Content area
Full Text
You often can tell a lot about a successful company CEO simply by looking around his or her office.
For visitors to the office of David Fenley, president and CEO of Fenley Real Estate, a quick inspection will likely find an unusually large number of children's toys strewn across the floor.
Not that things are all fun and games at the commercial real estate firm. Quite the contrary.
Since the family-owned company was founded in 1994, it has fast become one of Louisville's leaders in developing, investing in and managing class A corporate office space.
The toys are the property of Fenley's 3-year-old son, Truman, a frequent guest at the Fenley Real Estate offices. Fenley, who has never been married, shares custody of his son with the child's mother. He regularly brings Truman to the office with him.
"A lot of times, III have to clean up when I have meetings," Fenley says. "YJere will be kids' toys all around here and juice bottles and so forth. That's the way it's been for the last three years.
"My son is a big part of my fife," he adds. "It's really a balance between raising him and running the company"
Maintaining that balance is important to Fenley, but he has no pretenses about where his priorities lie - Truman is No. 1.
Helping the family business grow just a few short years ago things were much different. Fenley, 33 and a Louisville native, describes himself in those days as a driven person, totally dedicated to expanding his young real estate company. He owns the firm with his twin brother, Stephen Fenley, and two older siblings, Joe Fenley, 40, and Jennie Gomez, 39.
Stephen Fenley is director of project management. Joe Fenley is director of construction management, and Gomez is chief operating officer.
It took some time and effort to generate name recognition for Fenley Real Estate, David Fenley recalls. The firm began making that name by developing several speculative, suburban office properties.
Fenley, his siblings and coworkers worked hard to get the firm on the local commercial real estate map in the midand late 1990s by developing the three-building Fenley Office Park at U.S. Highway 42 and Lime Kiln Lane and the sprawling Corporate Campus...