Malin Burnham in his Downtown office. (photo/lambertphoto.com)

“He won!” Thelma Burnham stepped out onto the afterdeck of the Chickadee, the family yacht bobbing in Cherry Cove off Catalina Island. It was a warm, late-summer evening a half-century ago, and everyone in the cove could hear her yell, “He won! He won!”

Yachting with her husband nearby, Esther Newmark couldn’t help but hear the victory scream, her first notion that a Malin Burnham even existed. Young Malin Burnham had just won a Star boat racing championship; the news was radioed to Chickadee and his mother broadcast from there.

Twenty-something years later, in 1973, a year after Thelma died, the lady on the other boat, Esther, herself a widow now, would marry the widower Donald Burnham, a “very wonderful man, tall and handsome,” Esther Burnham recalls.

“Malin’s father was so crazy about him and Malin has always respected his father and given him a lot of credit for his morals. Donald was the most proud father that I’d ever met.”

Donald died in 1983, so Esther, now 88, is a widow twice over, counting herself lucky twice for having spent 25 years and then 10 years with two excellent husbands. She seems almost thrilled to be Malin’s stepmother, more so to serve as grandmother to his four children and great-grandmother to his two grandchildren. A Point Loma resident, she maintains her own passions and activities, notably in support of the San Diego Opera and Neurosciences Institute, regardless of whether she can convince her busy stepson to participate with her.

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With roots in England, after moving from Jackson, Minn., to San Diego in 1905 and purchasing a small 14-year-old real estate brokerage that he renamed John Burnham & Co., John died in 1926. Son Donald Burnham inherited the company. He and wife Thelma had Malin a year later. Malin grew up in Loma Portal, attended Point Loma High School but busied himself as a teenager on San Diego Bay racing small sailboats. He became a world Star class champion, tried twice unsuccessfully to qualify for the Olympics, losing the U.S. trials to Chicagoan Dick Stearns in 1964, who returned from Tokyo with a silver medal, and San Diegan Lowell North in 1968, who returned from Mexico City with gold. Still, for small-boat sailing and big-boat America’s Cup competition, Burnham has won enough trophies to fill a wall-long case.

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Malin was John Burnham & Co.’s 14th employee when he joined the company in 1949, ascending to the presidency in 1962. “My father retired and sold his interest back to the company, to me in effect, in 1963,” Malin recalls. “Interestingly, the one area where my dad and I had a different philosophy was in ownership of our business or any small private business. He felt there were more disadvantages to having minority owners, i.e., managers or employee owners, than there were advantages, because of the illiquid position those people would be in, (an investment) that they could not use or sell.

“However, as our business grew after I’d taken over, and times were changing — mostly the business was changing for us, in that national brokerage houses in real estate and insurance were invading San Diego — that was a turning point for me and our company. How best could we compete?

“There were two things that we decided after long conversations with peers in the business community to determine what our best chances would be to compete: We had to know our community better than anyone else in our fields, and that meant we had to be a part of our nonprofit and political community and be able to open more doors and have more phone calls answered than any of our competitors. We’ve done that in spades and without question we can still do just that, one of the things we pride ourselves in and a big part of our modus operandi.

“The other part: We became convinced in the late 1960s and earlier ’70s to share ownership in the company with our managers because that was what our competition was doing. Many of these companies were public as well. So the pride of ownership of your executives becomes a big motivating factor for them and to the business. And so I made those decisions. They were two of the best things that I’ve done.”

Consequently, to this day employees of Burnham Real Estate Services and John Burnham Insurance Services are active in numerous nonprofit and civic organizations. Employees still own Burnham Real Estate. John Burnham Insurance employees sold about a year ago to Union Bank of California.

Burnham himself sold his interests in those core companies, housed together at that time, in December 1986. The combined companies enjoyed commissions of about $25 million back then, Burnham says, “and today the real estate company is doing somewhat in excess of $25 million on its own and the insurance company is approaching $20 million in commission income.” They were unqualified successes at the time they were sold, he says, and they remain successful.

The real estate business still employs more than 200 people, the insurance business more than 100, a far cry from the 14-employee company Burnham joined in 1949. First National Bank, with Burnham as the founding chairman in 1981, had more than 200 employees at the time it sold to John Eggemeyer’s First Community Bancorp in 2002. Before it was liquidated, Burnham Pacific Properties, a real estate investment trust with its roots going back to the early ’60s acquisition of the Sleepy Hollow Apartments near Mercy Hospital, peaked at about 250 employees, many of them still attached today to the properties under new ownerships.

