Martin Baral
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Published: 3/11/2010 | Updated: 6/2/2010
By DOUG WILSON
Herald-Whig Senior Writer
Martin Baral, the Australian businessman who created the Quincy Development Center, has died at age 77.
Baral, managing director of Expo Oil Co., bought the former Motorola building in 1984 and subdivided the space as an industrial/business mall. The 850,000-square-foot building has been the site of several growing businesses and has reached full capacity three times.
“Martin loved Quincy,” said Lou Bond, general manager of the Quincy Development Center.
Bond, now in Seattle, described Baral as “a great mentor and a great friend” whose main goal was to create jobs.
Pat Bybee, a long-time worker at the QDC, said economic development was Baral’s passion.
“Martin was very careful as to just what kind of business he wanted in the QDC. He studied every possibility and brought only good, clean businesses under his umbrella,” Bybee said.
Baral was reluctant to lease space to companies looking for storage, saying in a 2002 interview that he wanted to see jobs created.
Former Quincy Mayor C. David Nuessen held a contest that led to the Motorola building’s sale to Baral after Cummins Engine announced it was leaving town only a few years after it had moved into the former Motorola site at 1400 N. 30th.
Baral heard about the contest when he was making a business call to Quincy.
Cummins Corp. had come to Quincy thanks largely to a $6.9 million federal grant. When it left, due to problems in the diesel industry, Cummins had to repay the federal money, and Quincy was allowed to use it for development.
The city used $2.2 million from those funds as a loan to Baral. The other $4.7 million in federal money was used to establish a revolving loan fund that helps new businesses get their start.
City Planner Chuck Bevelheimer said Baral paid off his loan to the city earlier than the agreement required.
Jim Mentesti, president of the Great River Economic Development Foundation, said Baral’s contributions have been huge.
“Martin probably gave us, as a community and a county, an identity in economic development that we needed,” Mentesti said.
“He took a risk at a time when risks didn’t make a lot of sense” in the midst of an economic downturn in the early 1980s.
Blue Cross Blue Shield was one of the early tenants recruited by Baral. The facility now employs 700 people.
Born March 21, 1932, Baral and his mother and sisters survived the Nazi death camps of World War II. His father died in Auschwitz.
“He felt that, given his background as a survivor of the Holocaust, it was a privilege and an honor to work in the United States,” Bond said.
The Baral family migrated to Australia after the war. Baral worked in a printing company and took classes at night.
Baral made his fortune with shrewd investments. He and his wife, Dahlia, bought small parcels of land whenever they came up for sale along the Australian coast. At one point, he learned of a South American copper mine and bought land all around the mine, reselling his holdings at a huge profit.
-- dwilson@whig.com/221-3372
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