Milan Patel’s fate is tied into southwest Georgia

ALBANY — Of all things, businessman Milan Patel has found a measure of inspiration in his career from a song by punk rock band Green Day. The song? “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.”

“That was my life,” Patel, who with long-time business partner Umong Patel (no relation) and other business and investment groups in the region is one of the most active developers in Albany and southwest Georgia, said during a recent conversation. “Here I was having made my first million dollars by the time I was 25, believing the greatest thing in life was to be rich.

“That period of time, though, of putting all my eggs in one basket and building a lodging/hotel portfolio, turned out to be the worst thing I ever did and the best thing I ever did. It was the worst because I ended up losing pretty much everything I had; I went through the shame of having my house foreclosed on, my name in the paper. It was the best thing because it forced me to reset my life.”

Patel and his business partners have since had their names attached to some of the most well-known businesses in northwest Albany and southwest Georgia, as owners or landlords of businesses like Olive Garden, Newk’s, Edible Arrangements, Dairy Queen, Bottom’s Up, Lucky’s, Steak and Shake, Panera Bread, property at the Albany Mall, new locations for the Georgia Department of Revenue and Habitat for Humanity.

From survival mode in the wake of the Great Recession of 2008-2009, Patel’s vision now is focused on service, to his business partners, to the people who works in his establishments and to the community that has, at long last, become his home.

“Winston Churchill said, ‘Service is the rent we pay to live our lives,’” Patel said. “I found my way when I decided it was time to live a purpose-driven life, to not just build things, but to build relationships with family, with community, with friends. I’m at a position in my life where I want to make a positive difference.”

Patel’s ascension and position in life did not come attached to a silver spoon. Born in Edison, N.J., to immigrant parents, his family moved to Newnan, Ga., in the summer of ‘92 when Patel’s father realized the opportunity to own a hotel in the middle Georgia city. There, he learned some of the harsh realities of an undeclared caste system in his home country.

“I resented when I was younger the way we had to live,” he says. “I resented that we lived in a hotel room, that entrepreneurial way of life. But as I grew older I learned to appreciate it, to realize that often in life you have to make the most of what you have.”

After graduating high school, Patel applied to and got into the University of Georgia — “I love that movie ‘Rudy,’ the determination of the lead character. Like when he walked into that big football stadium determined to play for Notre Dame, I was determined to go to a Tier 1 school, and I realized that at UGA.”

In Athens, Patel met his long-time business partner Umong Patel in a weight room at the university, and together they started what would turn into — with a few bumps along the way — one of Georgia’s most successful grassroots business development groups.

The pair started with The Winery, a liquor store they bought from Ed Duffy — “He could have sold it to a lot of other people, but I think he wanted us to have it.” — and expanded into the hotel/lodging industry. Then came the Great Recession.

“It was unbelievable; I’d never seen a run on a bank before,” Patel said. “Every day I’d drive by seeing people waiting in line, trying to get their money out of banks. I think we can all say thank goodness for the strength of the FDIC.

“I just didn’t believe things would stay bad, and I kept feeding money into a system that was off 80%. I kept thinking things would get better.”

They didn’t. And one day a process server showed up and told Patel his properties were being foreclosed upon.

“I couldn’t believe it was happening to me, but there was nothing to do but walk away,” he said.

Patel went to a job fair and was offered a position managing a Waffle House restaurant, but his heart wasn’t truly in it.

“I went to the guy who offered me the job and said, ‘You’re going to hire me, but this is not the job for me. If I recommend someone, would you consider him?’” Patel said. “The guy said yes, and I introduced him to my brother, Vik, who’d started working at a McDonald’s when our businesses failed. They gave Vik the job, and he went from managing one to two to three to six to 10 restaurants. Now he’s the vice president of the company’s Birmingham properties.”

Patel was down, but he refused to concede to the foreclosure on his property.

“My mortgage was $2,600 a month, and I was only able to scrape together $1,000,” he said. “I was doing construction work, odds and ends, and both Vik and my wife were working. I went to see the lawyer of the company that owned the mortgage, and I told him, ‘I can’t let you take my house.’ He said there was nothing he could do about it; that he couldn’t refinance my mortgage.

“I asked him if he knew how much a bag of cement cost. He looked at me, puzzled. I told him if he tried to take my house, $20 bucks later I could fix it where he’d never be able to sell the house. He ended up putting the amount I was behind in arrears, and I was allowed to start over.”

Patel easily got into grad school at Emory University with a new plan: “I will never get involved in business again; I will work the rest of my life for someone else.”

But Patel was smart enough to know a business opportunity when he saw one, and when he got the chance to purchase a failing Holiday Inn in Albany for “20 cents on the dollar,” he took it. “We cleaned that property, spent all of our time there, working to upgrade it, and after about two months we got it re-opened,” Patel said. “We ran the hotel, but we knew the real value was the property.”

So Patel took a shot at giving Albany what it had been clamoring for: an Olive Garden restaurant.

“We were able to do a deal on that property, and that lifted us up,” he said.

Over the next several years, a large number of the high-profile business deals in and around Albany involved the Patels and other partners. And soon the slightly blighted northwest Albany property around the then-badly aging Albany Mall came alive with new, more upscale businesses.

“There are essentially two sides to our business: ownership and being commercial landlord,” Patel said. “We either get deeply involved in a property, or we use it as an incubator to bring in other investment dollars.”

There are developments on the horizon: Milan and Umong Patel either own outright or jointly 10 acres of land in the Albany Mall, they’re involved in the new Pop Shelf development behind the Panera Bread property, and they’re reaching out into other segments of the region.

Which begs the question: Are you always on the lookout for potential new development opportunities?

“I can honestly say at this point in my life and my career, I am not looking,” Patel said. “If something interesting comes our way, we’ll give it our best. But we’re not out actively looking. There will come a point in the next 10-15 years where I know I will be looking at a life with less responsibility. But I’m in the stage of my career where I’m going to do the things that interest me, and I’m at a point where I want to help the next generation of business owners.”

And, Patel admits, unless there is some golden opportunity that drags him away, he’ll be doing that work in and around southwest Georgia.

“I sold The Winery because I couldn’t wait to get out of Albany,” Patel said. “I planned on heading back home (to Newnan) and never looking back. But there is a word in the Indian culture, ‘nasip,’ that translates to ‘your fate.’ About a year after I started having some success with some developments here, my mother told me, ‘You need to quit fighting the fact that Albany is your home now.’

“Nasip. When I accepted that as my fate, I quit looking for projects. They started coming to me.”

Staff Photo: Carlton FletcherStaff Photo: Carlton Fletcher