Reclamation projects
Entrepreneur flips not only houses but his life
Staff writer
Stan Lerner says he doesn’t do it for money or fame.
Coming from him, it is a fascinating statement — he already knows how both taste.
Yet here he is in Florence, spending his days trying to repair rundown properties.
In his 60s now, Lerner lived in Los Angeles as a young adult and worked as an art dealer, film producer, author, and chef.
His father owned a successful auto-parts shop. Lerner recalls him cutting deals with Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton over the phone.
His uncle, Harry Sinclair, founded Sinclair Paint Co., a major west coast manufacturer of architectural coatings.
Lerner’s own career path was no less triumphant.
He describes meeting “an up-and-coming chef named Wolfgang Puck” at 12, and learning to cook in Puck’s restaurants.
Other achievements came in the young Lerner’s business dealings.
A 1990 article describes a 25-year-old Lerner as a “UCLA dropout turned entrepreneurial phenom” with a red Porsche and a Beverly Hills office.
“At his peak, this son of middle-income parents from Montebello spent his days negotiating multimillion dollar art transactions involving some of the world’s best-known painters,” the article reads.
Lerner also is an artist himself.
“I have paintings, painted and signed by me, in major collections,” he says.
His public LinkedIn and Goodreads profiles use a reverential tone to describe his skills:
“A multi-millionaire artist by the age of 18, his great artistic talent was perhaps eclipsed in the public eye by his fantastic wealth and fast lifestyle.”
Lerner’s most successful book, “Stan Lerner’s Criminal,” was a grand prize winner at the Hollywood Book Festival.
He recalls going on tour around the country to promote it, giving live readings during the day and partying in exclusive clubs after dark.
“I know what it’s like to live a life of luxury and privilege,” Lerner says.
It begs the question of how a man like this ended up buying and renovating homes in Florence.
Lerner moved to Winfield in 2013. He had previously visited a local factory there that printed hardcover copies of his books.
Lerner wanted to have new experiences while working as a small town chef. Perhaps he would get some material for a new book.
He also may have wanted to escape the excess and materialism of his earlier life.
After all, his lavish Hollywood lifestyle had not come without some controversy. In 1990, Lerner served 30 days in a federal penitentiary and 30 months in a community correctional center for distributing cocaine.
“I learned to put my energy and whatever financial resources I come across into things that are undoubtedly positive,” he says.
Lerner ran a restaurant in Winfield named Chef’s Table for most of the 2010s, then opened Chef Stan’s Place in Strong City. He grew fond of rural living, he said, having found something sincere in the Flint Hills.
“I started to grow out of the idea of, ‘this is just for play,’” Lerner says. “I evolved to the idea of, ‘No, this is actually real life.’ People need good food. People need a place to congregate.”
While driving to Costco last June, Lerner spontaneously took an exit into Florence.
“There wasn’t a burning bush telling me to make a left,” he says. “But you know when you just feel like, the Lord wants me to make a left?”
He bought his first property in town that night — an old house in the city’s land bank — after speaking to the mayor and city council.
Since then, he has bought and repaired roughly seven homes in Florence. He declines to give an exact number.
The properties Lerner buys are extremely cheap. On Thursday, Lerner was working on a place he purchased at a tax auction for $400.
Its deck was in pieces; rainwater dripped from a two-toned roof. Discarded VHS tapes had submerged in front-yard mud for so long that they had turned slightly squishy.
Lerner had already cleared away a massive amount of overgrowth and garbage just to get inside the building.
“You got to dig your way in,” he says.
The rocky foundation holding the building above its basement was dilapidated.
Lerner plans to jack up the house, take a sledgehammer, knock off old stones, and cement new blocks in.
Inside, the building was in similarly rough shape, mostly because of junk littering every inch of the floor — Powerpuff Girl dolls, purses, tiki torches, plastic bottles, ashtrays filled with ashes.
A calendar on the wall dated March, 2000, highlighted that the home had not been abandoned long ago.
“They’re almost all like this,” Lerner says. “People came along with all the modern conveniences, and they literally filled it with a never-ending amount of sh—, to the point where they might have had to live outside. The house became part of the materialism of our times.”
He picked up a cardboard box, filled it with junk, and walked to a nearby dumpster.
Lerner spends 40 hours a week renovating, he says. That’s the same amount of time he puts into Chef Stan’s Place.
While he usually rents or sells the homes he renovates, he does not do the work for profit, he says.
“This is about a community that has a dilapidated home — in this case, more than one.” Lerner says. “The primary purpose is to not tear down but to allow these to continue to be in the state.”
Of course, the idea that Lerner isn’t making money house-flipping is a fallacy. He budgets his projects extensively — often trading favors or valuables he finds in a house for construction help. He also speaks about the strong profit margins that come from buying such cheap property.
He dreams of turning the $400 home into an AirBnB.
“It kind of captures my imagination, being right by the fishing bridge… I want to keep it rural-chic,” he says.
Or maybe it could work as a cheap, rustic restaurant.
“You could get a bowl of beans and a big slice of bread for five bucks.”
The entrepreneurial spirit that made Lerner successful in California is clear to see.
However, he also possesses a spiritual and almost obsessive desire to give back to future generations, a desire unique among most landlords.
“Not to go holy roller here, but I believe that the Lord wants us to do good in the world,” he says.
Florence residents seem to recognize this. It’s hard to find one with a bad word to say about Lerner. On Facebook, he is frequently praised for uplifting the town.
While working on the house, a local in a beaten-up Lincoln pulled over to speak to him about buying one of his father’s properties. Lerner said he’d be interested.
One might also note properties Lerner buys are properties no one else wants. While most Florence residents might not have the means to buy and renovate as he does, he has a rare kind of creativity and work ethic.
“I did not grow up doing construction, so this is a great way to learn,” he says. “And there’s not a lot of downside. Let’s just say I made a mistake. It hasn’t happened. But if this thing caves in, I’d just be like, ‘Dude, it’s 400 bucks.’”
Lerner lives an ascetic life these days. He prays twice a day, eats whole foods, rarely goes out. After everything that went on in California, he has come to value the simple life in Kansas.
He loves the idea of sustainable self-sufficiency, perhaps the root of his interest in buying old and run-down properties.
“If you buy the biggest, fanciest places and you want to be a big shot, you’ll impress a certain crowd, but you will also draw the ire of the people who don’t care for that,” he says. “One hundred fifty years ago, when they were building this house, [they had] no water, no electricity, no gasoline. It didn’t matter. They could just do this.”
It’s not clear how far Lerner’s beautification efforts in Florence will go. But the dream is that restoring blighted homes will bring more people and business to town.
Sitting on the hood of his Ford pickup, Lerner quotes a film about a different kind of restoration project, “Field of Dreams.”
“If you build it, they will come,” he says.