Soave Corporate News

Building a Culture, Not Just a Company

Entrepreneur Anthony L. Soave reflects on his career...and tells why he stays in Michigan

By Carl Simpson

CORPORATE LEADERS commonly speak of “starting in the trenches,” but Anthony L. Soave isn’t talking figuratively about how his career began.

The president and CEO of Soave Enterprises L.L.C., a Detroit-based conglomerate with dozens of companies across the country, worked alongside his employees in the contracting business for more than a decade after launching his first venture more than 40 year ago.

Now the lifelong Detroiter oversees a diversified portfolio of companies with more than 2,500 employees and annual sales approximating $1.6 billion. Photos of Soave with his family, friends, presidents, governors, and other prominent dignitaries decorate his office on East Lafayette Avenue, just a few blocks from the Gratiot-Harper neighborhood where he grew up.

This rise from working-class roots is a classic American success story. Soave, 65, heads one of the nation’s top 300 privately held companies a firm he founded in 1961 with one truck and a handful of employees. “I didn’t think what I was doing was so special at the time. I just looked for opportunities to grow and seized them,” Soave says. “But as I look back, I can see that we’ve overcome a few obstacles and built something I’m proud of. I’m glad my father had the chance to see that while he was still alive.”

Family role models
Soave’s father, Nicholas, was an Eastern Market grocer in Detroit who kindled an entrepreneurial spirit in his teenage son. The younger Soave also admired an uncle who was a general contractor, and absorbed life lessons working alongside him.

“I had an ambition back in high school of becoming a contractor and building a business,” he recalls. “I didn’t think it was anything extraordinary at the time.”

Nor did he think twice about missing a varsity football awards ceremony at the former Nativity of Our Lord High School to roll rocks up an embankment on a highway project one Saturday. “My uncle urged me to go, but finishing the job with the rest of the crew seemed more important right then,” says the former All-City football tackle.

A lifelong work ethic was emerging, and Soave never paused as he took on a series of uphill missions after that early one.

From graduation to contracting
Soave was so eager to jump into business that he waved off offers of several college football scholarships. Instead, he applied family lessons and his own tenacity in 1961 by buying a used truck and pursuing grading contracts.

The east side Detroiter married the former Darlene Jasmund in 1966. A year later, he paid $42,000 for half of a Utica landfill business, where he became the operating partner. Nicholas Soave supported that leap with a $22,000 loan, acting as his son’s first banker.

When one of his largest customers, Sanitas Inc., a publicly held waste management operator based in Hartford, Connecticut, ran into financial difficulty, the bank invited him to buy the Detroit operation while Soave turned his newest acquisition around.

1970s turning point
“That’s when I stepped into the big time,” recalls Soave, who acquired the larger firm’s Detroit pickup business, collection site, and 240-acre Sumpter Township landfill in 1974. “Until then, my staff consisted only of equipment operators. I didn’t have any professional people. We all were hands-on - and hand-to-mouth back then.”

The rising entrepreneur, then in his mid-30s, named the new venture City Management Corporation, hired a full-time accountant, and began assembling an executive team to help run the business that formed the original core of Soave Enterprises. “Until then, I handled most everything,” he recounts with a grin.

With an inside team in place, Soave began to add other ventures to the portfolio. “We started to get busier, and I was working seven days a week,” he says of that turning-point decade. He quickly acknowledged his wife Darlene’s pivotal support. “She took care of things in so many ways, including everything at home. None of this would have happened without her.”

Taste of success
With more municipal and industrial collection contracts and a virtually uninterrupted string of acquisitions, City Management expanded in the 1980s and 90s. “We wound up positioned as the largest waste hauler and landfill operator in Michigan.” But, with less opportunity to expand in a field dominated by publicly held corporations, Soave sold City Management in 1998 to USA Waste Services Inc., a Houston-based waste management company.

That profitable turn left Soave with a talented, experienced, and loyal management team. Proceeds from the sale fueled additional growth in real estate, Anheuser-Busch distributorships, auto dealerships metals recycling. Today’s portfolio also includes industrial service companies, hydroponic greenhouses, luxury condominiums, hotels, transportation services and logistics firms.

Hands-on and decisive
“We’ve had good business instincts,” explains Tony Soave, who links steady growth to his operation’s lean structure, quick decision-making and leadership continuity. Critical decisions are made at Soave Enterprises without unnecessary procedures. “To be successful you have to have a competent team of people, you have to have good managers and you have to have a good team of leaders,” Soave notes. With those fundamentals in place, “We’ve made approximately 100 acquisitions since 1990, had significant organic growth and reached sales of nearly $1.6 billion in 2004.”

Another strategic advantage, in his view, is that of being immune from immediate shareholder expectations. “We look at growth with a long-range perspective,” Soave says. “That can make a big difference in your decision-making.”

Pouring new foundations
Since 1998, real estate development has been a bigger part of the long-term growth strategy.

