Premier Partners While 50-year-old Thomas Trubiana is the president and CEO of American Campus Communities, it was 38-year-old William Bayless, the COO, who co-founded the company and recruited Trubiana to the firm. The two men met in the mid-1980s when Trubiana was a regional director for Memphis, Tenn.-based Allen & O’Hara Corp., a student housing company. Trubiana was making a site visit at his old residence hall at West Virginia University, which was having occupancy issues for the very first time.
Bayless was a 20-year-old resident manager of the property who chased Trubiana through the parking lot telling him he had ideas on how to improve the property. “Bill had such positive energy,” says Trubiana.
“He made such a favorable impression on me that I knew someday I wanted us to work together.”
That opportunity came two years later when Trubiana started Cardinal Industries’ student housing division – Cardinal Campus Communities – and hired Bayless. The division was fairly successful. It completed four student housing communities and targeted about 20 markets where it tied up sites for development, all in just two years. But, the firm’s parent company had problems and was forced into bankruptcy, says Trubiana.
Bayless left the company because he wanted to continue to work in the student housing industry, and Trubiana stayed on to help Cardinal work through its bankruptcy and its reorganization into a public company – Cardinal Realty Services Inc.
After Bayless left, the two men stayed in touch and vowed to work together again.
American Campus was formed in 1993 when Joseph Domerger, the owner of the Dobie Center, a 27-story high-rise located a couple blocks away from the University of Texas, was looking for a manager to run the distressed project, says Bayless. Domerger was originally a limited partner in Dobie, but through bankruptcy found himself as the general partner of the asset.
“In meeting Domerger, I saw an opportunity to not [just] manage a property but to start a management company,” says Bayless. He helped form the new company and the Dobie Center was its only contract.
Until it received financing in 1997 from Reckson Opportunity Partners, now Reckson Strategic Venture Partners, American Campus was a small regional company. With its new funds, it was ready to enter the acquisition and development business nationally.
Once the company had capital, it needed to find a new president and CEO. “Obviously, my old friend Bill said, ‘I’ve got the guy,'” says Trubiana. “So, I went up and met with the [American Campus] partners in New York who recruited me for this wonderful opportunity.”
“I told him I would find a way to get us back together,” says Bayless.
Now, the two men are fulfilling their dreams of “building the premier student housing company in the nation,” says Trubiana.