12 People You Need to Know in 2016: Bryan Magers

Bryan Magers is building more than student housing. The apartment developer and manager is building a legacy.

Through Springfield-based Bryan Properties, Magers can be counted among the most prolific student-housing developers in the area during the Queen City’s post-recession boom, but he launched his real estate career in the 1970s as a House of Brokers agent.

“I was one of the original nine people who in 1979 formed House of Brokers, which later became Re/Max. I was there for 13 years, and during the latter-few years, I started buying single-family residences. I still do that to this day,” he says.

Magers declines to say how many properties fall under his firm’s management, but they range from single-family residences south of Missouri State University to duplexes near Kickapoo High School and the Hillcrest Apartments in Lebanon. Among at least seven multifamily properties under the Bryan Properties umbrella include Pheasant Run apartments in Nixa, University Suites on the Drury University campus and Carlisle Apartments on West Battlefield Road.

But his development legacy likely will always be tied to a still-growing student-housing complex that runs along Kimbrough Avenue north of Grand Street. Dubbed Bear Village, about 300 units across three buildings have been constructed so far, but much still is to come under his $30 million, roughly 800-bedroom apartment plans.

In late 2014, work at the corner of Grand and Roanoke Avenue had begun on an 83-unit building, which is expected to be complete in fall 2016. The following phase will put 300 to 400 more units along Kimbrough.

And then there are his family ties.

“After my father died three years ago, we split the family businesses,” Magers says.

Brother Randy Magers runs Magers Management Co. LLC – which owns several older apartment complexes in center city, manages Battlefield Market Place and recently constructed the Battlefield Office Park at 2915 E. Battlefield Road.

Their father, Bill Magers, bought Citizen’s State Bank of Marshfield in 1973 before buying banks in Kimberling City and Lamar, and then Metropolitan National Bank in 1987. With the Metropolitan acquisition, the other bank holdings were brought under the Metropolitan National name.  

Bryan Magers and his brother worked together with bank leadership in the shadow of their father’s death three years ago to identify new owners, which they accomplished in 2015 via Arkansas-based Bear State Bank.

“He worked hard and built it up and left a great legacy in that,” Magers says of his father.  

Moving forward, he has no plans to retire.

“We are set up with the existing staff that we can take on more properties,” he says, adding the Kansas City area is a new target. “And I don’t want to waste the opportunity to challenge them."