By Sally Kirby Hartman
A couple of smart real estate buys made the Adams Cos. the dominant real estate firm in the Winchester region. Company founder Douglas Adams gets credit for that — the empty farmland he bought in the 1970s and 1980s is today home to the area’s main retail corridor and a 275-acre business park. But what has driven the company’s impressive growth in recent years was a change in business strategy.

Douglas Adams, left, and Kevin Adams with an architect's rendering of a current company project.     Photo by Mark Rhodes

Realizing it could sell its expertise as well as its real estate, the company started working outside its own real estate holdings, setting up a property management firm and expanding its brokerage firm. The result has been 267 percent growth over four years, making it the fastest-growing company among the Fantastic 50. Revenues reached $6.6 million in 1998. "If you’re only looking out for yourself, you can only grow to a certain size," says Kevin Adams, 42, Douglas Adams’ son and the company’s president. "In all areas we’ve looked at, how can we do for other people what we’ve done for ourselves?"

It was Douglas Adams — an experienced real estate attorney — who first saw the investment potential in the Winchester region. He and a partner bought 147 acres of landlocked pasture in 1972 for $250,000. Then in 1988 he paid nearly $1 million for 300 acres near the city’s small airport. Then he moved here with his wife, Fern, "to develop the property with our sons and move toward retirement," he says.

His investments paid off. The first parcel now holds the 90-store Apple Blossom Mall and major retail stores like Wal-Mart and Home Depot. The second became the Adams Cos.’ Airport Business Park, site of a 400,000-square-foot distribution center for the Kohl’s department store chain.

The region’s population growth is a big reason for the success of new retail projects. The population in Winchester and the surrounding Frederick County has risen from 44,000 in 1970 to 80,000 today, and is expected to rise 12 percent by 2010. Transportation infrastructure — such as Interstates 81 and 66, and an expanded Winchester Regional Airport — have helped boost industrial development, Kevin Adams says. The company has grown more complex since its start, when the only staff was a few family members and a secretary. Today, it has 18 employees among three companies that specialize in commercial real estate development, property management, and sales and leasing.

Most of the company’s business is within 50 miles of Winchester, up and down the I-81 corridor. Current projects include transforming a former Catholic church in Winchester into a community center and building a 60,000-square-foot building in Frederick for the Winchester-based Trex Co., a producer of alternative decking material. The company also recently started Pegasus Properties, a residential sales division. In April, the company moved its headquarters from the business park to a historic building in Winchester that it renovated and named for Fern Adams, who died in 1994.

The company’s growth wasn’t always so spectacular. A collapsing real estate market in the 1991 recession forced the Adams Cos. into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Rather than giving up, the Adamses worked through their problems. "We were in Chapter 11 less than a year and all debtors were paid in full," Kevin Adams says.

He cautions that the company’s fast growth isn’t the whole story. New marketing and property management efforts are just part of the mix, he says. "A lot of projects that we’ve been working on for 10 or 12 years are beginning to come to fruition," he says. "There are no overnight successes in real estate."