What's New
We’ve had a great 8 months or so as Odyssey Partners! We’re excited to be under construction on one project and in design on another! Siempre Reception Center located at South Mountain Golf Course in Draper, Utah has footings and foundations poured and is steadily progressing now that we were able to get a building permit. This reception center is in partnership with Golden Holt who developed and operates the reception center and clubhouse at Sleepy Ridge golf course in Orem, Utah. This high-end 17,000 SF reception center will have amazing views of the whole Salt Lake valley and enhance the current Salt Lake County owned property.
We are also in design on a 60,000 SF charter school on the Ute Indian Reservation in Fort Duchesne. We’re excited to work with the Ute Tribe and hopefully bring a charter school that will be valuable to the entire community.
These first months have been challenging and exciting. We’re chasing a good amount of projects and various product types. We’re to the point where we have a good pipeline and hope to get another few projects going in the coming months. We’re excited about the potential these projects have. We’re also enjoying the start-up aspect of our company. There are new challenges and problems to be solved that keep us on our toes day-to-day.
Our Odyssey Begins
Brent Pace and I met in high school when both were on the yearbook staff at Olympus High School in Holladay, Utah. The name of the Olympus High yearbook is The Odyssey--hence our company name. Brent and I became fast friends as we had similar interests, including playing ping pong in his parents’ old carriage house, where we spent countless hours perfecting our skills. After high school, Brent went off to Fresno to serve a church mission for two years, and I went to the Czech Republic.
After our missions, Brent attended the University of Utah and I attended BYU. While Brent was at the U of U, he started working with his father at the Boyer Company. Upon graduation in 2005, he was hired full time to help on the Hill Air Force Base housing privatization project. I graduated from BYU in 2007 and started a small residential real estate investment business. Brent called me in 2008 and told me that he was leaving Boyer to go to business school at Cal Berkeley, and that his dad (Mark) told him he couldn’t leave unless he found someone as his replacement. That’s when Brent called me. So I started working with Mark in 2008. When Brent got back from business school, we started working together and partnered on over a dozen projects at Boyer. I also went back and got my master’s of real estate development in 2015.
During our time at Boyer we occasionally talked about what it would take for us to start our own development company. We knew that there were puzzle pieces that needed to fit together before we’d venture out on our own. This year, those puzzle pieces finally all came together and we decided that it was time to start our own company. People ask me if it’s scary--and it is to a point, but really, we’ve been preparing for this for years--which (for me at least) almost makes the anxiety disappear. It feels more exciting and just plain fun. We’re ready and we’re motivated. We’re energized and we’re hitting the ground running.
Joining our team is Oliver Ostler, who worked on the finance side of things at Boyer. He’s currently getting his MRED at the U of U. Steve Ostler (Oliver’s dad and former Boyer CEO) and Mark Pace (Brent’s dad and senior partner at the Gardner Company) have agreed to be our mentors and serve on our advisory board.
The last time I figuratively ate only what I killed was during college when I sold security systems (door-to-door) during the summer in order to pay for college. I consider this type of work a thrill and a personal challenge. Often on my way out to the neighborhoods of Chicago to knock doors, I’d listen to “Lose Yourself” by Eminem (the edited version of course). “Success is my only option, failure’s not” is the line that kept me motivated. I love that mindset, and it’s the mindset I have as we start Odyssey Partners. Here we go.
Success is my only option, failure’s not
