CP90492.F01 Chenise
SASKATOONEXPRESS - June 1-6, 2015 - Page 1
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1702 8th St. E. • 3330 8th St. E. • 705 22nd St. W. • 1204 Central Ave. • 802 Circle Dr. E. • 519 Nelson Road
Volume 12, Issue 22, Week of June 1, 2015
Saskatoonʼs REAL Community Newspaper
Building a village 1,200 people will reside at Crossmount Village Duncan McKercher’s project, Crossmount Village, is designed for fully independent residents to those needing fully supported health care (Photo by Sandy Hutchinson) Cam Hutchinson Saskatoon Express uncan McKercher can trace his love of entrepreneurship back to when he was 14. It may have been even earlier, but that was his age when he recalls looking at a post pounder sitting idle on the family farm. “You would look at a machine and say, ‘I wonder if I can make a couple of bucks with this particular piece of equipment.’ ” He could, as it turned out.
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CP90493.F01 Chenize
With the post pounder, he built fences for neighbours. When he was 18, he started another business. His parents — Robert and Peggy — had built an acreage and they wanted to put in trees. “We phoned around to find someone to move some trees in and there was only one guy in the city. I thought, ‘There might be a pretty good business here.’ Guess what? I got into the tree-moving business. We moved trees. We sold them all over the province. I did that for about seven years. It
just kind of builds on itself.” He didn’t grow the trees. Instead, he had two lists: one for tree buyers and one for tree sellers. “People would say, ‘Gee, I am putting up a garage and I don’t want to cut this tree down.’ They would phone me and we’d go and buy it. We always had more people looking for trees than we had trees. “I would say, ‘I love your tree and will give you X amount of dollars for it, but give me a couple of weeks to move it.’ And then
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I would phone up somebody else and say, ‘I have a tree for you.’ ” You could say McKercher has come a long way since then. Or maybe he’s been on the same path, with the deals getting bigger and the numbers higher. His passion now is Crossmount, a village he is building on 400 acres of land five kilometres south of Saskatoon on Lorne Avenue/Highway 219. The village is designed for fully independent residents to those needing fully supported health care. “I think you are born an entrepreneur. You start reading about entrepreneurs and their background and things, and a lot of my past is very similar, which means (postsecondary) schooling isn’t necessarily the way to go. Our family is entrepreneurial. We’ve always been in the farming business. . . . I think what the farm does is it instills work ethic.” The McKercher family and Saskatchewan land go way back. “My grandfather (Stewart McKercher) owned land in the city, actually where we are sitting right now. He was in World War I as a pilot and was shot down. Then, when World War II came, he was training pilots up in Prince Albert. Pilots from all over the world would come out to learn how to fly airplanes. “When the war was done, he bought land because he wanted to open up an airport, and the government wouldn’t give him a licence. So he just kept the land and, all of a sudden, we ended up in the real-estate business more by accident.” Stewart McKercher’s airport is now home to neighbourhoods and businesses, including the Crossmount office on the corner of McKercher Avenue and Eighth Street. “When I was a kid, we used to haul bales off this site. Land is important to Saskatchewan people. Prairie people have a passion for land and an association with land.” After seven years in the tree/landscaping business, McKercher went into real estate. There was a motive. It was time to think about marketing that prime property held by his family in the eastern part of a growing city. “My parents said, ‘You have to work for somebody to get some experience. You don’t just jump into the business without the experience.’ ” He learned about leasing and selling properties. “The problem I found in that business is real-estate people typically like to do the deal and it’s done.” He wanted to broaden his scope. He opened a property marketing company. (Continued on page 4)
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