So there are still hundreds of employees out there who can easily trace their jobs to Malin Burnham, even though he no longer manages any. That’s one measurement of success, creating jobs and leaving a foundation of continued employment when the creator’s job is done, says Burnham. Now 76, Burnham has no qualms about having left management to his employees in 1986, although he definitely carries some regret for the recent liquidation of Burnham Pacific Properties, once a respected New York Stock Exchange-traded REIT with $1.2 billion worth of property, mostly shopping centers, under management.

“It was a sad occurrence to see a company having to be liquidated because of some greedy investors, pure and simple,” says Burnham. “But that’s the life of a public company. They (dissenting shareholders) had their legal rights and we responded accordingly.”

BPP is about 99.9 percent liquidated. An initial investor, Burnham himself came out ahead, while more recent investors did not fare as well.

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First National Bank also was not Burnham’s finest endeavor. Following its $15 million initial capitalization in 1981, then the largest initial capitalization of any national bank, FNB grew despite a succession of too many presidents under one chairman, who couldn’t or wouldn’t keep his eye on the ball. Probably had too many other things going on, like running and then advising Burnham Real Estate, Burnham Insurance, Burnham Pacific and eventually Sorrento Associates, and later still, chairing the non-profit cancer research organization known now as the Burnham Institute, his own Burnham Foundation, and on and on. To get an idea of the man’s nonprofit activities and philanthropy, check out the December 2003 edition of the San Diego Metropolitan or sandiegometro.com. Oh, and the man spent a little time sailing with Dennis Conner and organizing America’s Cup regattas. And he spent some time with family.

“Certainly when you start out a new bank, the leaders are expected to spend a disproportionate amount of time on the new business, and yes, I did attend all loan committee meetings at that time,” says Burnham. “But again, my style has been something my father taught me. One of the finest things he taught me was to be able not only to delegate responsibility, but to delegate authority. The only way I’ve been able to do as many different things as I’ve done in my career at the same time is that I had another skill I inherited. I’ve been able to pick extremely good, competent partners, whether they be managers of the business or partners or board members or whatever. I’ve always been comfortable in having somebody else manage the enterprise. Otherwise I can only manage so many entities, and I’ve always been involved in many more than I could possibly manage myself.

“I’m not a banker, never have been a banker, never looked at myself as a banker. At First National, I was interim president and CEO for about seven months between presidents. I was a temporary banker. But I never believed that I was a banker. I never wanted to be a banker. I’m simply a businessman, was simply an organizer, one who was primarily responsible for raising $15 million in starting capital. Yes, I was chairman for 15 of my 20 years with the bank. But I didn’t go to banking conventions, didn’t make any banking decisions other than as a board member. Maybe there’s some confusion in some minds. I’ve certainly been a mortgage banker. But a mortgage banker is someone who makes mortgage loans, usually with somebody else’s money. Yes, the John Burnham & Co. was strongly in the mortgage banking business, and still is today (as Burnham Real Estate Services) as part of its business, arranging commercial loans for lenders and borrowers.”

Then again, during Burnham’s years on the First National board the bank ran assets up to $650 million, less than Murray Galinson grew San Diego National Bank. But Burnham kept it intact, which is more than his counterparts at Great American, HomeFed or Bank of San Diego could say. First National sold in 2002 for less than three times book value, which is less than Pete Davis, John Rebelo or Bill Nelson and Ron Carlson got for their banks, and the way John Eggemeyer and his First Community Bancorp like to buy their banks. Eggemeyer represents First National’s fourth capitalization. Hurt like many others by the dot.com bust, First National had returned to profitability by the time it was sold, says Burnham, who remains a shareholder of FNB’s new parent, First Community. He came out ahead on FNB, too, says Burnham.

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He also came out ahead in Poway, where in the late 1980s Burnham as a limited partner invested heavily in George Codling as managing partner and the subdivision of more than 300 virgin acres into industrial land where Geico, Gateway and others have located their mostly office operations far from consumer amenities, far from mass transit, in other words, far from the redeveloping Central Business District that Burnham and former San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson championed in the 1970s as a noble cause of land-use and good planning.

Was this a conflict of interest for the guy who co-founded and chaired San Diegans Inc., the Downtown advocacy group of business leaders who’ve morphed into the Downtown San Diego Partnership?

Nah, says Burnham.

(Then again, the Downtown Partnership just re-joined the San Diego North Economic Development Council. Go figure.)

“The city fathers of Poway had determined before we came along that they wanted to develop a diversified tax base, which they did not have as mostly a residential community,” Burnham recalls. “It was their preference that the land we ultimately developed would be zoned for industrial development, knowing that some of the properties would have a different occupancy, including retail.

