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Charles E. Seymour sometimes seems like three or four people in one.

As president and partner of Turning Point Real Estate in Urbana, he's a big-business guy overseeing brokerage services that involve properties such as a shopping center in Monrovia listing for $8 million, a $3 million retreat and conference facility in Blue Ridge Summit, Pa., a $4 million piece of unzoned land in West Virginia and a day-care center in Montgomery County with an asking price of about $2 million. Those are just a few of the company's listings.

And he's a broker working on buying and selling businesses in the region. He says his brokerage fees are 6 percent for real estate and 10 percent for business brokerage. But at the same time, he's also a small-business guy trying to help land a tenant for a small office building in downtown Frederick, and he's your neighborly Rotary guy, having co-founded a club in southern Frederick County last year.

As someone who grew up in Frederick and the son of an art teacher mother, a father who was in fundraising development at Hood College and a stepfather who worked on a farm and was a carpenter, Seymour, 50, is deeply invested in the community.

And what he's really gotten passionate about this year is not million-dollar deals, but land-use policy in Frederick and the state, especially when those policies hurt "the little guy," Seymour said. A zoning controversy in Frederick this year struck a nerve when the county commissioners, as a way to control growth, passed a comprehensive land-use plan that caused some residents — including some Seymour represented — to see their land value decline drastically.

"And right now, I feel that churches, farmers, landowners, they are all being treated like developers, and developers have been labeled as bad," Seymour said. "There are good and bad, and you can't just mass label any type of growth as bad; we've got to have moderation. We have an important election coming up in November and I'd like to say that I think we've got just a fabulous Frederick County, just a tremendous community, but we can't just shut it down.

"And, back to the comprehensive plan, what happened to all the tax revenue they just took away from the county ... all those properties just lost significant revenue ... all that tax base is going to not be coming into the county."

The Business Gazette recently talked to Seymour about small-business issues, growth and his company.

You had a development idea near your property that was turned down?

I proposed a community, a very senior retirement community that would have employed about 700 people. ... It would have had no impact on schools. I had a national user that was going to participate with me and, I won't say who, but one of the commissioners told me they weren't going to support that because they wanted to save the water for future growth along I-270. Again, it's tough economic times ... this would have been something that could have offered employment today.

You weren't asking for county, state money?

No. I think people are under the wrong impression when you develop something. Let's take Urbana, this four acres [Turning Point's headquarters building, and a professional and retail complex nearby]. When I built this I had to write a $150,000 check to the county for a future road ... and I had to build a $45,000 median strip, and had to extend a water line completely around the property so it could serve future use down the street. There are a lot of things people assume the county is paying for, and that's an inaccurate assumption, because developers pay for it. And this four acres offers a lot of amenities ... three different restaurants, it's a neighborhood center. The benefit to the county in this is over $150,000 a year in tax revenue.

This was once a restaurant?

My parents actually opened the Turning Point as a bed and breakfast. They did that for three years, retired down to the beach and I bought them out back in '88 ... built [this] into a top restaurant. In early 2000, when fine dining was starting to head out, I made a transition [to a real estate company full time]. We actually had opened a company for the purposes of buying and selling real estate, doing creative things with real estate — like we took a distressed, contaminated property in Frederick and were able to revitalize it — so I went on from there.

How has the recession affected you?

Before the recession, I was working with buyers on two transactions in particular, each of which was in excess of $100 million. When the recession came, and the counties started to shut down growth, the big deals went away ... but our bread-and-butter clients stuck with our firm. The recession has not had a negative impact on the amount of listings we have. ... However, many customers are waiting to sell their properties.

We actually have increased listings as a result of the new direction our company took, as a result of the recession. Our listings currently total around $78 million. Our focus became marketing ... we hired a marketing director, administrative director [and others] ... image consultant, social media coordinator. We took on overhead when everyone else was cutting costs. My partners, Joe Anselmo and Aric Rudden, are a tremendous resource ... Joe's background as a CEO and residential broker and Aric's experience with construction services and leasing.

How has the business broker unit been doing?

