 "Photo: Courtesy photo")
Gerard Keating bought his first home while in college in the 1980s, but he didn't live there.
Rather, he fixed the home up with his brother and rented it out while living down the street at Alpha Gamma Sigma fraternity on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's East Campus.
"That's where his real estate empire started," said fraternity brother John Bergmeyer, a 1989 UNL graduate.
Keating, a 1987 UNL graduate, has since handled more than $500 million in real estate transactions. He owns shopping centers, office space and industrial buildings in suburban Chicago and 20,000 acres of land near Atkinson, Neb., where his family has lived for more than 100 years.
Keating brought an East Campus-perspective to student government after he was elected president of the Association of Students of the University of Nebraska in March 1985, said Marlene Beyke, director of administration for ASUN.
Expanding opportunities to greater Nebraska was one of Keating's priorities, said Mark Scudder, who was ASUN president for the 1984-1985 school year. Keating even took a group of student government leaders and friends on a float down the Niobrara River and to his home in Atkinson to introduce them to Nebraska beyond Lincoln and Omaha.
In the ASUN senate and meetings with then-Chancellor Martin Massengale, Keating pushed for the creation of a campus recreation center and dealt with "hot potato politics," Bergmeyer said. One of those was protection for homosexual students from being barred from clubs because of sexual preference.
Massengale said Keating was well-versed on current issues and came to administrative meetings well-prepared to speak up for fellow students.
When Keating started attending the university, he majored in agribusiness and hoped to run his family's farm equipment dealership and cattle and hog-feeding operation.
"The ag crisis of the early and mid-eighties eliminated that opportunity," Keating said. "It wasn't a viable option."
After he graduated, Keating landed a job at First National Bank of Omaha. In Omaha, he met his wife, Janet Arnold Keating, but he didn't stay there long.
Opting out of banking at age 25, he enlisted in the army and spent one year moving between Missouri and Texas on active duty, followed by a year of active reserves and six years of reserves.
Once honorably discharged, Keating spoke with Omaha business contacts he met through the bank and broke into real estate full time in 1989.
"I thought with his entrepreneurial spirit ... he would be able to really fashion the way that things worked around him, rather than being locked into a job," Scudder said.
Keating owns his former employers' building, the Federal Reserve Building at 13th and N streets in Lincoln, which he bought in 2000. After investing $7 million in renovating the 12-story tower, he leased the entire building to First National Bank.
In 1991, Keating moved to Chicago, where his wife was offered a job. They didn't know anyone in the city, but they found friends through the Chicago area chapter of the Nebraska Alumni Association, which Keating became president of shortly after the move.
Keating worked at a real estate firm and later bought it from its owners to cofound NAI Hiffman, which is now the largest, privately-owned real estate firm in the Midwest.
Thirteen successful years later, Keating decided to do things his own way again. He sold his share of the company to his partner to leave behind managing a real estate business and return to making real estate transactions.
His new holding company, Keating Resources, is mostly a one-man operation. The company owns extensive property in the Chicago suburbs and 20,000 acres in Holt County, Neb., which Keating hopes to develop for wind energy to create jobs in Atkinson.
"They say if you wait long enough, you can come back to where you started," Keating said.
rachelalbin@dailynebraskan.com
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