Battered and Bruised, Terminella Returns to First Love, Real Estate

Deep sea fishing is therapy. Ask real estate lifer Tom Terminella, who went boom and bust and back again, and he’ll tell you all about it.

When the bottom fell out of the economy in 2007, Terminella was holding one of the biggest bags in Northwest Arkansas — a bag filled with millions in outstanding loans, undeveloped subdivisions and dreams to conquer this little corner of the world.

What came out of the crash was a long, public feud with Metropolitan National Bank that made headlines off and on for years. But the story that didn’t receive a whole lot of attention was that Terminella, a man who always had his finger on the “Go” button, found himself with nothing to do.

The banks weren’t lending money. Property values were in the tank. Homes weren’t selling. Investors weren’t scouting for the next big deal. The world in which Terminella had once thrived had suddenly vanished, and for five years there wasn’t a whole lot else to do but fish, and sulk, and ponder the irony of how real estate, the source of his fortune, could also be the cause of his demise.

“I shut down from the business world,” the 47-year-old said recently. “I cut lots of firewood and caught lots of marlin.”

The doldrums ended in the summer of 2012 when something momentous happened — Terminella received a phone call from an old associate asking him to helm the liquidation of 17 commercial parcels in Washington and Benton counties.

And just like that, Terminella was back, bigger and better and wiser than ever, and wearing the hat of the broker, not the developer.

“I’m more nimble than I’ve ever been and I’m as busy as I’ve ever been, and it’s spiritually rewarding,” he said.

Terminella was a member of the 2000 class of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s 40 Under Forty, when he was head of Terminella and Associates Inc.

These days, Terminella is a fixture on the Fayetteville real estate scene, but he goes about his business under a new model. He said he no longer borrows from banks, owns nothing, and when it comes to financing, uses private equity.

As the principal broker at The Terminella Company Inc., a company organized in Oct. 2011 by his wife, Monica, he assembles commercial properties and facilitates the sale to investors looking to build, or, as he says, “those who go vertical.”

Terminella said he is involved with the ongoing push to create housing for the growing number of students attending the University of Arkansas, particularly south of campus.

Terminella says he is in the midst of a $200-million run in brokerages, a run he credits in large part to the support of his family and the nucleus of professional associates who stuck with him through the economic downturn and the war with Metropolitan.

“This is the rebirth of what was,” he said. “You never stop moving, because if you do, you might get run over.”

Through the tough times, Terminella remained with his wife, four children and two dogs, and the family still lives in the country manor on a hilltop in west Fayetteville.

He still enjoys a big Cabernet from Napa Valley and a Dominican cigar, and of the fact that he’s still standing after so many around him have fallen, he has this to say: “I’m the most blessed man on the planet.”

The sheer enormity of what happened to him during the downturn, however, has created plenty of enduring, bitter memories. Metropolitan ultimately filed for bankruptcy and
was sold to Simmons First National Bank, but not before dragging him into court for five years. And his former accountant, Kimberly O’Dell, was sentenced to nine years in federal prison for wire fraud and money laundering — but not before shaking Terminella’s trust.

Looking back on the events of the past, he has plenty to say. But once the bluster is done, Terminella seems to find peace when he says, “I was naïve and I can blame nobody but me.”