From Olympic Medalist to Portland Visionary: Jim Brady’s Journey

Lisa Belisle: Hello. I am Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to or watching our video podcast Radio Maine, where we explore and celebrate creativity and the human spirit. Creativity in its many forms. We are sponsored by the Portland Art Gallery in Portland, Maine. Today I have with me Jim Brady, who is the president and founder of Fathom Companies Real Estate Development and Hotel Management. Thank you for coming in today.

Jim Brady: Thanks for having me, Lisa. Delighted to be here.

Lisa Belisle: Really, the honor is mine, because you and I have known each other for quite a while, but then we took a decade of maybe not seeing each other quite as much. You've had a lot going on in your life.

Jim Brady: I have. I've had a lot going on. Move out of Yarmouth and into Portland, and two daughters shipped off to college and just graduated this year. So they're off on a new path now, and some changes in my personal life too. I was divorced a few years ago and been with a new wonderful woman, Katya, since then. So a lot of changes in my life on the personal side, but also on the business side as well.

Lisa Belisle: Yes, and I should say it hasn't really been a decade since you and I have seen each other, but we used to intersect quite a bit on the sports fields because we had daughters who played together. And now, as you've alluded to, your daughters graduated, my daughter's graduated from college and is married. Just different life phases. These things, they seem to kind of creep up on us, I think.

Jim Brady: Exactly. We're all getting a little older.

Lisa Belisle: Yes. Celebrating more birthdays, I would say. So I want to ask you, I want to start with something that's always intrigued me about you, and that is your sailing background, because you were a 1992 silver medalist in the Olympics in Barcelona.

Jim Brady: Yes.

Lisa Belisle: So that's not something that we always have conversations about. You and I, when we get together, we don't go, oh, let's talk about your time in the Olympics.

Jim Brady: Right. Most people in the Portland area know me from my real estate side, and before I moved to Maine back in 2000, I was a professional sailor and raced Grand Prix high-tech sailing boats in different ports around the world for my whole life. That's what I did for a living. I was very fortunate to be able to make the US Olympic team in Barcelona back in 1992. So quite a while ago, but really was one of the best experiences of my life. Being able to compete in the Olympics and for the United States, but also in a venue like Barcelona where the Olympic port was built within the Olympic Village itself. So we really got a chance to participate with all the other athletes, from the dining room to the gym in the morning. So it was a really special time, and one of the things that I look back on as one of my accomplishments that I'm really proud of and really was a fun experience for me.

Lisa Belisle: You also built relationships with people that would actually carry forward into your business life.

Jim Brady: I very much did. In fact, the Olympics was just one aspect of my sailing, because I did a lot of large scale maxi boat type racing with the titans of the world, from top level CEOs and mostly billionaires, to a single handed boat called a laser that I raced in the Pan-American Games in Venezuela in 1983. So I certainly went through the whole gamut of those types of sailing things. But during the Olympics, I had partnered up with a fellow from Maine, Kevin Mahaney, and so he and I did a campaign, if you will, for that four year quadrennium leading from 1988 up to 1992, and we were ranked number one in the world. We won the world championships during that time, and I had only really ever been to Maine once before Kevin brought me here. And ultimately, when I decided to think about transitioning out of sailing as my full-time career, Kevin Mahaney kindly offered me an opportunity to come and work for him for basically nothing, but to learn the ropes and to learn from his group. Not just Kevin, who's a real finance expert, but I have a lot of respect for Kevin for his knowledge and his know-how. He's just a very sharp individual, and I give him a lot of credit for taking me on and shifting me from a sailing world into the real estate world.

And I've always thought that one of the things that was unique about the sailing aspect for me is that, to do well in that day and age, to make a living at sailing, you were primarily working for these billionaire type clients who wanted you to really project manage their campaign for them. So I might go, the CEO of United Technologies was one of my clients, and I might meet with him on his Gulfstream jet flying somewhere so he could meet with me to say, next year I'd love to go racing in these kind of venues, and what should we be doing? And we would literally get down to, let's design this type of boat, hire that naval architect, this builder to build it, hire these sailors to come sail with us. And so I learned how to do project management for these ultra high net worth individuals, and that I think really parlayed very well into the real estate world, particularly the development side, which is all really about project management.

