Terry Thompson Brings Entrepreneurial Culture to His Team at San Bernardino County

This is the best job Terry Thompson has ever had. The ultra-competitive former UCLA football player went searching for the kind of “juice” that could somehow compare to the rush of the gridiron, and he found it in real estate. For over 25 years, Thompson has led organizations and conducted millions of dollars in deals in the private sector throughout Southern California.

And then came the calls that just wouldn’t stop.

“When the role at San Bernardino County opened up, a broker friend of mine told me this job would be perfect for me,” Thompson says. “I’m going to be honest; I was a little offended at the time because I don’t think I really understood just what can be done on the public side. But this friend called me every day for six days straight, and when I would say I hadn’t given the CEO a call about the job, he would hang up on me. I finally called just to get him off my back.”

That phone call was more than 10 years ago, and in that time, the director of real estate services has crafted a team that can more than hold its own in the private sector. Thompson measures his metrics against the private sector and empowers his team to work entrepreneurially and with the same spirit that got him into the business in the first place. And with his team serving 42 different departments spread out over 20,000 square miles, there are opportunities galore.

How We Define P3s

With the support of the Board of Supervisors and County Leadership, some of Thompson and his team’s most impressive deals since joining San Bernardino County have come in the form of four successful public-private partnership (P3) types of deals, two completed and two in progress. The one that sticks out as the most memorable for Thompson serves the youngest members of his community: kids.

Thompson remembers visiting the preschool on a preliminary fact-finding mission. The situation was complicated—a dilapidated building, a charter school, and San Bernardino County. But Thompson knew one thing for sure.

“I remember when touring the preschool and seeing all of the kids sleeping at naptime, thinking they deserved a better and safer facility than what they had,” Thompson says. “I knew then and there that I was going to figure this out.”

Thompson and his team were able to partner with an industrial developer to trade a plot of land for the land the school was currently sitting on. The charter school was able to provide financing for a new building, and San Bernardino County got a preschool in a better location with no cost to its tax base. That’s when Thompson saw just how much good could be done on the public side of things.

Thompson’s probably best-known P3 success was done in partnership with TopGolf that has become its second highest-performing site (second only to Las Vegas) in TopGolf’s national portfolio. The deal provides the San Bernardino County Regional Parks system with over $620,000 per year, a win for everyone on board.

Currently, Thompson and his team are engaged in a P3 deal that is the most complicated transaction of the director’s career. San Bernardino County’s fire department is in dire need of new administrative facilities, and the new location involves the overhauling of a 75,000-square-foot facility that is structured as a lease-to-own transaction with costs getting baked into the rental rate. The deal took four years from start to move-in, which will be occurring in April 2024.

Expect to Win

These major wins reflect Thompson’s years as an athlete playing with successful teams. In whatever he pursues, Thompson says he expects to win, not with ego, but with purpose, humility, and persistence. If you can’t follow a football metaphor, you might want to brush up before joining his team. But football jargon aside, Thompson’s team is a true reflection of the community it serves.

“We are an organization with 72 percent women and 62 percent minorities, which is contradictory to what you normally see in the commercial real estate industry,” Thompson says. “I’m proud of that. This is a team of highly qualified professionals who have each other’s backs and work together to get the job done. The ‘we’ is far greater than the ‘me’ in accomplishing our goals for the county and getting things done and done right.”

More broadly, Thompson’s entire real estate philosophy is closely tied to a quote he loves from 19th century architect Daniel Burnham:

“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized. Make big plans, aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency.”