Growing the business
It didn't take a miracle to transform a Midwestern company that was financially crippled just five years ago into Ohio's largest owner and manager of affordable apartments today. It took the expertise in management and finance that The Wallick Companies CEO Tom Feusse acquired during his 20-year career with The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, to turn the multifamily developer, owner and manager around.
"Those were the areas of difficulty for Wallick," said Feusse, who began working as a consultant for the 44-year-old affordable multihousing company in May 2005.
Discipline and focus, along with the strong belief that a company should stay in its core market as long as growth is still possible there, also were key to fixing the problems Feusse found when he took on the job of helping to heal the ailing real estate firm that was founded in 1966 by Jack Wallick and Sanford Goldston.
The company enjoyed 37 straight profitable years following its formation by engineer, builder, and general contractor Wallick and certified public accountant and financial advisor Goldston. But rapid expansion into new markets outside the Midwest and the simultaneous development of four assisted-living communities, followed by disastrously slow lease-up of communities with high fixed operating costs resulted in a mountain of debt and revenue plunged $50 million in just four years. By the time Feusse arrived, the company had sold the ill-fated assisted-living deals in New Jersey and the Carolinas to pay some of the bills that mounted because of them.
Ironically, the company that was in financial trouble when Feusse entered the picture was born from the ruins of the New
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