By Andrew Meacham, Times Staff Writer
Saturday, September 18, 2010
CLEARWATER — Courthouse regulars in St. Petersburg or Clearwater knew Rob Binder. You'd see him all the time at foreclosure auctions, a trim man in jeans shorts, a sleeveless shirt and tennis shoes.
Mr. Binder actually enjoyed buying foreclosed properties, fixing them up and selling them. He studied real estate listings the way a hard-core horse player studies a racing form.
By the time he walked into the courthouse he had separated the bargains from the nightmares laden with hidden debt. He thrived on the adrenaline of an old-fashioned auction, and resented Pinellas County's move to online bidding set to take effect in October.
"It will not be a public auction when it goes private," Mr. Binder told the St. Petersburg Times three weeks ago. "This system has been working for 240 years."
It had been working for Mr. Binder since 1968, when auctions were conducted on the courthouse steps. He kept the keys to his more than two dozen properties on separate loops of blue tape, the addresses marked on each.
Besides his real estate, the roofing contractor owned a waterfront home, a 38-foot speedboat and a 58-foot yacht.
Instinct and an unflinching focus helped him succeed, friends say.
"It's not that he pushed anybody around, but he wouldn't be pushed around," said Thomas Bishop, 64, a friend since both attended the same high school in St. Louis.
Mr. Binder dropped out of high school because he was too busy working, Bishop said. The Mobil gas station where he had fixed tires since age 15 was offering him a shot at manager.
By his early 20s, Mr. Binder was managing three gas stations and owned two of them. He moved to Clearwater to be near the water and bought into a roofing company.
He loved to race sailboats, and had traveled to Cuba by boat more than once. A weak heart might have limited his movements but did not discourage him. Mr. Binder worked out two hours a day, ate carefully and seldom drank more than a glass of red wine, friends say.
"He lived life to the fullest because he knew he was on borrowed time," said Donna Green, his real estate broker.
The crowd at Tommy Duff's Irish Aviation Pub, not far from his Island Estates home, knew Mr. Binder as a patron who showed up with a broad smile and a joke or two.
Owner Tommy Duff, 67, and Mr. Binder traveled to Ireland with a group last October for a tour of the country's pubs.
"He became impressed with the country, and he had to know about his roots there," said Duff. "That became a mission for him."
His more recent family history was all too familiar. Mr. Binder's family declined to comment for this story, referring all questions to his friends.
Those friends say that Mr. Binder had been estranged from his two children for years. Pinellas County records show at least four divorces since 1975.
"He did have some difficulties in his personal life with his relationships," said Bishop. He attributed those difficulties to Mr. Binder's single-minded focus on his work.
"(Relationships) suffer when you are that intense about the things in your business life," Bishop said. "He worked so hard at it, it was almost to a fault."
A few weeks ago, Mr. Binder told friends he had reconciled with his children.
The evening of Sept. 8, Mr. Binder was telling Duff about his family. He had a laptop out, and was showing off pictures of his granddaughters, Payton and Paige.
"He was aglow about that," Duff said. Then something happened.
"As he was showing me the pictures," Duff said, "he recognized that he was starting to have a problem. I asked him if I needed to call for help."
Emergency workers arrived but could not revive Mr. Binder. He died in the pub where he had shared many drinks and stories. He was 62.
Mr. Binder was buried Wednesday in his jeans shorts, a short-sleeved shirt and tennis shoes. That evening, Tommy Duff's held an Irish wake.
Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this story. Andrew Meacham can be reached at (727) 892-2248 or ameacham@sptimes.com.