Lisa Belisle: I do think, as I am hearing you talk, this idea of creating something out of nothing, or something out of scattered bits and pieces, and understanding how to make it a success, is something that not everybody understands how to do well.

Jim Brady: Yeah, and I don't think of myself as a creative type per se. I certainly am a patron of the arts, and I love to see performing art. I love to have visual art and artwork on my walls and things like that. But I think that what I've been able to do is take the experiences I've had of traveling around the world and come back to a place like Portland, Maine, and see that there's an opportunity or an opening in the market that somebody really hasn't figured out. And I think sometimes when you don't travel as much and see other parts of the world, it's really easy to have your blinders on and not really understand what you're missing. So I think that my experiences of traveling everywhere and experiencing so many different unique cultures and architecture and design and different places around the world has allowed me to use some of that creativity to create something here in Portland that I felt was kind of missing in the market.

Lisa Belisle: Talk to me about some of your projects in Portland.

Jim Brady: Well, going historically, I worked with Kevin Mahaney, who has a company called the Olympia Companies that was based in Portland, Maine. So if I go back in time, I was competing in the America's Cup, I did two America's Cups, the last one was in Auckland, New Zealand. And in 1999, Kevin Mahaney came and stayed with me and said, I would love for you to come back to work for me again when the America's Cup is over. By the way, I just bought this amazing piece of property in downtown Portland, Maine. Would you consider moving from New Zealand to Portland, Maine, and being the head of a development group managing that? So ultimately that's what really brought me to Maine. And I was with Kevin for a number of years, and we developed things in Portland. For example, really the block around Fore Street restaurant, we did the Hilton Garden Inn, we did the Bangor Savings Bank building. We did what was CIEE, which is now University of Maine Law School building. So we developed those four corners of that block. That was my first foray.

But after I left Olympia in 2008, because we had actually, I left before the crisis of 2008 really set in, and decided to move with my family to take a year off and move to Italy. And I ended up getting a job over there working on a Four Seasons hotel and branded residence project in Venice. And when I came back, moved back to the states three years later, I decided I didn't really want to go back to work at Olympia because I wanted to stay local and I wanted to stay in Maine and not be on an airplane on Monday mornings and back on a Friday, which is kind of what Olympia was, mostly traveling up and down the East coast developing at that stage.

So I decided to hang up my own shingle and start a business, and the first thing I started doing was looking at some real estate opportunities. And I found the former Portland Press Herald building sitting empty there on the top of Exchange Street right across from City Hall, and it seemed like, what an opportunity to turn that into a boutique lifestyle hotel that the market was ready for. I thought the market was ready for it. And so many people told me, no way, this will ever work. Terrible location, top of Exchange Street, just doesn't work, no way, we need more hotels in this market. You name it, I heard it from all the highly respected real estate people. They thought I was crazy, but I had a conviction and I took enormous risk. I literally put everything that I had financially into making that happen, brought a partner in from Florida, where I originally grew up, to be my partner in Fathom also in that project.

And so what we did is we took that vacant shell of a building and turned it into what people know today as the Press Hotel. And I'd like to say it was very successful and it proves a lot of people wrong. I've had a number of them who I highly respect, a great example would be Joe Boas or Peter Anastas, both of which told me I was absolutely crazy, be nice enough to come to me a year or two later and said, boy, I didn't get it. You saw something I didn't see, and this is amazing.

Lisa Belisle: I want to stop you right there, because I personally watched the evolution of the Press Hotel. I remember being in the Press Herald building when it was the Press Herald building, and having also traveled some, I saw what it was turning into and I saw what it became. And you're absolutely right. Portland did not have anything like that at the time, and arguably doesn't have a lot like that even now. But it also speaks to something that I think that people who are entrepreneurs and business people probably hear a lot, which is, we've never done that, so you won't be able to, you're not going to be able to be successful. And I think that conviction that you're describing is not easy for everybody to come by. So for you, what was it about this particular project that you said, no, I believe in this, I'm going to keep doing this, I'm going to believe in it so much, I'm going to put all my money into it, all my resources into it. Tell me about that.

