In business at the right time

Press, 8 April 1987, Page 9

In business at the right time

By DAVID CLARKSON Lynley Cooper does not claim to play hard in the property world. She claims plenty of success, although most of it has been in a low-key way.

At 27, she is the managing director of her company, Cooper and Associates, and has property dealings worth millions of dollars behind her.

Her company will move this week into new offices in Peterborough Street. It will still own

the Worcester Towers office building, where its offices are. Ms Cooper says noonewanted the building when the company bought it and started refurbishing its three floors. She believed it had to be in demand, because it was so close to Cathedral Square. The building is now full of tenants and a firm of solicitors is ready to -move into Cooper and Associates’ own brickwalled rooms. Ms Cooper describes

herself as “Christchurch born and bred.”

When she left Rangi Ruru School she had some selling jobs, travelled the world, and then returned to Christchurch for a job as a real estate agent

“I decided I would go out and form Cooper and Associates and do some property development Three years ago, at the age of 24, I was the youngest female property developer in New Zealand.”

The firm bought and

sold buildings in Christchurch, built three buildings locally, and bought and sold several North Island sites including one in Auckland’s Queen Street and another on The Terrace in Wellington. She and her founding partner, Mr John Dixon, acknowledge they were in business at the right time. Mr Dixon puts his partner’s success down to her enthusiasm. “She has a great love for property. She wakes

up, lives and breathes it night and day,” he said. Ms Cooper believes that being a woman in the predominantly man’s world of property has helped. “I think they will never hang up in my ear. I can always get appointments to see financiers, bankers, or real estate agents. They are polite and courteous with a woman,” she said. She has a son, aged 14 months, who is looked after by a nanny while she does her dealings.