From sports to government to chicken tenders, Craig Turner’s path to success has been varied and exciting. He is the founder and CEO of CRM Cos., a Lexington-based development company with 880 employees.
“We’re a little unusual in that we develop, own and then manage,” Turner said. CRM Cos. owns and manages a variety of entities, including restaurants, hotels, office buildings and homeowners’ associations.
Yes, his is a high-risk industry. “It’s like life; you have ups and downs,” he said. “In our business when you have a down you just have to make sure you have the horsepower to stay. Sometimes it takes a lot of staying power.”
A native of Michigan, Turner attended Eastern Kentucky University on a basketball scholarship and earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and government.
“While on campus, I met a young lady named Madonna Spradlin,” he said. “We’ve now been married 41 years.”
After college, he worked in industrial development for Govs. John Y. Brown and Martha Layne Collins, and in the private sector of the development industry before founding CRM Cos. in 1996. His legal counsel came up with the grab-and-go initials, using CR for Craig and M for Madonna.
Turner likes personal and professional partnerships.
“I’m the first to tell you I’m not a detail person. If I’m the detail person we’re probably not going to be very successful,” he said. “My partner Wayne Wellman is the detail person.”
Wellman is the president of CRM Cos. He and Turner worked with Pat Madden to open an Aloft hotel in Louisville in mid-January. The three are also involved with an Aloft project in Westerville, Ohio, scheduled for an August opening. CRM Cos. was the developer in a public-private partnership, or P3, for a 370,000-square-foot office building in Frankfort that opened in June 2016. The Commonwealth of Kentucky is leasing it for a 35-year term.
“Every time we do a development, it’s a standalone entity,” Turner said. Before proceeding with any given project, the CRM partners look to see if it can stand on its own feet financially. If so, a specific LLC is created. This has made for an occasional difficulty with financial institutions because “sometimes they like to see them all pooled together as a larger asset,” Turner said. “Sometimes the strong ones help the weak ones and so forth, but ours are set up as all individual entities.”
Over a decade ago, while developing a large commercial office building in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Turner and Wellman met Todd Graves, the founder of Raising Cane’s. They became friends.
“We, in our jovial way, said, ‘If you ever want to do a Raising Cane’s up in Kentucky, let us know’ and Todd immediately said, ‘I’d do one with you,’” Turner said. “Wayne and I came back and announced to everybody we were going to get in the chicken tender business.”
CRM Cos. formed Dropping Bird LLC in 2007 and has 14 Raising Cane’s restaurants in Kentucky and South Carolina, with more stores scheduled to open soon.
“We like the food business,” Turner said. “It’s been good to us so far.”
Another company, Cool Dough LLC, is the CRM business with four MOD Pizza restaurants in Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana, with three others set to open in first quarter. Garyen Denning, Turner’s son-in-law, is a managing partner of the restaurant operations. Other family members are also involved in the various aspects of CRM Cos.
Turner is a big fan of Central Kentucky. “I think there’s a good business environment in Lexington,” he said. “I tend to find Lexington doesn’t seem to be as volatile when the economy changes, as much.”
In Richmond, he has served on EKU’s board of regents since 2006 and was elected chair of the university’s governing body in 2013. “It’s a passion that I have,” he said of his alma mater. “My goal is to make sure Eastern continues to thrive.”
He also serves on the board of Lexington Center Corp. Madonna Turner is vice chair of Blue Grass Community Foundation. “We instill in everybody here that works for us that you have to give something back,” he said. “We’ve raised a lot of money for the community over the years, which we’re very proud of.”
Philanthropy is the ultimate reward for developing, owning and managing a successful company. It all starts with understanding business factors, according to Turner. “You have to have the ability to borrow money; you have to have the ability to have the equity to put into projects; then you have to make sure you hire the right people,” he said. “And there’s nothing more important or more real than putting the right people on the right seats on the bus.”