Wednesday, April 27, 2005

New office expands Centerfire's hospitality

Western hospitality is a key ingredient to Centerfire Real Estate's success.

When Max and Cherie Kiehne designed the company's new office located at 2206 Sun Ranch Village Loop, they wanted to extend hospitality to the community as well as to their clients.

Centerfire has been recognized as one of the country's most innovative agricultural property brokerage firms.

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More recently, Centerfire has been involved in various commercial projects in the county, including Sun Ranch Village. Customers receive special treatment when they sell a home or buy property through Centerfire.

On Friday and Saturday, April 29 and 30, beginning at 5 p.m. each day, the community is invited to see for themselves how Centerfire has taken hospitality to the next level.

This building is definitely not your run-of-the-mill office structure. For one thing, the second floor is designed for entertaining — community and clients — with outdoor decks on the east and west sides and two guest suites.

"We wanted a place where community organizations could hold events," said Max of the outdoor decks that give guests spectacular views of the Rio Grande Valley and Manzano Mountain to the east and Los Lunas Hill to the west. "We wanted a place where youth groups could hold fund-raisers that go beyond car washes."

Each deck has a platform for musical groups, natural gas hook-ups for grills and a wet-bar area.

"I think the community is going to enjoy coming to events here," said Max. "I can already hear the music and see the sunsets."

The typical response of visitors to the office regarding the five-star quality hotel suites is usually surprise.

One suite has two queen-size beds, while the other has a king-size bed; each has a seating room area, a television and a refreshment center.

"We have ranch buyers who fly in from New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin — all over the country — to look at ranches, and they need a nice place to stay where they'll feel comfortable and at home," said Max.

The new Centerfire building definitely fills the bill as far as comfort goes.

Cherie coordinated the decorating to give a warm, ranchhouse feel to the suites, as well as to the office space downstairs.

She combined hair-on-cowhide, leather and Southwestern tapestry with classic furniture to produce a Cowboy chic decor.

"This has been a project of a lifetime," Cherie said of the project. "We found antiques in Colorado, Arizona and Texas and had all of the chairs custom-made in North Carolina."

Each room has its own theme which is carried out in warm color schemes, artwork and custom-made ceiling fans that include a hand-tooled leather fan in Max's office.

A special touch to the interior was created by painter Gwen Thorman with old cowboy sayings lettered by Loretta Sachs.

"If you've dug yourself into a hole, quit digging," one saying says as it winds its way along the first floor hallway.

The Kiehne family's love of hunting is also captured with a cougar on the travertine stone fireplace and mounted elk and onyx heads on the wall in the lobby.

Hospitality for Centerfire's clients also comes with technology that allows them to tour perspective properties in the comfort of the office.

"These folks' time is always very valuable," Max said. "When they come all the way out here, they want to see ranches and they want to see as many of them as possible and they generally don't have a whole lot of time to spend doing it," Max said.

"The old, traditional way of showing property would have us hauling a buyer across the state, inspecting one ranch after another. After a while, it's exhausting and, pretty soon, the places all begin to look alike. It's really not a very efficient way of looking at ranches."

Centerfire has stepped into the 21st Century with a virtual computerized tour of its offerings.

"We wanted to be able to give our buyers a quick overview of a variety of ranch properties right here in the comfort of our office, their home-away-from-home," Max said.

"After some research, we discovered a new technology that would allow us to take a virtual tour of nearly any place we wanted to go in the country. We will be able to show any ranch, anywhere, check out the terrain, the improvements and the lay of the land, all with a high-speed Internet hookup and a laptop computer.

"We'll be able to tour the nearby towns, see the local recreational sites. If any of the places we've taken our buyers to on a virtual visit warrant a firsthand look, we'll load up and drive to the ranch."

Since opening the office, the Kiehnes say the combination of comfort and technology has paid off. "Our clients love our facility and our service," Cherie said.

With a staff, including Shawn Kiehne, Verne Payne, Sherry Faust, Gabriela Lovato, Shanna Parker, Rebecca Olguin, Rob Holloway, Woody Crumbo, Russell Burris and Martin and Lorena Lopez, the Kiehnes say business is booming.

And they now have office space for the additional real estate agents they hope to bring on board in the near future.

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