Jim Brady: Yeah, and I did. As I said, it was scary. There were many sleepless nights when I was putting that deal together. But I felt like the Portland market was full of a lot of limited service hotels, which is kind of a hotel term for a Courtyard, a Hilton Garden Inn, the Hampton Inn. They serve you breakfast, they're probably nothing else from a food and beverage perspective, in a very simple and probably somewhat institutionalized or corporate room decor. And I really felt like there was an opportunity in this market to create something that was much more unique, creative, and frankly, having a historic building as the bones to start with, in the history of the Portland Press Herald and the media, it just gave us this huge plate to build off of, create a unique brand. And I still am really excited about what we were able to create there, and frankly, it did better than our wildest dreams.

And I think that that led into us doing other projects. And more recently we acquired a building at Monument Square, beautiful old Maine Bank and Trust, Fidelity Bank and Trust building that was built in 1910. Funny enough, same architect in 1910 who also designed the original Press Herald building, Desmond and Lord. And so we just acquired that this summer and we're in the middle of a whole planning and design and creative charette process to figure out what we're going to do with that. And of course, rather than the media and press side of the theme of the Press Hotel, this one is going to be very much about banking and finance and money and currency, and there's still a really unique old vault in the basement that's just fabulous. So there's a lot of character to build off of, which I think makes it easier to create this unique brand.

But back to your point about this being a very different product, you had all this institutional feeling stuff, but nothing really said to you that it was Portland or Maine. And I always used to try to explain to people, think about when you go stay in different places, and if you're the type of customer who stays in a Courtyard or a Residence Inn, you wake up in the morning and you look around and you could be anywhere in the world, the same furnishings. It's the green scheme or the blue scheme or whatever it is. And I really wanted to tie into the local artist community, to local materials, authentic materials, creating a whole brand that pulled through your whole experience, from the time the guest arrives at the valet, seeing the signage that looked like typewriter keys, to every little detail like that throughout your stay, to create an experience for the guest that is not something you would ever have in a limited service hotel. And that's what I think really differentiated that product.

Lisa Belisle: Not to mention the fact that the food was and is really wonderful. The chef that you originally had, I know, has now moved on, but you now have another great, exceptional chef.

Jim Brady: Yes, exactly. And Josh Berry, Chef Berry, was there from the beginning with us, and really, I think by the time COVID was around, he was kind of done being a full-time executive chef, but he was phenomenal. We've got another great executive chef now, Christian. But we were able to create a very upscale food and beverage offering there. And it's tough to be in the food and beverage business. We all know they have the highest failure rate of really any business out there. And hotels often struggle with that because they have to do three meals a day. You've got a hotel guest who really wants a great breakfast and a healthy option, but also the typical classic things with the bacon and eggs and pancakes and whatever. And then you need to have, for locals and also somewhat for the guest, an upscale dining experience for dinner.

And it's very hard to have an establishment be able to, with three very different meal options like that. If you look in Portland and you look at the really successful restaurants, and I would certainly put Dana Street with his three places at Scales and Fore Street and Street and Company right at the top of the list, he does dinner only. And frankly, you make most of the money off of the alcohol. It's the beverage side, not the food. The food is there to draw you in, but it's the beverage that actually makes it financially viable. And we've seen a lot of closures in Portland just recently, in fact, where the high cost of labor, the high cost of rent and insurance and utilities, together with high cost of food, has really pushed the cost of supplying that product to the customer up. And yet there still seems to be some pushback at the entree price point level for the retail customer to be able to have an establishment that really makes a margin.

And where I was going with that is that a hotel maybe doesn't really make any money on food and beverage, but having a great food and beverage establishment within your hotel allows you to generate that extra rate on top of your hotel room. So maybe we don't make it in the food and beverage, but having that good food and beverage is what allows you to do better in the hotel. And so I think in some ways we have an advantage that way. Our disadvantage is that we have to do it three times a day and the first two meals are not really money makers.

Lisa Belisle: As I'm thinking about the places that I've been to, and in particular the places that we've stayed in boutique hotels, I think you're absolutely right that one of the things we actually will look for is a place that has a great restaurant that we can actually go to. Maybe we're not going to go every single meal there, but it's a place that we can always land back at. And then when we go to places that don't have that at all, it's not quite the same experience. It's not quite the same ability to just really rest into the place that you're visiting.

