Louis’ bid for an NFL expansion team, but the reserved Kroenke couldn’t win over league executives, with the Sun Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale writing that he had “as much charisma as an undertaker.” (Widely known as “Silent Stan,” he rarely speaks to reporters, and his representatives did not respond to an interview request for this article.) Kroenke finally got his foot in the door in 1995 when he paid $60 million for a 30% stake in the Rams, helping owner Georgia Frontiere move the team from Los Angeles to St.
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He made his first push into pro sports in 1993, leading St.
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Those assets, plus his majority stake in the privately held self-storage company StorageMart, represent $5 billion of his wealth, according to Forbes estimates. As founder of the Kroenke Group and a cofounder of THF Realty, he now owns some 60 million square feet of real estate, as well as more than 1.5 million acres of ranches. Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times via Getty ImagesĪfter striking out on his own, Kroenke continued building shopping centers that often had Walmarts as tenants. Kroenke went to work for that company in 1975 and became a partner in 1979, until a bitter breakup in 1985 set off a nearly decade-long court battle in which Kroenke accused his partner of misrepresenting assets and was himself accused of shirking responsibilities.
While Kroenke built his own fortune, first in real estate and then in sports, he received advice from Bud Walton and his legendary brother, Sam, and was introduced to a real estate developer who built strip malls that often featured Walmarts. His trajectory changed after he met Ann Walton, the daughter of Walmart cofounder Bud Walton, on a ski trip to Colorado in 1971 and married her three years later. Then, while attending the University of Missouri and working as a busboy at a nearby college’s dining hall, he used a $1,500 loan from his father to buy into a local clothing shop. He later got a modest start in business when he transitioned from sweeping the floors at his father’s lumber company to keeping its books. That was where he fell in love with the sport on a gravel court, eventually playing for his high school team. That dream must have seemed far-fetched as Kroenke was growing up in Mora, Missouri, a tiny town 100 miles southeast of Kansas City. 22 on Forbes’ most recent list of the NBA’s most valuable teams, he has told the Denver Post that “basketball has a special place in my heart.” In 2000, when he bought the franchise, he said it was the fulfillment of a long-held dream to be involved in pro basketball. Although the Nuggets don’t occupy the most prominent place on Kroenke’s balance sheet, landing at No.
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