Tebo Properties hires CEO

BOULDER — Now that Stephen Tebo has a CEO to help steer the ship at Tebo Properties Inc., he can relax a bit and cut down his hours to “part-time” — 40 hours a week. 

“Compared to the 65 hours a week I’ve been working my whole life, 40 hours is like part-time,” he joked in an interview with BizWest Tuesday. 

James Dixon, who previously served as Tebo’s director of leasing before taking a similar role with AmCap Properties Inc. about five years ago, returned to Tebo Properties as CEO about a week and a half ago.

When asked if he’s hesitant to hand over the reins of his Boulder Valley commercial real estate empire, Tebo, who began business in Boulder with a coin shop in the late 1960s and has been a major landlord and real estate developer since the 1970s, said, “No, I’m kind of anxious to do it, to be honest. I just got remarried, and we haven’t had time to take our honeymoon yet. James is going to give me some flexibility.”

While he might be stepping back a bit, Tebo is certainly not taking a back seat.

“I’ll help guide the company, and I’ll be involved in any major decisions,” he said.

And while a new face might be in the chief executive seat, don’t expect many fundamental changes within the organization.

“The plan is to continue to move the company forward in the same direction, along the same path, using the same formula that’s worked in the past,” said Dixon, a North Dakota native who grew up in Colorado Springs. 

Dixon joins Tebo Properties during a busy time for the company, which is preparing to develop a site in Lafayette at the intersection of U.S. Highway 287 and Arapahoe Road.

Other key projects on Dixon’s plate include an expansion at Longmont’s Southmoor Plaza shopping center and the buildout of about half-dozen smaller development sites around Longmont. 

“A part of the role [of CEO] will be to get those projects teed off and ready to go,” Dixon said.

While 2020 was challenging for business in many industries, including some of Tebo’s own retail tenants, Dixon and Tebo are bullish on commercial real estate in the Boulder Valley. 

“The Boulder market is so resilient,” Tebo said. “… Our whole purpose has been to keep our tenants in place so that as we got out of the COVID situation, they’d be able to keep doing business and start paying their rents again.”

The local commercial real estate market “is on substantially better footing” than in many other parts of the nation and state, said Dixon, an avid outdoorsman who lives in Broomfield with his wife, son and daughter. “It’s great to come into a market with a solid backbone.”

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