Jim Brady: Exactly, exactly. A lot of times if somebody's only staying one night, they're likely not going to come and dine with us for dinner. They might have breakfast with us. But if they're there for three or four nights, they're definitely going to dine with us, assuming we've got a good establishment that they'd want to go to. So yeah, I think that it does give you the flexibility when you're traveling to have a place that you don't feel like you need to go out and make a reservation. The hotel can make sure you get a table, even if it's a high demand restaurant.

Lisa Belisle: So you're entering into, as you're talking about restaurant closures and you're talking about, we just came out of COVID and that has had its challenges, and yet here you are back again going into another situation where you've purchased a building, and we know that Congress Street is always an evolution, but has had also some changes recently. So are you drawing on the same conviction that you had previously, or now are you able to say, well, we did this wonderful thing with the Press Hotel, so let's do it again in a slightly different way with this new establishment?

Jim Brady: Certainly doing the Press Hotel at the top of Exchange at the time was risky. And I would say today, doing that type of project that we're doing at Monument Square is also risky. We have concern about Monument Square. It is not the center best place in Portland, Maine right now. And historically, Congress Street was the main street, that was where the commerce and the activity and everything happened, on Congress. And now that has, over the last couple of decades, very much shifted down to Commercial Street. Very much so. Part of our goal is to really reactivate Monument Square and help bring that back around. So I think this is something that has a lot of community development, and we'll be pushing hard and working together with the city to help look at different ways that we can try to bring Monument Square back into the times that we think it should be.

There's a very large building right next door to us called the Time and Temp. Many people know that building. It's been vacant also for a number of years. The building we just acquired is vacant. So you've got these 300,000 square feet of old office buildings and retail that are sitting vacant at Monument Square, and that's not helping that area either. So once you get people on the streets, and whether Time and Temp becomes a residential play or a hotel or whatever, getting that building occupied is the critical function. The office market's pretty soft, so I doubt it's going to be office. But if we can get people back in that building, we can get an upscale hotel in the old Fidelity Trust building there, that'll bring life back to Monument Square. And that tends to allow retailers to then come in, and they then want to fix up their storefront and put in better lighting and clean the sidewalk in front of their retail establishment. And it's just a snowballing effect that creates community. And so our hope is that we're the impetus to start that snowball moving, and we'll obviously work together with others to try to do what we can to really help bring Monument Square back, and really the old street of Portland back to the life that it should be.

Lisa Belisle: And I do see that you did that with the Press Hotel, because it seems as though the Press Hotel, where it's situated not very far away from City Hall, you almost extended the Old Port up in that direction. So you created more space by saying, no, we are going to be here. And so I think the opportunity really is there on Monument Square. In talking to Quincy Hentzel when she came in from the Chamber, the Portland Chamber of Commerce, Portland is in a unique place to practice business.

Jim Brady: Yes, it is.

Lisa Belisle: And so your decision to practice business, to be in business in Portland, I think probably has its own unique opportunities, let's say.

Jim Brady: It does. There are certainly challenges within the city of Portland. The politics are not necessarily always so pro-business, the permitting process can be arduous, lengthy, costly, et cetera. But at the same time, from a hospitality perspective, it's where the tourists want to be. It's where the customer wants to be. So really we don't have much choice. If we want to do an urban lifestyle hotel, we need to be in downtown Portland. If I want to do a resort, I mean the Inn by the Sea is awfully nice out in Cape Elizabeth, places like that that are just a very different experience, but they're not urban and they have a very different situation and issues to deal with out there. But no, the city can be challenging, but we are excited about trying to transform this area. As you said, we feel like we did that on Exchange Street. Upper Exchange used to have a hard time holding retail tenants.

And after the Press Hotel opens, and I can't say we take all the credit for it, but there's no question in my mind that it helped the commerce on Upper Exchange Street. We also at Fathom acquired the building at the bottom of Tommy's Park, people call it, that has the Grill Room as their downstairs tenant. We bought that building and did a big historic tax credit gut rehab of that to bring that building back up to snuff. And it was part of our plan to help enhance and make Exchange a better location for businesses. And I think it was very successful.

