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© St. Petersburg Times, published February 19, 2003
ST. PETERSBURG -- Tuesday's announcement that Opus South Corp. had taken the helm of a star-crossed condo project on the city's downtown waterfront was a dramatic reversal of fortune rarely seen in a city where business deals can take years to unfold.
In mere months, Opus South, part of a Minnesota development, architectural and real estate firm with a national reach, has replaced Paul K. Morris, a decided rookie in the development business who went bankrupt before coming to St. Petersburg.
The Opus Group, of which Opus South is a part, does more than $1-billion in business each year. Morris could not make good on a $1,250 prize he promised to schoolchildren who last fall painted murals on the fence around his would-be Villas project, which called for twin 20-story towers.
Morris also missed a $250,000 rent payment on the prime piece of property on Beach Drive NE and Fifth Avenue, defaulting and opening the way for Opus.
With the news that Opus will build two high-rise condominiums along Beach Drive instead of the one it announced last month, the company becomes one of the larger financial players in downtown history.
The combined investment of $155-million is larger than the cost of Tropicana Field before it was renovated for the Devil Rays. It is more than the combined cost of BayWalk and the renovation of the Renaissance Vinoy Resort.
Opus was founded in 1953 by Gerald Rauenhorst, who was in Mayor Rick Baker's office Tuesday as the company unveiled its plans.
"Our company has been growing over that 50 years from a simple little general contractor with a used wheelbarrow and a pickup truck to where we are today," said Rauenhorst, 75, who has retired to Naples but remains active in the company, a privately held concern of about 1,400 employees spread across 28 cities.
The company claims 2,100 projects over its history, from office towers to warehouses to university buildings. Recent projects include massive headquarters buildings for American Express and Best Buy. Opus says it has more than 26-million square feet of commercial space planned or under development across the country.
Rauenhorst added: "We are not well-known in the condo business."
He said the company's first condo project was 30 years ago in St. Paul, Minn., along the Mississippi River. Others include a retirement village in Bethesda, Md., and a $70-million, nine-story condo project under way in Naples.
"Our bigger business over the years has been office buildings," Rauenhorst said. "Right now we're expanding what has been a sporadic involvement in residential to a much bigger factor now because we aren't, frankly, building any or very few (speculative) office buildings."
When a similar lag in office construction occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the company turned to retail development, he said.
Morris could not be reached for comment. His company is still active, according to state records. And the voice mail systems on his cell and office phones still refer to him as head of Morris Development Group and the Villas project.
-- Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report.