Trident Properties, Soave’s real estate arm, has developed or invested in subdivisions, high-rise luxury condominiums, office complexes, industrial buildings and other projects in Michigan, Florida, Illinois, Missouri and Virginia. Two projects will rise soon in Michigan; a $75-million-dollar condominium project in downtown Rochester, called Milltown, will add 184 units on 18 acres, and a $250 million-dollar project in Wayne County will add 850 units on 350 acres, including a 100-acre nature area.

In its most ambitious real estate undertaking so far, the Soave Enterprises real estate division is creating, in effect, a new city with their $4.5 billion Brambleton development, a master-planned community of more than 2,000 acres near the nation’s capital in Loudoun County, Virginia. Soave provided four public school sites, with a high school and elementary school due to open this year. Residents also will have access to day-care centers, a county park with 10 athletic fields and more than 200 acres of natural space with trails. Brambleton is a technology showcase, with all homes, businesses and civic buildings linked via high-speed communication lines as the nation’s first Verizon-enhanced fiber-optic community.

Long-haul careers
As the company has grown, so has its leadership team’s strength and experience - with little of the turnover common in corporate suites. Fittingly, the self-made CEO encourages corporate officers to stretch beyond their specific industry or professional backgrounds.

Through a winning combination of charisma, inspiration, opportunity, trust and financial incentives, Soave works closely with four key executives, three of whom came aboard when he was building City Management into an industry powerhouse, as well as one recent addition. Interestingly, all spent their early careers in public accounting: Yale Levin, executive vice president; Michael L. Piesko, senior vice present and chief financial officer; Kathleen B. McCann, senior vice president, and Michael Hollerbach, senior vice president.

Hometown stability
Soave feels the same type of affection to Detroit that veteran employees feel toward him. Though holdings stretch as far as Texas, Florida and Virginia, Soave maintains Detroit as his home.

“This town has been good to us. We’ve been here our whole lives and never left the east side,” adds Soave, who raised daughters Angelique and Andrea with his wife of 38 years, Darlene.

Because community reinvestment remains a core value of Soave Enterprises, the company enjoys a long history of investing in Detroit and the other communities. Employees at each operating company are also encouraged to become involved with and support local schools, parks and community programs.

Corporate citizenship
For his part, Soave is a key supporter of numerous charities and community initiatives, including the College for Creative Studies, Michigan Opera Theatre, Capuchin Soup Kitchen, Detroit Institute of Arts and Matrix Human Services, among others. “Darlene and I have been pleased to be able to help support our community,” he explains. “I’ve always envisioned Detroit making a comeback,” says Soave.

It’s all directed from a former tool-and-die shop that has been converted into a remarkably modest headquarters, reflecting someone who values actual business success – not its glossy trappings. This is a former contractor-turned-entrepreneur, after all, who rose by doing.

True, the sprawling network now demands Soave’s attention at his Missouri and Kansas car dealerships, the Chicago beer distributorships, the Naples condos and the celebrated Brambleton development in the east. But, at 3400 East Lafayette in Detroit, the command center has no marble columns or corporate dinning room.

Leaning back in a reflective mood that associates say is something new, the founder of Soave Enterprises says, “When I look back on my career, I am proud of everyone in our organization and that we have been able to help provide employment to so many families.”

His executive team and divisional managers don’t want to let him down. It’s a level of loyalty, mutual respect and dedication reflects a business leadership ideal.

Along the way, Anthony Soave built a culture, not just a company.

REFLECTING ON TONY

“I am not one to just hand out endorsements lightly. I believe those are earned. I always tell people who come to Comerica for a business loan, “tell me what you are gong to do and then go ahead and do it.” Tony Soave is one of our most respected customers and deserves the highest endorsement possible that he always does what he says he will do.”
Mark E. Gregory, Executive Vice President
Comerica

“Tony has truly been one of our most successful and valued customers. Our history goes back to when Tony first started in the waste and landfill business and has progressed through to his scrap, beer and extensive real estate business.”
Richard C. Webb, Senior Vice President
Standard Federal Bank

“For me, Tony Soave is the ultimate entrepreneur. He’s made good decisions, takes smart risks, is not overly impulsive, and has really enjoyed his success. The most amazing thing to me is that he really hasn’t changed that much. The lunches may be a little nicer, and his suits may be better tailored, but his success hasn’t changed the person a bit.”
Barb B. Gattorn, Senior Advisor to the President
Detroit Regional Chamber

“One of Tony’s greatest strengths is his ability and commitment to build a strong organization and, importantly, investing in and providing every employee with the resources necessary to ensure that they have the ability to succeed.”
Philip K. Kazer, Regional Sales Vice President
Anheuser-Busch

“Tony Soave and I have been partners for more than six years and I consider it a privilege and an honor. To learn from one of the masters in business, and to have a partner so generous with his own lessons learned, is an opportunity most entrepreneurs will never have. This is more than just business. There’s a relationship here that may be impossible to beat.”
Roderick K. Rickman, CEO
MPS Group