose friends know they won’t be offered a drink when they visit his home; a man who employs precious few peopie with college diplomas and likes to refer to them as ” family” ; a man whose lifestyle and personal philosophy are so bedrock simple as to make him the perplexing figure that he is,

There are, says Carter-Crowley Properties chief operating officer Jed Thompson, two things about which his boss is passionate above all else: his family and the city of Dallas. “Mr. Carter’s always been a businessman with long-range vision,” he says. “What he’s doing now is for his children and his grandchildren.”

Indeed, there is strong evidence that he is looking ahead to the time when his family financial torch will be passed to his children. With an eye to the future. Carter recently named son Ronald, 34, president of Carter-Crowley while giving son Joey, 35, and daughter Christie, 33, tides of executive vice-presidents of Home Interiors.

City, family, faith. It may sound simplistic and draw cynical scoffing, but these may well be the best clues to the motivation of Donald Joseph Carter, a man described by more than one business analyst- and a host of so-called sports experts-as “too nice to be successful.”

CERTAINLY CARTER’S EARLY COURSE IN LIFE OFFERED NO IND1-cation that he would one day be recognized as one of Dallas’ financial pillars.

His parents were in the process of divorcing before he entered the first grade in Sherman, Tx. Mary Crowley, looking for a new start for herself and for her son, borrowed $100 from the local Rotary Club to finance their move to Dallas. While she worked as an office manager for a furniture company by day and attended business classes at SMU by night, little Donald learned the lessons of Dallas7 streets. He wore his hair in a ducktail, was seldom seen without his black leather jacket, and aspired to nothing greater than ownership of his own motorcycle and hot rod. To that end he had his Social Security card by age nine and worked at a variety of odd jobs-Dallas Morning News paperboy, gas station attendant, drug store delivery boy, concessions hawker at the Cotton Bowl, Moody Coliseum, and the State Fair Midway-that interested him far more than the education his mother futilely insisted he attain.

“I was wild,” he admits. “I ran the streets, got into more than a Little mischief, and had absolutely no respect for the value of education. My feeling was ’Who needs it?’ “

Carter had never made a grade higher than a C-except in shop- before finally dropping out of Crozier Tech to join the Air Force in 1952, That, he says, still ranks as the smartest decision he’s ever made. “Without the services,” he says with no hint of exaggeration, “I might have ended up in some penitentiary. I grew up in a hurry and finished my high school education in the Air Force.”

Back home in Dallas, other good things were happening. Mary Crowley took out another loan, this time for $6,000 needed to start up Home Interiors and Gifts. After only six years she employed 600 people and was being recognized as one of the city’s wealthiest and most influential businesswomen. A spiritual woman as well, she became the first female ever named to serve on the board of Billy Graham’s Evangelistic Association. Working alongside her was her son, learning her Christian faith and being groomed to become vice-president of the highly successful operation.

Before she died of cancer in 1986, Mary told reporters of the early concerns she had for her boy. “I had this prayer that I prayed many, many times. I’d pray, ’Lord, I know Don is going to do something great-please let it be legal,’ “

“My mother,” Carter says, “still affects me every day, in everything I do. Her influence is everywhere I turn. I owe it to her to treat with great tenderness everything I have.”

That gentle approach to the hard-edged world of big business sets Carter apart. He has been criticized privately and publicly lor decisions considered both unwise and naive. To wit: Here’s a guy who had never seen a professional basketball team play until he paid $12 million to buy one; a guy whose boyhood sports heroes weren’t the NBA stars or pro football greats but rather a thrill-seeking stunt car driver named Joey Chitwood.

Carter, who still carries a photo of his wife Linda posed in her Duncanville High basketball uniform, had two reasons for becoming an NBA owner, First, he thought it would be a nice present for Mrs. Carter. (“The only way I managed to get a date with her in the first place,” he recalls, “was to promise to take her to see the Duncanville girls play basketball.”) Second, he believed that an NBA franchise would enhance the nationwide reputation of the city. The decision came at a time when the city did not even have an arena; nobody could foretell how the Cowboys-crazy area would welcome another pro sport.

Despite some disappointing seasons, North Texas has taken the Mavericks to its heart. Still, it is no chore to find those quick to criticize the manner in which Don Carter has operated the Mavericks. Many feel he’s been all too patient with such disruptive forces as Mark Aguirre and Roy Tarpley, given far too generous contracts to unsuccessful coaches, wasted too much money and too much understanding on people who haven’t responded to his seemingly endless generosity, meddled too often in areas where his general manager Norm Sonju has the necessary expertise.

The late W.O. Bankston, longtime friend and mentor of Carter, was among those quick to defend such practices. “The thing I’ve most admired about Donald as a businessman is that in any deal he ever makes, he first considers the people involved,” Bankston told me a few years ago. “The well-being of a single person outweighs any amount of profit he might earn. He makes business decisions based on what he feels is the right thing to do, and if you’ll just check his record, you’ll find that he’s come out way ahead of die game. I’ve never met anyone with more genuine respect for his fellow man.”

And now, Carter appears to be way ahead of the real estate game despite jumping into it without knowledge of the dangerous twists and turns of the highly speculative business.

He’s repeatedly violated the entrepreneur’s most sacred credo by investing in certain ventures-like the faltering Dallas indoor soccer franchise-knowing full well he was kissing millions goodbye. His explanation for that particular decision perhaps best reveals Donald Carter’s vision of the greater good: “Sometimes I make business decisions,” he says. “Sometimes I make emotional decisions.”

When, back in 1991, it appeared the struggling Dallas Sidekicks had exhausted all financial resources and were on the verge of folding, he re-assumed ownership. (Carter owned the team when it came to Dallas in 1984 and sold it for $500,000 before the 1987 season.) Why? “Soccer is a wonderful sport for kids,” he says, “and the Sidekicks have long been the most affordable ticket the city had to offer. ” Losing the Sidekicks would, he felt, not only deprive working families of a sporting event they could afford to attend but would hurt the movement of youth soccer in the community, not to mention Dallas ’ chances of hosting World Cup matches in 1994.

Was it, then, a good business decision?

“No,” Carter quickly admits. “But was it something I felt good about? Yes, it was. I prayed about it and then did it. It was payback to this town for what it has done for me.”

Carter, in truth, has spent much of his adult life paying back the city he calls home. “My mother and I didn’t have anything when we came here,” he reflects, “and the city and its people gave us an opportunity to succeed. That’s a big debt to repay.”

And he seems destined to spend a lifetime making payments.

“Don Carter has helped thousands of people in this city,” Norm Sonju says. “I’ve never met a more charitable man. I’ll hear about something he’s done and mention it and he’ll be upset that anyone had learned about what he’s done. He doesn’t want people to know.”

In August of 1993, when the Salvation Army was having difficulty getting relief supplies to flood disaster victims in the Midwest, Carter quickly donated the use of three Home Interiors 18-wheelers to the cause-and got behind the wheel of one of the rigs himself to help with the delivery. A year earlier, he and a crew of Home Interiors employees were in the Brazilian jungle helping with the construction of a medical clinic.

Closer to home, his Mary C. Crowley Academy makes it possible for disadvantaged women to return to school and complete their educations. Organizations like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Dallas Big Brothers, the Boy Scouts, Fort Worth’s Lena Pope Home for youth, and the YMCA are among those who regularly receive the quiet support of Carter.

“If you’re looking for flaws, for hidden agendas,” Mavericks coach Dick Motta says of Carter, “forget it. They don’t exist.”