From the archives: Dwight Yackley profile

Editor's note: This story, written by Susan Stevens, first appeared in the Daily Herald on Feb. 3, 2003.

If you walked into a crowded room, you might not notice Dwight Yackley.

He's a man of moderate height, a slight smile and a soft voice. Friends describe him as humble, generous, considerate.

And unbelievably successful.

Yackley, 49, is responsible for two developments that are literally changing the face of downtown Naperville.

He built the Barnes & Noble Booksellers building in 1998 at the key intersection of Washington Street and Chicago Avenue. Later this year, he will open the $40 million Main Street Promenade along Van Buren Avenue on the opposite side of the shopping district.

Each has attracted big-name national retailers and each will pump millions of dollars into the local economy.

“I enjoy creating something, taking an idea from the ground up and seeing it come together,” Yackley says. “I think being an entrepreneur is exciting.”

Farm boy

Yackley is used to starting from scratch.

He grew up on a farm in west-central Illinois, near Pittsfield. The farm had dairy cows, sheep, chickens, hogs and plenty of chores for Yackley and his older brother, Duane, who still lives there.

“I worked most of the time,” Yackley says. “I couldn't be in sports because I had to go home and milk the cows.”

When he was 4, Yackley's mother moved into a state hospital for treatment of her epilepsy. With limited help, it was too hard for Yackley's father to care for the farm and the medical needs of his wife.

A neighbor started coming over several times a week to help keep house and care for the boys.

June Baughman remembers Yackley as an easygoing child who'd wait patiently to lick the mixing bowl when she baked cakes.

“Those eyes and dimples and blond hair,” Baughman says. “You'd have to be crazy not to love that kid. I wish he'd been mine, because my husband and I think that much of him.”

Baughman made sure Yackley got to 4-H, summer camp and fishing trips. Later, when Yackley graduated from high school, Baughman kept his cap and gown and made sure he got out of town.

Yackley's father wanted his son to stay and work on the farm. College wasn't part of his plans for Dwight.

“We were standing at the back door of their house, and he told me what he wanted to do,” Baughman says. “I said, ‘Dwight, if that's what you want to do, you do it.'

“I just pushed him out the door.”

American dream

At 17, Yackley left home without his father's permission.

He worked in Pittsfield and saved $300, enough to take him to Chicago and enroll at DeVry Technical Institute.

He worked nights cutting speaker cloth and repairing Hammond organs while attending school during the day. Then Bell Labs offered him a job as a hardware technician and agreed to pay for his schooling.

Yackley stayed with the company until 1984.

By then he was starting to look at other careers. A real estate agent showed him a vacant building on Ogden Avenue in Naperville, explained how he could fix it up, lease it out and end up making money.

It worked.

“After that, I decided maybe there was something to this real estate business,” Yackley says.

He began buying and managing commercial properties while working as an independent computer consultant.

Eventually, he did well enough to devote all his time to real estate. He bought properties in Chicago, Fox Lake and Naperville.

The company he named after the slogan “better business machines” became BBM Inc., a firm devoted to “building the future.”

About the same time he was planning some of his biggest projects, Yackley met his wife, Ruth, in the Chicago restaurant Soul Kitchen. She also had a background in development and now works on the leasing side of the business. They've been married eight years.

Building big

In 1994, Yackley bought a bowling alley on the northeast corner of Washington Street and Chicago Avenue in downtown Naperville.

Four years later, he celebrated the grand opening of Barnes & Noble Booksellers, a three-story building that dominates that corner.

Yackley plans the same transformation on the north end of downtown, where construction crews are pouring the concrete floors of Main Street Promenade.

The development features an entire block of new shops and restaurants, with a stepped facade designed to look like old-fashioned storefronts. Facing Benton Avenue, Yackley plans to build 30 condominiums.

