Star Profile

Pete Cannon

By John Temple Ligon Temple@The ColumbiaStar.com

Rev. Peter Cannon was born in Hartford, Connecticut, where his father was a tool maker and mechanic for Pratt & Whitney. His mother managed the house, which included Cannon's two sisters.

Cannon suffered high school better than most. He was the captain of the football team, and he was asked to speak at graduation. In the afternoons and on weekends, he was a cook for a hospital, where he had to help manage meals for 600 at a time.

He entered Georgetown University in Washington in 1964. One of his freshman dormitory buddies was William Jefferson Clinton, originally from Hope, Arkansas. Cannon rowed crew as starboard stroke, or #7 seat, and he helped the neighborhood rowing bar, Tombs, carry its overhead.

Cannon met his wife, Pat, at Georgetown, as she was a nursing student. Cannon was on the Senatorial staffs of Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York and Senator Mo Udall of Utah. The Cannons left politics after Bobby Kennedy's assassination in the early summer of 1968.

With his undergraduate education in business management and finance, Cannon first went to work for GEICO in Bethesda, Maryland. With GEICO, Cannon headed the Massachusetts bureau, although he still operated from Bethesda.

After a year with GEICO, Cannon moved into banking, specifically City National Bank in New Jersey, where he managed mergers under the bank's growth strategy. Staying in banking, Cannon moved to Boca Raton, Florida, and worked as a bank's chief financial officer for three years. He was able to take advantage of the national recession of 1974- 5 when the Americans were selling to the Canadians, and his bank was financing the deals.

Cannon experienced a religious turnabout in 1977, dropped banking, and began a purchasing co- op to serve the underprivileged. In 1979, he moved to Columbia to begin a three- year academic stint at Columbia International University's seminary off Monticello Road. Upon attaining his master's degree in divinity and becoming ordained, Cannon worked at Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Irmo for eight years as their associate pastor for outreach.

In 1990, Cannon left Cornerstone and began HIS, or Helping International Students. He bought a house at 1711 Pendleton Street, behind the Moore School of Business. Every Wednesday and Thursday, HIS serves free lunches to 250 students, mostly well- placed people attracted to USC and its international business programs.

In 1992, Cannon saw a Wall Street Journal notice advertising the auction of 1233 Washington Street, the old Security Federal Building. Cannon attended the auction at the local Ramada Inn, fully expecting a competitive environment. When he opened the bidding with a low- ball offer, no one bid against him, and he immediately entered the real estate investment and development business.

He soon bought the parking lot across Washington Street to accommodate his new office building. The parking lot was sold to make way for the Meridian Building's garage, but Cannon kept an adequate number of spaces in the new garage to still serve 1233 Washington St.

Cannon completely renovated the old Security Federal Building and brought it up to date technologically, including high-speed Internet lines. The building is about to go back out on the market as a condominium for prices ranging up to $125 per square foot.

Cannon also bought 1334 Sumter Street, Caldwell's Cafeteria, as the old-timers know it, and Morrison's after that. The building was headquarters for Renaissance Interactive, his son's business for several years, and then it housed USC's Technology Incubator. The incubator moved to Laurel Street, but 1334 Sumter Street has remained a home for start- up businesses.

Cannon and his wife have two other sons besides Rich, the Renaissance Interactive entrepreneur who now is Microsoft's head of its eastern division. Robbie is a finance man in Charlotte, and Atlanta- based Ronnie is in real estate.

Cannon was instrumental in forming downtown's business improvement district and its operating arm, the City Center Partnership, and he remains active as he remains invested. Pete Cannon,

real estate investor