John Osborn, who was instrumental in building about 10,000 homes on the Front Range, died March 27 after a long illness. He was 66.
Osborn died of complications from a January liver transplant, said his son Matthew Osborn of Denver.
In 1984, Osborn founded Village Homes, which eventually became one of the largest homebuilders in the area, starting developments in Denver, Grand Junction, Fort Collins and Granby.
“John was an entrepreneur, risk-taker and good businessman,” said a former business partner, Donn Eley of Morrison.
“John was the visionary, and I was the details person. He had the big ideas. Over the years, we made and lost a fortune,” said Eley, noting that Village Homes went into bankruptcy in 2008 and is now restructuring.
When Village Homes was started, “we didn’t have much cash or equity,” Eley said. All the principals “got second mortgages on our homes in order to get a line of credit, but eventually that ran out,” he said.
“But we always looked on the upside,” Eley said, and the company went on to success.
“John was always high ethics for everyone he dealt with,” said John Kanouff of Denver, a lawyer who had known Osborn since his college days in Nebraska. “He was totally trustworthy.”
John Edward Osborn was born Sept. 25, 1943, in Norfolk, Neb., and was reared in York, Neb.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Creighton University in Omaha and another in civil engineering from Marquette University in Milwaukee.
While at Marquette, he met Mary Elizabeth Ross, and they married on May 11, 1968. They both were in the Navy. She was a nurse and he was a Seabee, working on construction projects.
“They thought they’d be stationed on the same base,” said Matthew Osborn, “but that wasn’t so.” He was sent to Vietnam, and she served on several stateside bases.
After Vietnam, they came to Denver and John Osborn got a master’s degree in business administration at the University of Denver.
He was with the Writer Corp., a homebuilder that developed Willow Creek in Centennial and The Pond in Arvada. Later he was senior vice president of Ken-Caryl Ranch Corp., which developed the land.
“He always wanted to create great places for people to live,” said Matthew Osborn, now president and chief operating officer of Village Homes. Osborn wanted the developments to have a multigenerational environment with starter homes, townhomes, patio homes and a community center.
In addition to his wife and son Matthew, Osborn is survived by son Mark and daughter Kate Lively, both of Denver, and eight grandchildren.
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Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
