Steve Brown's goal is to bring good jobs home

MARY BRIGGS / FLORIDA WEEKLY Steve Brown, vice president of project development for the John Madden Company, at the future home of the Madden Research Loop. Steve Brown's business philosophy hits close to home - literally. "My dad was the old mayor of Sanibel," he said. "His name is important to me, and I want to be a good reflection of him."

The younger Brown, 39, is also making a name for himself in Southwest Florida. As director of project development for Denver-based John Madden Company, Brown is guiding development of the Madden Research Loop, a research park at Southwest Florida International Airport that will bring high-paying, white-collar jobs to the area — everything from biotechnology, pharmaceutical and research and development. The company expects to break ground on the first 61,000-squarefoot building in phase one in January and is pursuing LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Brown, who splits his time between Denver and a home on Sanibel, said the area is ripe for this type of project. "There's a great market here," he said. "We see an area that really wants to bust out and become something."

The park, a public-private partnership with the county, will eventually encompass 750 acres and upwards of 2 million square feet of office space, and will be patterned, to an extent, after the company's highly successful Southeast Denver business park, which offers 10 million square feet of prime business space, and also started with one building.

The first building at the Madden Research Loop, said Brown, "is a precursor to a far larger project for the region," one that will evolve during the next decade and serve as an economic engine for a multicounty area.

Brown said Southwest Florida was a logical step in John Madden Company's business plan. He and company patriarch John Madden, who owns a home on Captiva, see an area fueled by economic and growth engines such as Florida Gulf Coast University, a strong healthcare system and other industries that support the community's top brains. "Southwest Florida has been growing its education system but not its commercial market to complement that," said Brown, noting the area's reputation for attracting the wealthy fits in with the company's business model. "When there's high-end residential, there's high-end retail and that leads to high-end office."

The project is attracting interest from local, national and international businesses, which see Southwest Florida's potential. "We have multiple tenants eager to get in," he said. "Twenty years from now, we can be proud of what we did. This park will be an economic engine for the area."

Brown has a personal stake in the park's success. His family has been on Sanibel since he was in high school and his parents, Steve and Lena, were instrumental in fundraising efforts for the Chrissy Brown Inpatient Oncology Unit at HealthPark in honor of their daughter, who died from breast cancer.

The younger Brown is following in his family's philanthropic footsteps, supporting local educational and healthcare causes, including FGCU, Junior Achievement, the Lee County Horizon Council, and the hospital systems. He jokes that he and 2-yearold daughter, Lily, are active supporters of the local park system. Brown and family - his wife Blair is a dancer 190% divide their time between Florida and Colorado. "I literally look at the weather forecast and decide where I want to be," he joked. "Not having an office where you want to be is criminal."

Brown's family moved from Annapolis, Md., to Sanibel when he was in high school. "I grew up on the water and love being on the water," said Brown. "We're a boating family."

Brown broke his neck playing hockey in high school, but returned to the game after recuperating, even getting a bid to try out for the Olympic team. After prep school in New England, he studied business and government at Lafayette College and molecular genetics at the University of Maryland. He thought he'd follow in the footsteps of his father, a doctor, but soon learned "I wasn't lab material. Being a molecular geneticist means sitting in a lab all day," he said.

Brown worked in the technology and bio-tech field in sales and project management positions for a decade before joining John Madden Company. He's just two classes away from completing a master's degree in finance and construction management at the University of Denver.

And he knows exactly what he wants to be in his next life. "I've been so fortunate to live and work in Southwest Florida so I'm coming back as me."