“We came along with our group headed by George and we brought in other investors to do just that, to do a land subdivision where, by the way, in the mid-’80s, we moved a total of 20 million cubic yards of dirt, leveling hilltops and filling in the valleys. And we did that with high-tech engineering and monitoring devices so that literally today there has been zero, to my knowledge, settlement of any significant measurable amount, in all of those 20 million cubic yards of dirt. It was one of the two or three largest moves of dirt in San Diego County history. I’m very proud of the work our team did. I’m also proud of the fact that the design of the park, the layout of the streets and sizing of the lots, was exactly correct for the marketplace, it appears in hindsight.

“Unknown to us at the time, we were ahead of our time, in that the economy popped out from underneath all of us in the very late ’80s, and there was no marketplace for a period. But I think I’m very satisfied in hindsight it was the right development in the right place at the wrong time.

“Now looking at the competition between that site and Downtown San Diego, there has been some office space that’s come into that Poway site, but it was primarily an industrial development. It was not primarily a high-rise, high-quality office park that would compete with Downtown or any other high-quality office space. All those tenants you mentioned came in after we sold our interest in that park. I don’t know to what extent the city changed their attitude over types of tenants. But during our era, we were strictly looking for industrial users.”

(Rob Lankford just broke ground on the first mixed-use office tower, some 450,000 square feet gross, to be built in Downtown San Diego since 1991. In the intervening years, more than 57 million square feet of office and industrial space were built in San Diego’s suburbs, including Poway, clogging the freeways that are among San Diegans’ loudest complaints about a deteriorating quality of life. But we digress. Besides, how many Poway developers other than Burnham have put any resources or energy toward the improvement of San Diego proper?)

George Codling continues to serve as managing partner of three different projects Burnham remains invested in, locally and in the Salt Lake City area where Burnham owns a part-time residence.

Burnham has done well also as chairman of Bob Jaffe’s Sorrento Associates, a 15-year-old venture capital firm that has invested mostly, but not entirely, in North County high-technology operations.

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But Burnham did best, he says, with the growing and selling of Burnham Real Estate Services, run in recent years by Stath Karras, and John Burnham Insurance Services, run by Brad Orr now for Union Bank of California. Combined, they alone still employ more than 300 people, but peaked at more than 400 under Bob Lichter, Burnham’s only successor as CEO of both the real estate and insurance sides of the business.

“He is motivated by only one thing that I can see, making sure that the company or civic activity is managed with a purity of purpose,” says Lichter about his former boss. “Individual desires, petty alliances and self-serving agendas have no place in doing ‘what is right.’ While profit was important at Burnham, the lives of the employees and their dedication to bettering the community was paramount… To this day the ‘Spirit of Burnham’ award typifies this commitment. He chose to use the company as a platform for good things both for those running it and the community.”

Burnham says “it’s a fair perception but not accurate” that Burnham Real Estate Services has retrenched from Downtown San Diego. True, its main office relocated two years ago from its signature high-rise, losing naming rights, to a main office in North City on Eastgate Mall, with a satellite office occupied by Burnham himself on A Street in Downtown.

He attributes the company relocation to development trends bigger than Burnham, and while North County developed heavily in the last 20 years, the pendulum is swinging south again. Burnham Real Estate Services maintains offices in Otay Mesa as well as Downtown San Diego and actively works properties, both as managers and transactional brokers, in all of southern San Diego’s submarkets.

“Since the convention center expansion, the ballpark, all of the condominium high-rises being built Downtown, and the greatest residential growth in the entire county being in Chula Vista and South County, much of that momentum has swung back south of I-8,” says Burnham. “At the current time, Burnham Real Estate is adding brokers in fairly significant numbers and many of those will be concentrating south of I-8 and added to the Downtown office. Your perception was fair, but the trends are showing increasing activity in the southern part of the county, and I think that will continue for a number of years.

“By the same token, there’s certainly no less interest, certainly a growing interest, in our people being engaged and active in the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, the Regional Economic Development Corp., and other centrally located community endeavors. So while our largest size office and staff is in the UTC area, our office is very much engaged in the so-called Central Business District. Downtown will always be the CBD; it’s where you want and have the concentration of the courts, the legal offices and our government offices. That all makes sense to have them in one spot.”

He notes that other cities have made greater gains than San Diego in luring their high-tech businesses to their inner-cities by converting old brick buildings.

