ROBERT C. McNAIR SR.
When Touch Gold crossed the finish line to secure his exciting come-from-behind victory in the 1997 Belmont Stakes, ROBERT C. McNAIR, the horse’s co-owner, might not have been able to relate.
Since he founded Cogen Technologies in 1983, McNair’s business life has been more like Secretariat’s 31-length victory in the 1973 Belmont. Cogen started out as an innovator and a leader in the electricity cogeneration industry and today remains the largest non-utility electricity generator in the country.
Ironically, McNair left one industry—the trucking business—that had just been deregulated, to enter another one that had just been deregulated. In response to the energy crisis in the late 1970s, Congress opened up the electricity generation market by requiring utilities to buy power from co-generators if the cost was less than or equal to the cost of producing it. That gave McNair an opening.
"When the industry was deregulated," McNair said, "it made it easy for new people coming in. I recognized that the advantage is to the new entrant because they don’t have the overhead costs that had accumulated over the years, so you can go in lean and mean."
McNair also went at it backward. Cogeneration turns coal and natural gas into steam and electricity. He said many cogeneration companies in the expansion-minded ‘70s would market the electricity first, then try to find the customers for steam. But the chemical and refining industries in the '50s were cutting their costs, so Cogen grew by selling steam first, and then using the profits to increase its electricity business. While McNair was building Cogen, he also began a philanthropic effort focused primarily on education. The Robert and Janice McNair Foundation makes grants to organizations and programs that benefit the education of children in low-income and needy neighborhoods from elementary school to high school.
"I grew up in a relatively poor community and had classmates who were talented but who didn’t go to college because their parents couldn’t afford it," he said. McNair’s efforts started with high school students, "but I came to the realization that you have to work within the feeder schools, starting even in kindergarten, if you want to have an impact on graduation rates, reduce teenage pregnancies, prevent drug abuse—all the things you want to do. You can’t wait until high school."
Meanwhile, he has found time for a third interest— sports. He started in horseracing and co-owned Strodes Creek, the 1994 Kentucky Derby runner-up. Now he is part owner of Stonerside Farm in Paris, Ky., where Touch Gold is the prime attraction—especially after his Belmont win denied Silver Charm the Triple Crown.
Now, McNair is working toward possibly replacing Houston’s departed NFL team with two new Houston Oilers franchises. Not only is he working toward securing another football team for the city, but McNair and partner Chuck Watson are negotiating to buy the Edmonton Oilers and bring them to Texas.
"That would be interesting," McNair said. "The Oilers leave Houston, and the Oilers come to Houston."