Like other redevelopment in downtown Naperville, Main Street Promenade will welcome well-known national retailers: Ann Taylor Loft, J. Jill, Coldwater Creek, Sur La Table. The trend — begun with Eddie Bauer in 1997 — has caused some angst among smaller merchants, who say the resulting higher rents are driving them out.

Yackley's projects have other critics as well. Residents living near Main Street Promenade complained the five-story condos would dwarf their homes.

In response, he met with homeowners and eventually modified his plans. He eliminated some condos, lowered the height of the building and split it in two.

“Quite frankly, the guy's a gentleman,” says Christine Jeffries, president of the Naperville Development Partnership, a quasi-governmental agency that works to attract businesses.

“He's very soft-spoken,” Jeffries says. “He's not a very theatrical, do-it-my-way type. He builds consensus, and I think that's why his projects have been successful.”

Consensus building, apparently, takes time. Both Washington Corners, where Barnes & Noble is located, and Main Street Promenade took years to bring together.

Assembling the properties, refining a design and winning city approval easily can consume several years. Finding the right tenants is even more difficult — like herding cats, Yackley says.

Retailers are cautious about whom they'll move next to. And with the tight economy, fewer stores are searching for new leases.

“A lot of businesses have put their expansion plans on hold for a few years,” Yackley says. “If you're a big chain and only expanding to seven stores nationwide, there's probably three dozen sites. It makes it very competitive.”

Citizen of Naperville

If Dwight Yackley had to tell his own story, it would be small-town boy makes good.

Others are more effusive.

“I think Dwight is a person of great vision,” says Mike Skarr, president of the Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce. “I think there's a richness to our downtown now that is a direct result of some of the great work he has done.”

Yackley serves on the chamber's board, as well as the Naperville Heritage Society, Exchange Club, Rotary Club and even the city's bicycle and pedestrian committee. His name appears on the donor lists for the city's biggest charitable projects.

And city leaders say Yackley has truly accepted Naperville as his hometown. When the old Cock Robin ice cream parlor was demolished, Yackley bought the bricks so they'd stay in Naperville.

“He has a sense of the heritage and history of the community, which is kind of cool for a developer to appreciate,” says Dave Kelsch, president of the Naperville Heritage Society.

Exchange Club President Dave Wentz describes Yackley as “underspoken.” For all his humility, Wentz says Yackley has had a dramatic impact on Naperville.

“I compare him to a latter-day Al Rubin,” a respected local developer, Wentz says. “He will be one of the godfathers of the town eventually. I put him in the same category.”

Hard work

Ruth Yackley jokes that her husband is “somebody who's not happy unless they're working, or working out.”

The only New Year's resolution Yackley made this year is to take a vacation.

He also plans to shave a few minutes off his time in the triathlon, the sport he took on a couple of years ago with friend Michael Shechtman, a mortgage broker who has worked with Yackley on development projects.

The two men live too far away to train together, but they talk daily during triathlon season in the spring.

“He's just a really warm person,” Shechtman says. “He gives so much of himself to everyone else.

“I think that's one thing he gets out of exercise — it's something that's his own time. It gives you a good time to think or be on your own. Other than that, he's in meetings or on the phone.”

In his first triathlon, Yackley did the back stroke the entire swim portion, taking four times as long to finish as the other athletes.

He swims better now but says he enjoys the same feeling of accomplishment every time he finishes a race.

“It's taking a dream and turning it into reality,” Yackley says. “It takes hard work, it takes determination, it takes willpower, and there's plenty of people that will tell you ‘no' along the way, that it's impossible, it can't be done, you're foolish for trying.”

Yackley is happiest, he says, when he sees a goal reached — whether that's a finish line or a grand opening.

It's no surprise to Baughman.

The two have remained close, and Yackley cites her as the biggest influence in his life.

A few years ago, Yackley brought her to Florida so she could stand on the beach and see the ocean for the first time.

“I couldn't tell you enough about that boy, how he's worked and worked to achieve his goals in life,” she says. “He's very determined. When he set his goals to do something, he intends to do it. That's Dwight.”