Bruce Gilbert
Founder
The Gilbert Group
Columbus, Ohio
For more than five decades, Bruce Gilbert has been a leader in the Columbus, Ohio, commercial real estate industry. How has he managed to thrive in such a competitive business for so long? Gilbert points to his ability to form long-lasting relationships with his clients, his devotion to earning the best results for these clients and his willingness to work the long hours necessary to succeed.
Gilbert is the founder and principal of the Gilbert Group and Gilbert Investment Company and has been active in the real estate and shopping center industry continually since 1966. In his more than 56 years in the industry, he has been involved in thousands of transactions.
Gilbert’s path to commercial real estate wasn’t a straight one, though. In 1965, he was a junior at The Ohio State University studying political theory. His father, then a retired shoe merchant, shocked him by telling him he was broke. He’d outlived his retirement savings.
Gilbert made plans to withdraw from school and get a job. Before he could do so, though, Gilbert’s father came up with a different solution: The pair were going to build a shopping center.
Gilbert’s father put a large second mortgage on his house to raise construction financing and bought a piece of land. A year later, he had developed a shopping center and Gilbert had leased it to Montgomery Ward, Revco and others. The shopping center remains in Gilbert’s portfolio today.
“I was hooked,” Gilbert said.
After graduating from college, he opened a small retail management company before joining the R.G. Denmead Company brokerage. Here he learned valuable lessons about commercial real estate from Bob Denmead, a well-known figure in the Columbus market.
“He provided me both the skills to survive and the values that have helped me in my life,” Gilbert said. “I look back on those years as salesman of the year and smile.”
In 1977, Gilbert opened his own company specializing in landlord representation, shopping center management and small strip development.
“I made a living and believe that I contributed to the industry by training a number of salespeople who stayed with the Gilbert Group for a long time or went on to work for major developers,” Gilbert said.
Gilbert said that he made the best decision of his career in 2002, when he enticed his son, Aaron Gilbert, back from New York City to Columbus to run the company. Today, Aaron, as managing principal, has grown The Gilbert Group into a firm that manages and/or leases 9 million square feet of retail space across Ohio.
And today? Gilbert is enjoying his life.
“In my free time, you could say that I have ridden off into the sunset, which for me is hiking in the mountains of Arizona,” Gilbert said.
Gilbert graduated in 1966 from The Ohio State University with a bachelor’s degree in political science and has taken post-graduate courses in law and community and regional planning. He has long been passionate about politics and public affairs. This passion was central to his activities in support of an Ohio Fair Housing Law and as a delegate to the 1980 Democratic Convention.