“Keep in mind that many of these high-tech businesses are not very orthodox in their appearance, in their workforce and work hours, and therefore having housing, entertainment and restaurants all in the same area as your high-tech businesses has some advantages to their style of workers. I’m not suggesting that Irwin Jacobs fits that lifestyle, but certainly his research people may well. San Francisco has developed some of that kind of space and brought some of the high-tech people into the city. The development around the San Diego ballpark has attempted to attract some of those. It hasn’t happened yet, but it could in the future.”

Indeed, Burnham Real Estate Services is invested with John Moores’ JMI Realty in the development of the Ballpark District. And Burnham Real Estate will be the listing agent for Lankford’s Broadway 655 office tower. So perhaps one should cut Burnham the man and Burnham the real estate company a little slack for their activities outside of Downtown. John Burnham Insurance remains headquartered in Downtown.

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So we’ve covered some of his highest-profile business endeavors, a little on management philosophy, a lot in December on philanthropy and good deeds, a bit last month on his proposed Olympics for 2016. Surely there is no good way to summarize the lifetime activity of any 76-year-old, much less the hyperactive Malin Burnham. But to leave out family would be wrong.

Like any other father, Burnham has had his ups and downs with his two daughters and two sons, now in their late 40s and early 50s. Tommy, the artist, lives in Mendocino. John and Cathe, the twins, and MaryBeth, the youngest, live in the San Diego area. It seems the older they get, the better they all get along. Cyril Hennum, his longtime executive assistant, is like family. Mrs. Malin Burnham, Roberta, assures that he’s “not perfect.” What a relief. Roberta, according to MaryBeth, is the family’s glue and Malin’s enabler.

“I was substantially through the process of divorce, and I was not thinking in terms of where I was going in the future, in that department at least,” says Malin, recalling his meeting with Roberta about 34 years ago. (They’ll be married 32 years in February.) “We met on a blind date, which I would not have gone on if I’d known it was going to be a blind date. But serendipity prevailed, and it turns out one of the reasons we were attracted to each other is that we had an awful lot of common friends.

“She’s got her head on her shoulders correctly and our personalities mesh, including her being a semi-mother, and more importantly, a great friend of my four children. She had no children, so that worked out for everybody as well.

“I have four children who are very fine individuals. If I could reconstruct what I thought they’d be doing 40-something years later, when they were age 5, I was probably way off the mark. On the other hand, they’ve had very satisfying lives. We’re a very close family with three of the four living in the San Diego area. We see a lot of each other and travel together. I’m proud of the fact, to the best of my knowledge, they’ve never had any conflict with the law, with drugs, with misbehavior of any kind other than juvenile consequences, and that says a lot in today’s society. I feel very good about their upbringing and their accomplishments.

“Only one of my children ever had any potential interest in following in my footsteps business-wise, and we discussed that potential in its very early stages. After looking at several other multi-generational private San Diego businesses — by the way, in the real estate and insurance fields, not one of those four or five businesses survived for a long period — I recognized many years ago the odds and the difficulty of passing on leadership and ownership in a private family business from generation to generation forever. It just literally almost doesn’t happen. And so we came to the conclusion that there were better things for all my children to be doing business-wise than following in my footsteps. There’s nothing unique about our family in that regard.”

John owns the most successful UPS Store franchise in Hillcrest. Cathe, his twin, runs Burnham Design, and MaryBeth runs her own interior design and interior organizing operation when she’s not trying to protect an ecosystem from Vulcan Mountain to the beach. They speak glowingly of Dad and Roberta.

“He’s very organized,” says Roberta. “He’s quiet, loves to read, watches television only if there’s sports or something interesting on. He loves the water and loves to travel. He enjoys simple foods; loves a good ground sirloin. He doesn’t eat at fast-food places. He likes home cooking. If we’re home, I cook for him.

“Oh, definitely, I want him to slow down. Fortunately, he knows how to relax. When we go to the mountains, when we go to Cabo, he totally knows how to unwind, brings lots of reading, and loves to sit by the pool, in the sun unfortunately.

“He’s lived in the same house for 46 years in Point Loma. Malin claims I’ve changed everything but the address and the phone number. He’s lived within a three-mile radius all of his life. Born in Mercy Hospital, he grew up in Loma Portal.

“He’s a unique individual. I’m just lucky that I’m here and that we’ve had each other.”

Few things in life are grander than a kind word from one’s father. “Malin has done more for that company than I ever did,” Donald Burnham used to say, according to Esther.

And few have done more for San Diego, Donald Burnham should know.

Oh, Donald Burnham would be pleased to know, too, that his son, who raced a 35-foot J-105 to victory three years ago in the annual Master’s Regatta, requiring skippers of 60 years or older, won it again this year off San Francisco.