Extreme Underwriting: Adding politicos and policemen to the boardroom blue blood.
Bobby Turner is pretty certain that Canyon-Johnson has the only real estate development underwriting team that boasts an ex-cop. Back in 2000, when Turner and Earvin “Magic” Johnson were in preliminary discussions to set up advisors for their first urban development fund, he assumed that Canyon-Johnson would stick to the traditional industry hot shots with Ivy League pedigrees and exponential IQs. “But Magic wanted politicians and law enforcement agents on staff from the start,” Turner recalls. “I think I shook my head at first, but he had the foresight to understand that we were not [just] underwriting real estate but the community at large, and that we’d need people with very specific skills.”
Enter Randy Slaughter, an ex- Marine who worked gang enforcement, narcotics, S.W.A.T., and C.S.I. assignments for 18 years as a Newport Beach, Calif., police officer. Often a “first man in” during S.W.A.T. hostage negotiation breakdowns, Slaughter never imagined that one day he’d be applying crime scene disciplines to something as banal as evaluating real estate. “But there’s a lot of similarity,” he says. “In law enforcement, we would go into a new town, establish relationships, identify a problem, determine if it was correctable, and if so, [what] resources it would require. I’m really applying the same investigative techniques for Canyon-Johnson as I did when I was working 100-kilo cocaine cases.”
Now director of security for Canyon Capital Realty Advisors, Slaughter is still a consultant to Canyon-Johnson Urban Funds with respect to risk and liability management through the use of on-site security. His recommendations include the use of closed-circuit surveillance video at certain sites. What’s more, in Houston, he helped put together a partnership that incorporated a police substation at a redevelopment where crime—including homicide—had been the norm. The result was a dramatic decline in security incidents to near zero.
According to Johnson, Slaughter’s presence is a competitive advantage that lets Canyon-Johnson Urban Funds pack a punch without packing heat. “It is critical to know the temperature of a community,” Johnson says. “But you can’t gauge that temperature if you are standing there with a gun. [This type of underwriting] helps to understand the community and provide levels of safety and security that you never have to see. It’s another way we make sure we’ve done our homework way before we show up.”
