The Seed That Blossomed

VANCOUVER, B.C. - Stephen Sander ushers a visitor into the meditation room of his home. A panorama of the city's waterfront fills a picture window. Soothing music plays in the background. His wife pours herbal tea.

It was here, in the middle of his daily yoga session, that he decided to give away property worth $170 million.

``It was a seed that blossomed in my mind,'' says Sander, who had spent the past two decades building his real estate empire. After allowing for mortgages, his gift nets out to about $110 million. ``I wish,'' he says, ``that other people could see how good it feels to give away money.''

A few weeks ago, Sander signed over to a charitable trust the titles of 23 luxury apartment buildings he owned in downtown Vancouver and its suburbs. The trust, Consciousness International Foundation, will use its rental income to, among other things, finance projects in the Third World. Sander says he expects the money to start flowing in October.

All this may sound a bit more 1960s than 1990s. But Sander is no flower child. Born Sukhwant Singh, he grew up in a refugee camp in India. His family had fled Moslem-ruled Pakistan in the mid-1940s when the British partitioned India. He spent seven years living on the streets of Delhi, herding cows for $8 a month. He slept with the animals. ``I can still remember waking up with ticks all over me,'' he says with a shudder.

He immigrated to Canada in 1960 for a job teaching physical education in Nova Scotia. In the early 1970s, he made his way to Vancouver, where he struck his first real estate deal. He bought a house outside of town for $4,000, then traded it for 25 acres that he later sold for $25,000.

Sander promptly quit teaching and changed his name to Stephen Sander. He says he picked the name because it sounded vaguely British, and it seemed to allay the fears of business contacts who appeared nervous about dealing with a foreigner.

He picked a good time to change careers. Vancouver real estate has been on an extended roll for the past two decades, in part because of an influx of well-to-do Asians. Immigrants from Hong Kong alone pumped about $2.5 billion into the city's real estate market last year.

Over the past two decades, Sander has gained a reputation as one of Vancouver's shrewdest and most successful real estate investors. Buying property was a passion. ``I could smell blood,'' he recalls. ``I enjoyed the chase and the kill.''

By the early 1980s, he had accumulated a portfolio he valued at $70 million - ``solid gold stuff,'' says a local real estate lawyer. Yet the landlord lived more simply than many of his tenants. He drove a battered Volkswagen Beetle, dressed in old clothes while shopping for properties and worked ``out of my hat,'' as he puts it.

He drives a 10-year-old Jaguar. His modest three-bedroom home overlooks the city's skyline. There are no tennis courts, no pool and no servants. But there is a room loaded with Nautilus equipment for his wife, who was his aerobics instructor before they wed in 1985. The abstemiousness was, in part, a ploy. ``If people don't know you're rich, they let their guard down and don't try to cheat you as fast,'' he says.

Despite his success, he felt something was missing. ``I'd make a $20 million deal and come home and say, `This is insane. I need something for my soul,' '' says Sander, who is trim, athletic and only slightly gray at the temples. He is a Sikh, but he says religion didn't play any part in his decision.

``I'll leave behind a real legacy, not just a lot of real estate,'' he says. ``I can't see any better way to use my fortune. I'm 55, and making a lot of money isn't doing anything for me anymore. I'm keeping enough to be comfortable.''

Under the terms establishing the trust, neither Sander nor his family will be left penniless. His seven children from two previous marriages will receive $5.5 million. He, his third wife, Nancy, and their 4-year-old daughter will get $500,000, their three-bedroom home and three cars. ``We can live comfortably on $40,000 a year,'' Sander says, adding that he has left the real estate business for good.

His decision stunned many of his business associates. ``He is best known for his appetite for buying apartment houses, not giving them away,'' says Michael Keenan, a local real estate agent. ``It's unbelievable,'' says Kelly Heed, an agent who has done business with Sander since 1971. Sander, he says, was ``tight as hell.''

Each year, Sander's Consciousness International Foundation will grant a dozen or so ``cosmic consciousness awards'' of $25,000 to $30,000 to humanitarians in the Third World. Sander and a board of his choosing will name the recipients, whom he has dubbed ``lighthouses,'' and channel additional money for local projects such as hospitals.

This year, Consciousness International expects to dispense about $1 million. One of its first projects is an orphanage in Sri Lanka. Within three years, the foundation plans to distribute about $5 million a year. Its $170 million in assets apparently makes it the second-largest charitable trust in Canada, after one established by the Bronfman family of Montreal, whose members are heirs to the Seagram liquor fortune.

Not everyone in Vancouver is applauding Sander, though. Just before turning his buildings over to the foundation, he increased apartment rents - by as much as 30 percent. ``Charity begins at home,'' says Patricia Waddell, an out-of-work interior designer who rents a one-bedroom unit in one of his buildings. Vancouver's Mayor Gordon Campbell echoes her sentiments, saying the philanthropist should have chosen to back local charities. ``I haven't heard much about him,'' the mayor says, ``and I have no intention of contacting or congratulating him.''

Sander shrugs off the criticisms as ``sour grapes.'' Furthermore, he says, the rents for units in foundation-owned buildings are in line with those of the city's other luxury apartment houses.

Now that he has discovered philanthropy, Sander is determined to share the secret. He has been urging other wealthy people to unburden themselves of their riches. ``We want to make it fashionable to give away money.''

But so far, Sander's vision of himself as the Pied Piper of philanthropy hasn't quite jelled. ``Stephen is a bit disappointed he hasn't become the catalyst he hoped,'' concedes his lawyer, Douglas Scarlett.

But that hasn't dissuaded him. He says he has his eye on just the man to follow in his footsteps: Donald Trump. ``How many billions does he need?'' he says, pledging to carry his message to the New York billionaire. ``He'll find it's very relieving to give it away.''

Reprinted with permission of the Wall Street Journal. Copyright 1990, Dow Jones & Co. Inc. All rights reserved.