Very active. As brokers we have become very creative in our thinking as it relates to the structure and finance of deals to get them to closing. Commercially we are seeing a lot of transactions in income-producing properties. Leasing transactions are up, but again through creative structures. Residentially our volume is substantial due to our diligent marketing efforts.

What types of businesses are being bought and sold?

At the present time, the businesses we have [under contract] are mostly small ... under $250,000 [in price]. It's a good mix ... for example we have a bar in D.C., a pharmacy, a couple of gas stations, a [heating, ventilation and air conditioning] company, an awning company, etc. The change in the economy has slowed down the sale of cash-based businesses that were historically in high demand, like gas stations and liquor, beer and wine stores.

And you have brokers working on distressed properties?

We're working a lot with banks right now. I have driven as far as the Eastern Shore and to other states to look at some investments [to give] my opinion on them. When the residential side started to collapse, we had a team of people who recognized there might be an opportunity as a result of that ... and when we saw what happened in the residential markets and who was making money doing what, we put the wheels in motion to do the same with commercial properties.

How is that?

The standard for banks for lending right now is extremely high for the average borrower. We have had to go outside the typical lending methods to find methods of financing. In other words, churches no longer go to banks. [Instead, they go to] Christian nonprofit institutions. We would also work with partnerships, work with sellers, tell them these are nontraditional times ... so we've created partnerships between buyers and sellers where the sellers can get some of the money, maybe doing a little bit of the financing themselves, until times get better.

What do you think of the economy? Is the worst over?

I think we are starting to see some sustainable growth. I think we all lost our minds collectively at the same time. The economy was going great; we all wanted to have a Lexus at the same time and have a big car payment and have an $800,000 house to support. I think people have re-evaluated what's important ... and are trying to pay off their credit cards now and get rid of their debt. So if you look at the transactions right now ... that $300,000 range is the number [laughs] — it's not the $800,000 range anymore.

I had been a stockbroker in the past. I watched what happened to people on Black Monday [in October 1987], and watched how wealth was made and lost. I would probably smoke a pack of cigarettes a day looking at the ticker tape because I was so stressed out thinking about my clients if they were losing money. I could not control the outcome of what would happen and that bothered me. I knew they knew they were taking a risk when they would invest in the stock, because it's up to that board of directors to do the right thing ... and sometimes they didn't do the right thing; sometimes the market condition drove prices down.

With that being said, I learned a lesson after getting beaten up for seven years in the market. So I developed kind of a conservative approach, look at things on the long term, don't have any get-rich-quick schemes. And we looked at real estate as an investment ... we were looking at what value could we build into it, if there were a downturn for the short term.

Now one thing about real estate is that, as you know, they don't make any more of it. And one thing we have to look at, that you see happening in Montgomery County now, is a reuse of facilities ... adapting them to new uses, being flexible to zonings with text amendments to allow common-sense things.

Charles Seymour

Age: 50.

Position: Partner and president, Turning Point Commercial Real Estate/Turning Point Real Estate, a commercial and residential real estate services company in Frederick, with 23 agents serving Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.

Previous positions: Sales associate, Kline Scott Visco Commercial Real Estate; owner/operator, Turning Point Inn, a 140-seat restaurant in Urbana; financial adviser/supervisor, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith.

Education: Bachelor's degree, University of Maryland, College Park.

Organizations: Trustee, Frederick County Chamber of Commerce; co-founder, Southern Frederick County Rotary; member, Frederick Memorial Hospital Committee for Business and Industry, Sandy Spring Bank Frederick Advisory Board, Hood College board, International Council of Shopping Centers, Frederick County Association of Realtors; Maryland Association of Realtors, National Association of Realtors and Greater Capital Association of Realtors; Good Samaritan, Frederick Memorial Hospital; former member, Urbana Civic Association board; member and chapter adviser, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, University of Maryland, College Park.

Family: Wife, Susan; daughter, Kendal, 7; sons, Tom, 20, and Nick, 19.

Hobbies: Travel, flying, boating, scuba diving, snorkeling, saltwater fishing, wine, food and music.