Mission Statement

Richmond, Va.–area developer Bob Atack doesn't waste a second considering where to take a visitor who asks him to show off the property that makes him proudest. The pair jumps into his 2007 black Chevrolet Tahoe and motors past the year-old Henley community, where elegant single-family homes sell for up to $2 million. Atack, president of Atack Properties in Glen Allen, Va., points it out but passes it by.

Instead, Atack pulls his Tahoe into Richmond's inner-city Bainbridge area, where liquor stores outnumber churches and panhandlers hover too close to cars stopped at red lights. He points to an empty and neglected 44-unit apartment building across the street from a store called Marketplace, whose main wares are wine and lottery tickets and whose regular customers were the once-residents who lived in those apartments.

That was before Atack bought the building—and its 36-unit twin down the street—and donated both to Good Samaritan Ministries. Now, says Atack, the store's owner is pressing him to buy Marketplace, too, because his one-time customers have either stopped buying wine or have moved away.

This is Atack's pride and joy, the project he calls his “passion.” He has donated upward of $1.5 million to the 20-year-old Christian mission for the homeless and drug-addicted, and has led a fundraising effort that nearly matched it. He has lent employees to help renovate the two buildings of 612-square-foot, two-bedroom apartments, which are home to “graduates” of a 90-day mission orientation, during which its patrons live in a 30-bed men's dorm while they detoxify and learn the mission's routine: rise early, study the Bible, prepare for the day, then go to work around the mission in unpaid jobs ranging from stuffing envelopes to selling Christmas trees.

Bob Atack President Atack Properties

After three drug- and alcohol-free months, patrons may move—with their wives and children if they have them—into the tiny apartments for another nine months. During that time, they learn basic carpentry and life skills, attend group counseling sessions, and work every day—some on the grounds of one of Atack's commercial properties; others side-by-side with local contractors who are renovating the apartments; and a few in the mission's ancillary businesses such as a Christmas tree lot.

Half of the mission's 33-member staff began as wards of the program, which, with help from Atack and a handful of other prominent Richmond businessmen, has grown from a shelter with room for 23 men in a converted tire recap shop to an apartment community that houses more than 100. Today's mission also runs an elementary and high school for 64 at-risk students, a church, and a neighborhood outreach center that serves 200,000 meals a year.

“Every day is a miraculous event, a day that is life-changing,” says Atack, a onetime Realtor who has developed properties in Richmond's affluent west-end suburbs since 1985.

His life is one that the mission has changed.

No, Atack, whose $46 million-a-year firm develops around 325 lots a year for condos, offices, strip malls, and residential neighborhoods, was never homeless. The son of a Realtor, he caught the real estate bug early—mowing the lawns of his father's for-sale properties—and spent the first part of his career brokering deals between developers and home builders. In 1985, he developed his first 65 lots and found “it was in my blood.”

Like most busy entrepreneurs, Atack devoted his time and directed his talent to his growing business. But as Atack Properties prospered, Atack says, he realized “what my talents could do for others.” And, he notes, “My first talent is my financial talent, being able to write a check and seeing what good that money can do immediately.”