Editorial
Front Page - Monday, November 09, 2009
Being at the right place at the right time
Ethan C. Nobles
By Ethan C. Nobles
Special to the Daily Record ecnobles@att.net
Glen Rega – a Conway real estate broker for almost 33 years – said he’s attributed his success in life to simply being on hand when opportunities came knocking.
“I’ve lived kind of a Forrest Gump life,” he said. “I’ve always been at the right place at the right time and I’ve gotten to do a lot of things.”
Rega and his family moved to Arkansas from Chicago in 1969 and settled in Cherokee Village. Rega played on the golf team at Highland High School after growing up playing golf with Tommy Bolt – a man who held 15 Professional Golf Association (PGA) Tour titles, won the 1959 U.S. Open and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2002.
While in high school, Rega played against Payne Stewart – a man who went on to win the 1989 PGA Championship and the U.S. Open in 1991 and 1999.
Rega went to college at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro where he majored in communications and minored in real estate insurance. While in college, Rega got his real estate license.
“I made up my mind – even before college – that I wanted to get in to the real estate business,” he said, adding his father made a career in real estate and that helped inspire Rega to do the same thing.
Instead of jumping right into real estate, Rega wound up managing a Bowen’s restaurant four around four years. While a manager with Bowen’s, Rega moved around the state and got the desire to stay in one place.
Rega said he found himself – once again – in the right place at the right time. Conway was an appealing community and Rega made the decision to pursue a real estate career there.
Conway, he said, is a great place to live and work as the community is more than a bit unique. For one thing, the economy is diverse in that companies ranging from industrial ones like Ward Transportation Company to technology businesses such as Hewlett-Packard have found a home in Conway.
The diversity of the economy has helped for a safety net in that one industry heats up as another one cools. Over the past couple of years, for example, Central Baptist College, Hendrix College and the University of Central Arkansas have all engaged in major building projects and the Conway Regional Medical Center has expanded.
Of course, Hewlett-Packard announced it was coming to Conway last year and Southwest Energy revealed it was moving a regional headquarters to town.
“Conway’s been in what I call a bubble,” Rega said. “There have never been the real highs and the real lows that a lot of other markets have experienced. … It’s been humps and bumps (instead of booms and busts). We haven’t had to endure a whole lot of problems.”
The stable housing market, Rega said, is more evidence of his being in the right place at the right time. Of course, Rega said opportunities can be squandered if those who receive them don’t put in the work to take advantage of them.
“After you’ve been at the right place at the right time, you’ve got to work hard to stay there,” he said. “I’ve never been a stranger to hard work.”
Some of that hard work has come in the form of putting in a lot of time to help improve his profession and his community. Rega was the president of the Arkansas Realtors Association in 2004 and was named the Arkansas Realtor of the Year in 2000 after being nominated for the honor by the Faulkner County Board of Realtors.
Rega said community service, however, just comes with being a Conway resident. He said the town is generally progressive in that there’s a long standing idea that it’s better to be proactive and anticipate potential problems rather than wait for trouble and react to it.
For example, the town has reacted to growth by renovating and building around rather than abandoning and moving. The downtown area, for example, has been revitalized and room has been made for new businesses. Through that process, you don’t have areas become run down and crime ridden.
In other words, the history of the town is preserved and built upon as the town grows.
Rega said the progressive, growing town has provided him with a great place to raise his children – 21-year-old Kyle, 16-year-old Christopher, 12-year-old Holly and 10-year-old Hannah.
“The great thing about the diversity in this city is they can do anything they want to do,” Rega said of his children. “If they want to play basketball or find a job; if they want to go out with their friends – there’s always that natural parenting instinct that you want them to be safe, but you don’t have to worry about that so much here.”
Rega said that sense of community has led a lot of people to Conway and has prompted others to return once they’ve left.
“They come back for a lot of reasons. They’ve enjoyed something about this city so much that they want to come back,” he said. “It’s the community that kind of drives all of that.”
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