One of Ottawa commercial real estate’s most enduring partnerships has come to an end. Sort of.
Marc Morin and Graeme Webster, longtime buddies from Barrhaven who built a boutique firm into a powerful force in the local industry, have closed the book on their shared business history.
The brokerage they founded in 2014 as 50-50 partners, Koble Commercial Real Estate, was officially dissolved last week. It marked the end of a business arrangement between the two that stretched back nearly two decades.
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“Most people have only known us together,” Morin told OBJ last week. “As we branched out, we saw that we wanted different things.”
While Morin and Webster are no longer business partners, they remain good friends. Which is exactly the way they hoped it would be.
“It’s just a necessary junction where we’re going our separate ways in business,” explained Webster, who is now leading Avison Young’s fledgling capital markets team in Ottawa.
“This isn’t the end for the two of us. We’re going to be having beers.”
Unlike many businesses that call it quits, Koble went out with a bang rather than a whimper.
Just a few months ago, Morin and Webster brokered the biggest deal in the firm’s nine-year history, the $72.5-million sale of two office buildings at 66 and 130 Slater St. from KingSett Capital to Katasa Group and ARG Devco.
They are justifiably proud of their firm’s role in the transaction, another example of how Koble punched above its weight despite never being the biggest player in the ring.
“I think we both have a tenacity to us,” Morin said. “We’re not deterred by a difficult situation.”
Morin and Webster admit that some of their success was fuelled by a healthy dose of friendly competition.
With a chuckle, they recall the time when Morin bet his buddy that he couldn’t seal the deal on an office building he was trying to sell in Cornwall.
“I could barely afford gas to drive there,” Webster said, laughing. “Marc says to me – lovingly – he says, ‘Stop wasting time on this deal. It’ll never happen. But if it does happen, I’ll pay for a dinner for all of us to go to Beckta.’”
The wager was a pricey proposition for a fledgling young broker. But Morin was forced to dig deep into his pockets when Webster – who was “like a dog on a bone,” as his longtime partner describes it – delivered on his end of the bargain.
“I think we would always elevate each other and we would always push each other in a healthy way,” Webster said.
The alliance that began with a handshake in 2004 when both were working at Colliers took a while to gain traction. The million-dollar sale of a renovated 4,800-square-foot former fire station on Parkdale Avenue in 2009 (a deal that coincidentally also marked the pair’s first appearance in OBJ) helped get the ball rolling.
The way Webster tells it, the landmark transaction came about through sheer happenstance. He was meeting with Allan Jensen, a former vice-president of Alterna Savings Credit Union, to discuss a potential job opportunity when Jensen asked if Webster and Morin would like to take a crack at selling the heritage building on Parkdale, which he co-owned with Huntington Properties founder Alan Whitten.
“I think he felt sorry for us,” Webster said with a smile. “We put everything we had into that, and that listing literally changed our careers.”
“I think that deal gave us the confidence to say, ‘Maybe we can do this,’” added Morin.
The duo eventually left Colliers for a five-year stint at District Realty, gaining more experience under the tutelage of District executives Jason Shinder and Steve Ramphos.
In 2014, they decided to strike out on their own. They chose the name Koble on the advice of marketing experts.
“We wanted to have something that represented what we were all about, and we really connected with people,” explained Morin. “They ran (the word connect) through Google translate and found the word koble, which is the Norwegian translation of the word connect. It’s not very sexy.”
Maybe not, but the concept worked. Now, after nearly a decade, the Koble name is being retired.
Still, the bond between its founders remains strong.
“I think we’ve complemented each other,” said Morin, who plans to start a new venture of his own. “We’ve challenged one another in a good way, but we’ve always had a huge respect and care for one another as people beyond money and the business.”
