Kirsten Weeks, a friend who met Hatem when the two worked together at the state Department of Commerce in the late 1990.
RALEIGH — If it’s more than 60 degrees outside, there’s a good chance you’ll find developer Greg Hatem in shorts.
In his downtown Raleigh office, he doesn’t wear shoes.
He speaks Chinese. He owns a pig cooker and drives a Ford pickup truck.
When it comes to his work — buying up old buildings and redeveloping them into offices, stores, apartments and restaurants — Hatem is just as nontraditional. Instead of buying a building and focusing purely on financial return, he’s willing to take the time to renovate the building to its historical glory, and then wait as long as it takes — despite the cost — until the right tenant comes along.
Greg Hatem
BORN: Nov. 20, 1960, in Roanoke Rapids
OCCUPATION: Founder of Raleigh-based Empire Properties
FAMILY: Mother, Marie, of Roanoke Rapids; two brothers, Joe Hatem of Wilmington and Mickey Hatem of Raleigh; sister, Marie Hatem of Carrboro, married to Chris Long; niece, Paula Rosine Long, 17; and nephew, Moe Long, 14; dog, Raleigh, a border collie mix.
EDUCATION: Bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, N.C. State University; diploma of Chinese studies, Beijing Youth Politics College.
NEXT BIG PROJECT: Three buildings in downtown Durham on East Chapel Hill Street, with plans to turn them into apartments, condos and offices; redeveloping three buildings in Glenwood South, at the former site of David Allen tile and marble, into a mix of restaurants, shops, offices and condos.
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“It’s incredibly important to have local people who have grown up here, who are willing to commit their time and resources to leave a better legacy, and there’s not a better one in Raleigh than Greg Hatem,” says Margaret Mullen, president of the Downtown Raleigh Alliance.
In the beginning, not everyone saw his vision. The first two bankers he and his two partners approached in 1996, when they wanted to redevelop an old Coca-Cola warehouse on West Street in Raleigh’s warehouse district, thought he was crazy.
Hatem never planned a career as a developer. When he was growing up in Roanoke Rapids, where his family — all of Lebanese decent — moved in the 1930s, his love was photography. But he made his spending money working for his father’s downtown clothing store, Joseph N. Hatem Ltd.
As a student at N.C. State, he took pictures for the school’s paper, The Technician, and United Press International. He studied chemical engineering because it didn’t require a foreign language.
The next year he accompanied his mother to China to visit his father’s brother, a physician named George Hatem. Hatem had been living in China since the 1930s, working for Chairman Mao Zedong and later helping set up a national health-care system.
The trip began what would become a love affair of sorts between Hatem and China. He later would learn Chinese at a school in Beijing and take frequent economic development trips to Asia while working for the Commerce Department in the late 1990s. He even dabbled in some business ventures, including helping create a software development company and building a 21-story office and residential tower.
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