Croci sells Wheeler, focuses on new Wyoming ventures

FORT COLLINS – Two years following the death of close friend and cofounder Bill Neal, Wheeler Commercial Property Services LLC managing broker Fred Croci has sold the company to a young real estate pro who regards Croci and Neal as his mentors.

Kyle Henderson, 31, who joined the firm in early 2004, acquired all Wheeler assets from Croci for an undisclosed sum and will run it under the more compact name Wheeler Commercial LLC.

Croci said he will concentrate on real estate development projects in Laramie and Cheyenne under the name Wheeler of Wyoming.

“We’re trying to pass this on to someone who cares as much about this community as we do,” Croci said. “We find that in Kyle.”

Henderson joined Wheeler just six months before Neal, Wheeler broker Scott Nelson and Loveland homebuilder Leo Schuster died July 24, 2004, in the crash of a twin-engine plane in a southeast Fort Collins neighborhood.

“I had networked pretty much with every commercial broker out there,” Henderson said in recalling his decision to join Wheeler. “I talked to them all, and I just felt like I connected with the folks at Wheeler. It felt like home.”

Henderson said he and nine other Wheeler brokers, along with a full-time support staff of four, plan to extend the Fort Collins-based firm’s brokerage work throughout the region. He also said he and his colleagues would work to expand the property management arm of the company beyond Poudre Valley Plaza, the commercial center that Neal and Croci built at the southeast corner of Shields Street and Horsetooth Road.

“Obviously, Northern Colorado is one big economy, and we’ll be working to expand our work beyond Fort Collins,” Henderson said. “We’re going to build on this great tradition. Fred has been a wonderful mentor for me.”

In taking the reins at Wheeler, Henderson carries on a legacy that has its roots in Greeley, where Neal first entered the real estate business in 1976 under the tutelage of the late John R.P. Wheeler. Neal later founded residential brokerage Wheeler Realty in Fort Collins, and teamed with Croci in 1995 to form Wheeler Commercial Property Services, focusing on Fort Collins and Windsor commercial development.

Henderson first met Neal in 2003 when he was working as administrator of the Real Estate Center at Colorado State University’s College of Business.

“I met with him while conducting research on a project I undertook there,” Henderson said. “Through him and others, I got to see all sides of the commercial real estate business.”

He said that during his first six months at Wheeler he was more closely associated with Nelson, who Croci said he and Neal were grooming to assume a leadership role at Wheeler.

The deaths of Neal and Nelson set in motion a process that Croci said led to his passing the company on to Henderson.

“There were lots of people out there who said we’d never survive that,” Croci said.

He confesses to working 16 hours daily during the past two years shoring up Wheeler’s brokerage work and tending to the complex bundle of unfinished business that Neal left behind. During that time, Henderson became more and more indispensable, he said.

“Kyle was the cream that rose to the top,” Croci said. “His administrative skills are far beyond mine.”

The transaction allows Croci to return to development work in Wyoming, where he is engaged in a hotel, retail and conference center project in conjunction with the University of Wyoming in Laramie and has a growing pipeline of project proposals in Cheyenne.

Henderson said his first steps in taking over Wheeler would include recruiting “top producers” to join the brokerage, and assembling an ambitious data package for brokers to use in their work.

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