The 2006 Virginia 100 - Hunting for opportunity
Real estate developer Dan Hoffler bags big game and big projects

by Jessica Sabbath
Virginia Business
June 2006

In Daniel A. Hoffler’s office on the top floor of a gleaming new skyscraper in Virginia Beach is a photo of him in camouflage, standing next to one of his trophies, a North American bighorn sheep. "It took us three weeks of tracking to get him,"says Hoffler.
The 57-year-old founder and chairman of Armada Hoffler has spent most of his life bagging another kind of elusive game, prime real estate. In 27 years, he’s built his company from a small player into a major commercial real estate developer and contractor with a portfolio of more than 21.4 million square feet valued at $2.6 billion.

While a few finds certainly have slipped away in these risky endeavors, Hoffler’s most public disappointment came last year when the businessman locked horns with critics of the state’s game board. Controversy raged over a Hoffler-paid safari to Africa, attended by three high-ranking officials of the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (DGIF), who charged nearly $12,000 worth of equipment for the trip to state credit cards (charges Hoffler and other board members later repaid after the incident became public). But that wasn’t enough to save Hoffler’s position as game board chairman. He resigned in March 2005.

"It was extremely hurtful to me with the amount of time and money that I had spent on furthering the mission of DGIF,"says Hoffler. "I never had a credit card. I never spent a dime of state money. And then, you know, you get caught up in this media frenzy thing where it appears that you were taking advantage of the situation. … It was totally, absolutely unfair."

These days the wealthy developer has put controversy behind him, preferring instead to focus on his company. Hoffler started Armada Hoffler in 1979 with plans to build warehouses in Chesapeake’s Greenbrier section. These days, it’s a key force behind one of the most high-profile projects in Hampton Roads: the $500 million Town Center of Virginia Beach. As part of a public-private partnership with Virginia Beach, Hoffler’s company is building a 17-block business center in Virginia’s largest city. The mixed-use center will offer 800,000 square feet of Class A office space, high-end hotels and luxury residences.

So far, its most dramatic building is the 23-story, Art Deco Armada Hoffler tower, which bears Hoffler’s name. The real estate executive hardly envisioned such heights when he tried getting his company off the ground in the late 1970s. A wealthy family friend suggested Hoffler meet Jim Fisher, owner of Armada Petroleum Corp., an oil tycoon eager to diversify his company.

Low on cash, Hoffler borrowed the money to fly to Houston to meet Fisher. After waiting for eight hours, he was finally ushered into Fisher’s office, and, as Hoffler likes to recount, the oil man was willing "to roll the dice."Hoffler left with a $2.5 million check and bought two parcels: a 100-acre, undeveloped site in Chesapeake and a 10-acre property off Diamond Springs Road in Virginia Beach.

Back then the Greenbrier land sold for $20,000 an acre. Last year, Hoffler says he sold the last piece of the site for $350,000 an acre. In 1982, he broke off the company’s ties to the oil industry. Armada Hoffler continued to grow, landing major projects up and down the East Coast.

"Dan’s always been a terrific entrepreneur — the kind of business leader who makes good things happen in communities where he does business,"says former Gov. Mark R. Warner, a longtime friend and business partner and the person who appointed Hoffler to the game board in 2002.
For now, Hoffler is staying away from high-profile public roles. "I’m still going to support the [Gov.] Tim Kaines of the world, but I’m not going to expose myself again,"he says. (Armada Hoffler gave $30,000 to Kaine’s gubernatorial campaign and $10,000 to his inaugural committee.)

Judging from the ancient Persian poem hanging in his office, Hoffler likely sees the DGIF controversy and his growing wealth as transient episodes in the grand scheme of things. As the poem’s final line reminds him daily: "Even this shall pass away."