Eric Phillips is one of the nicest guys I’ve met. He walks into a room with a big smile on his face and enveloped in a “let’s get this done” attitude. He’s on the Board of Directors of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and has been instrumental in the ongoing remodel of the Riviera Theatre, clocking in hundreds of hours diligently looking after this non-profit’s back. But we’re not the only organization that benefits of from Eric’s indefatigable gregariousness. He’s also a major advocate for the Santa Barbara Police Foundation and is on the Executive Board of the Granada Theater. “I grew up with parents who were very active in their community,” Eric shares with me – a fact that might explain for his passionate motivation.
Phillips was born to middle class parents in Beverly Hills in the 1960s. “I couldn’t wait to get out of there,” he says. “The kids in Beverly Hills didn’t have any drive. They’d get a Ferrari on their 16th birthday.” So Eric decided to go to the University of Texas at Austin where h got a biology degree and studied to be a medical doctor. “I went to school with Michael Dell who at the time was selling computers out of the back of his car,” he says. In a form of serendipity, the University of Texas policy of prioritizing Texas residents forced Eric to get an in-state job for a year. He did so well as a realtor in Texas that Banc One asked him to move to New England and run their real estate division there. “I had to hire 300 people in 90 days,” he recalls. “At 24, I became their youngest Vice President. By the time I was 29, I was married and had three kids.
“I saw an opportunity on a student housing project at the University of Connecticut to buy it and manage it,” he tells me. People reminded him about Animal House and told him that students would destroy it. When he tried to raise the money for the project, people wouldn’t invest because the project was unlike anything he had done before. Fortunately, he met an investor, Russ Wilkinson, who told him that although he wouldn’t invest in the project, he would buy it, let Eric run it, and eventually, if it was profitable, allow Eric to buy it back. “A year later I bought it back,” recalls Eric with a beaming smile. “We did this all on a handshake.” That deal cemented Eric Phillips’ stock. He took a 124-bed student housing project and grew it into 7500 beds of student rentals in Ohio, Michigan and Connecticut. “In 2006, I sold my whole portfolio to the multinational banking and investment company ING and retired.”