Harding, Dahm & Co. - a Fort Wayne institution in commercial real estate.

• Author: Margolis, Jay
• Position: Company profile

Harding, Dahm & Co.

A Fort Wayne institution in commercial real estate.

Just starting out on their own in the real-estate business in Fort Wayne, they decided to share office space.

After all, keeping down overhead was important for guys like Michael C. Dahm, who managed a couple of small office buildings, and James E. Harding, who appraised commercial and industrial properties. That was 1967.

A year later, they formed a company.

Today, they are turning that company into an institution.

That's a long way from 1951, when Harding broke into real estate. Then, all that the central business district of Fort Wayne amounted to was office buildings owned by banks and retail stores. The industrial areas were on the city's outskirts. International Harvester Co. and Zollner Corp. were on the east end. Essex Group, Inc., and General Electric Co. were on the west. There was little industry to the north and none in the south.

Just a couple of years later, Sears, Roebuck & Co. became the first major retailer to bolt from downtown Fort Wayne when it moved south. Northcrest Shopping Center also opened on the north side. When the U.S. 30 bypass was built on Coliseum Boulevard and Glenbrook Square was developed, the central business district was history.

But like the land they have sold, leased or managed, Dahm and Harding happened to be in the right place at the right time.

"The war (World War II) brought a lot of changes, not the least of which was real estate," Harding says. "The day was gone when a guy could work out of the backseat of his car. All of a sudden, they needed professional management and leasing."

One of the changes came when the government mobilized brokers who specialized in industrial real estate to help with its move into manufacturing, Harding says. That helped bring a professionalism to the industry.

After working for a construction company for a year and a half, Harding entered the real-estate industry by learning the business from Edgar H. Kilbourne, a dean of Fort Wayne real estate to whom he was related by marriage. Kilbourne organized the first chain-store real-estate department--for J.C. Penney Co.--and wrote the first Kroger Co. lease.

"I consider myself fortunate to have stumbled into this business, and it was a stumble," Harding admits.

Dahm, on the other hand, followed in the footsteps of a father who owned Dahm Roofing Co. and also had real-estate investments. As a youngster, Dahm would tag along with his father on weekends...