Lisa Belisle: This idea of business development, I think, is something that not everybody thinks about, probably. I don't think you get enough credit, because when I see patients, everybody, you have to have a doctor. Healthcare, you just have to have one. People are like, wow, why do you need a hotel? Who really cares? Well, you're developing. It's not just a place for people from somewhere else to come to. You're actually creating jobs, and you're creating the ability for artists, for example, to practice their own skills. Because you have original art in the Press Hotel, I assume you probably would do something similar, I hope so, from the Portland Art Gallery standpoint, we would certainly appreciate that. So as you're considering what I can do for this community, it's a very practical thing that you offer. We are going to develop this area, it's going to create jobs. Jobs are good because it actually contributes positively to the economy.

Jim Brady: Absolutely. Between the Press Hotel, we also developed a ground up hotel called the Canopy that has Luna, the rooftop bar you might be familiar with there. And we more recently opened a hotel, a very small 14 room place called the Weldon. And between those three properties, we have over 250 employees. So it's a pretty big team of people that actually make a good living wage. I know people think, oh, people in the hotel business don't make a living wage, but the minimum wage in Portland, we know, has gone up. It's just over $15, I think, starting next year. Our entry level housekeeping positions are in the low twenties, and it's been more challenging since COVID, frankly, even to find people that want to do those jobs. So while it isn't a hundred thousand dollars plus salaries for all positions in the hotel, we do offer a living wage, and there are quite a few higher end positions.

But in addition to the jobs that we are offering, we pay an enormous amount of property taxes to the city of Portland. And I find that people kind of forget that we're a big business, and we provide hundreds of thousands of dollars in property tax to the city of Portland, which helps the resident pay less in taxes. So it's always a balancing act. But I do feel that in general there's kind of a sentiment of no more hotels. And it's interesting, in a lot of places around the country, the economic development directors and the city councilors are just begging and rolling out the red carpet for hotels to come to their town. And so the city of Portland hasn't recognized, I think, that there is a real positive benefit to a certain number of hotels in the marketplace. It's somewhat timely that the city's getting ready to vote on Monday night on a moratorium on hotels that's on the city council agenda. So there's definitely a sentiment in town that they don't want anymore hotels.

Lisa Belisle: It'll be really interesting to see how this all plays out.

Jim Brady: Yeah.

Lisa Belisle: I've also noticed that within Portland, we have a lot of people who are coming, who are now living in condos, high end condos that are down near the water, or we have people who are inhabiting the old Mercy Hospital building, which is multi-use. It's not just people who are high income. So with those people coming into those areas, you're going to need places for their guests to stay.

Jim Brady: Yes, exactly.

Lisa Belisle: So I think the idea that you could say, well, we're just not going to have hotels. Well, Maine is a tourist driven economy, largely.

Jim Brady: It is the number one driver of our economy in Maine.

Lisa Belisle: So if you don't, I mean, I understand that we all need to be aware of what development means, but if you don't have places for people to stay, then they can't come.

Jim Brady: No, exactly. And there is certainly the right balance to whatever that is. And my sentiment is that, while some people are saying no more hotels, we obviously have a good number of hotels. Most people tell us we're crazy to do yet another hotel, how could there be a big enough market? But we think that the market is continuing to grow. We've got numbers to show that the market is continuing to grow. And if you look at Portland, it's absorbed almost one hotel about every 18 months for the last several. So yes, maybe we don't need 10 new hotels, but the market is growing. The demand is growing at a rate that you can absorb a new hotel every couple of years. And so we believe that it will continue to grow. The city also passed an ordinance called the Tourism Improvement District about a year ago that generates some tax revenue off of hotels to promote Portland.

So that too will help, I think, the market grow. Visit Portland is really managing that whole fund through the city. And of course, I'm excited about some of the things that are happening that will grow Portland, like the Roux Institute. They're building a brand new campus in Portland. It's really state-of-the-art biotech oriented. And I think that is going to drive Portland to be a more successful and business oriented place to be, and create students with new skill sets that will hopefully lead into new entrepreneurs and startups and really help grow our economy and diversify our economy too, away from just being tourism. So I'm excited about where Portland's going and continue to believe in Portland long term.

