Don Soffer: the developer

South Florida CEO, Oct, 2004 by Charles Flowers

Don Soffer was not born to the "jet set." But no one has ever taken to it with more enthusiasm than this son of a Jewish immigrant. Now 71, Soffer keeps homes in the Bahamas, Aspen, Colorado and Las Vegas, along with a 10,000-square-foot condominium at Porto Vita, in Aventura, the northeast Miami-Dade city he named and developed. To save on travel time between them, he became a pilot. Today, he is on a speakerphone from a boat anchored near Capri, in sunny Italy. He is talking about inspiration.

"The inspiration is that you want to achieve, to do things that are memorable, with style and class, to create a good image and reputation for yourself and your family," he says. "You want to be proud of the work you do. So you're very concerned with what the buildings look like, how they operate. But of course you have to do it all within the parameters of being financially successful."

Soffer was born in Duquesne, Pa., a steel town 20 miles from Pittsburgh. He was a football standout at Brandeis University before he was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers when he graduated in 1954. Football may have been his first love, but he decided against making it a career and instead went on to a more lucrative one as a developer.

He garnered a reputation as an innovator in shopping center development. The first double-decker malls he built in the mid-1960s in suburban Pittsburgh returned more than five times his investment. Those malls made him a rich man.

But it was Aventura where Soffer made his mark. Now a vibrant bustling city, Aventura was built on 785 acres of swampland in a part of Dade County once known as "East Ojus," on land Soffer purchased in 1967. Soffer sketched out the plans for it on a table napkin that year and later pitched the idea to Florida Gov. Claude Kirk. Over time, it would become one of the most affluent addresses in Florida. It is also Soffer's address, when he is not on a boat, on skis or flying his jet.

US Steel was the main industry in Soffer's hometown of Duquesne. The soot from the smelting operation was so thick, he recalls, "You couldn't walk outside with a white shirt on for 15 minutes and have it stay white. There was a lot of strip mining. I don't remember seeing any leaves on trees."

Football was the small town's main obsession. "I think I was the first Jewish kid to play on my high school team. I had a few battles of my own. Being on a team was very inspirational. The emphasis that was put on winning was just so great. You couldn't quit no matter how difficult it was because you had to face your neighbors and your friends. You had to persevere; keep on fighting no matter how difficult it got. A lot of that attitude is useful in business. When things are tough and difficult, you have to get down and just work harder at it. Nothing really comes easy," says Soffer.

Soffer drew inspiration from his father, who owned a garage and a Studebaker automobile dealership before World War II broke out. "He had a 6th grade education. But he was a great salesman and very creative. I guess I picked up a lot of insight from him. He recognized the trends of shopping centers and he found the land on which Aventura was built."

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His father died in 1972. A photograph of the two at a Brandeis football game hangs in Soffer's office: the younger Soffer in uniform with tape on his hands, his father wearing a bow tie and holding a cardboard sign over his chest emblazoned with his son's number, "60."

Soffer may have inherited his father's down-to-earth business style but he surpassed him in his ability to get what he wants--usually.

"I don't walk around with my chest stuck out and say, 'What a great thing I've done,'" Soffer says of Aventura. "It's a pretty well-done city; more like the Central Park concept with a park in the middle with vistas. We don't have concrete canyons like you have on Collins Avenue, or mundane developments like you have in Boca where the golf courses are surrounded by houses, and you drive around the road and all you see is peoples' homes. Of course, some people say they liked it better as a swamp."

He named the city Aventura, which means, "adventure" in Spanish. Soffer had to go to the governor and the Army Corps of Engineers to obtain the permits to dredge and build the structures that would eventually make up the city. It took a fair amount of tact--some would say guile--to get the permission needed to go forward with the project.

"We preyed on his [Gov. Kirk's] boastfulness ... He presented it to the Cabinet like it was his idea. Then we got all the permits we needed," Soffer says.

Robert Swedroe, an architect who worked with Soffer on several of his early South Florida projects, describes Soffer as "the driving force behind the development of the original Aventura--a residential golf course and country club community. Then he developed Turnberry Isle, which established the jet-setter's gold standard for club life throughout the world. It drew everyone from sheiks to heads of state, celebrities, entertainers, socialites, and underworld figures."