Lisa Belisle: And I think about our children, for example. My son finally is finishing up his fellowship, and so he'll come back to Maine and practice as a Pain Medicine and ER Specialist. And one of my daughters is working for BerryDunn, which is a big organization in Portland. And if those opportunities were not available, then they would live elsewhere. So in order to have a successful longitudinality to even our demographic, we need to have opportunities in lots of different ways.

Jim Brady: Absolutely. You need to have a diverse economy. Because tourism kind of slows down pretty significantly in the off season. And if you're not at a major urban hub like Portland, most hotels in Maine shut down right after mid-October comes, the hotel shuts until maybe April or May of next year. So tourism certainly isn't thriving in our wintertime. Now with climate change, the season seems to be getting a little longer in the fall and starting earlier in the spring. I mean, here we are in November and it's a beautiful day out, which is nice in certain ways, even though it comes with other complication factors.

Lisa Belisle: And listening to the trajectory of your life, from sailing to development to just multifaceted business that you've been growing, what is it that you can call out as a common theme?

Jim Brady: That's a good question. But I always thought of, why was I successful in sailing, which is what I spent most of my life doing. And obviously one of those, when I used to teach youth sailors, is that you have to have fun doing what you're doing, because if you're not having fun doing it, one, you're going to not do it long, and you're not going to do well at it, because I think you have to enjoy it. So number one, I really love what I do, which means that I would also spend an enormous amount of time doing or practicing or training or trying to improve myself on what it was that I was doing. So if it was sailing, I probably logged more hours training than most of my competitors did. And that always made me feel like I've got confidence that I can go out and I can beat them, because I know I put the work in.

So I think part of that is that I feel like I've had a mentality of a go get it done, set your goal and focus on that goal and really dedicate the time and energy that's necessary to achieve that goal. And I think that really showed through in my sailing. And I think of the same thing with our real estate and hotel development work that we've done. I am not really the ops guy. I'm really more the development and the creative side of that. But I've been walking through this building nonstop, looking at different features, and maybe the stair could go this way instead, or maybe this room could be some other use. And trying to spend the time and energy rather than just go hire a bunch of architects and designers and tell 'em to go do it. Yes, we're going to do that, but I want to be part of that process with them and really push them to think outside the box. And that means spending a lot of time and dedicating a lot of hours in your brain thinking through different solutions that maybe somebody else hasn't thought of. So maybe that was a long-winded answer to your question, but I think it's just being really dedicated to wanting to be successful, frankly, and putting the time and effort into doing that, no matter what it is, whether it's sailing or real estate or in your personal life.

Lisa Belisle: I like it. So have fun and seek success and then work toward the success.

Jim Brady: Exactly. Yeah. Dedicate yourself to it.

Lisa Belisle: Very good. Well, Jim, it's really been a pleasure to catch up with you today.

Jim Brady: Well, it's great to catch up with you. It's been a while. Let's not let so much time go by next time.

Lisa Belisle: Well, yeah. I mean now I've got this new hotel that I get to go visit at some point.

Jim Brady: Exactly. We're probably looking at an opening of 2026, middle of 2026.

Lisa Belisle: All right, well, we'll set that as a goal and hopefully catch up before then.

Jim Brady: That sounds great. Sounds wonderful. Thank you so much for having me today.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah, well thanks for coming on. I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle and you've been listening to or watching our video podcast, Radio Maine, where we explore and celebrate creativity and the human spirit, creativity in its many forms. Today I've been speaking with Jim Brady, who is the president and founder of Fathom Companies Real Estate Development and Hotel Management. I encourage you to go to the Press Hotel. It's actually legitimately one of my favorite hotels and restaurants in Portland. So if you haven't been there already, you'll want to give it a stop if you're coming from out of town, or if you live in town, even go over there. And I look forward to hearing how things go with this new hotel. And maybe along the way, if you go to the Portland Art Gallery, stop in and visit us there. But thanks for coming in today, Jim.

Jim Brady: Thanks again.