Lindner remembered for commitment to community

Jose Lindner’s life reads like the archetypal American Dream story.
Lindner was just 12 when his family arrived in Columbia. They had fled Cuba following its fall to Fidel Castro in 1960 and left everything behind. Lindner entered Columbia Public Schools without knowing any English, but he went on to earn an accounting degree from MU and become one of the city’s most prominent developers.
Jose L. Lindner died Monday, Sept. 13, at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis after a stroke. He was 62.

Lindner suffered from heart problems for years and had been trying to get healthy enough for a heart transplant for weeks before his death, according to friend and former business partner Richard Mendenhall. Lindner had been on a heart transplant list since 2007, the Columbia Daily Tribune reported.

Lindner’s business dealings and community involvement made him a well-known community figure. His funeral service on Sept. 17 at Missouri United Methodist Church drew hundreds of people and packed the pews, according to the church office.
He was born on Jan. 8, 1948, in Havana, Cuba. Following the country’s takeover by Castro, he and his family fled. Lindner’s father, Luis, had already fled one dictator and moved to the island from Germany following Hitler’s rise to power, Mendenhall wrote in an e-mail.
While working toward an accounting degree at MU, Lindner worked for MFA Inc. as a tax preparer. When he graduated in 1970, he moved to Houston to take a job at what was then one of the “Big Eight” accounting firms, Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Co.

In 1972, Lindner decided to come back to Columbia and began working for Williams, Keepers, Oliver, Payne and Rackers. But he soon decided to organize his own accounting firm and worked there for five years before selling it in 1977.

That gave him the time and capital to pursue real estate investment and development, for which he formed Boone Financial Group in 1981 with Mendenhall. That company became Forum Development Group, which has built numerous shopping centers around Columbia, including Forum Shopping Center, anchored by Schnucks, and the Nifong Shopping Center, anchored by Gerbes.
Lindner married Kay Murray of Columbia in 1970 and had two sons, Scott and Jay, both of whom help run Forum Development Group. Lindner was married to Murray for 27 years, and in 2003 he married Barbie Weaver Whitt. They divorced earlier this year.

Lindner was an active member of community organizations and an important member of the business community. He served as chair of the Columbia Chamber of Commerce, president of the Columbia Country Club, president of the Columbia Jaycees and numerous special appointments by Columbia mayors. He was a founding member of the Central Missouri Development Council, and in 2007 the Chamber gave him the Outstanding Citizen of the Year Award.
In recent years, Lindner and his sons had planned another large development on Columbia’s southeastern border. The project’s plans, dubbed “Discovery” at the time, envisioned 220 acres of commercial and residential space near the Gans Road overpass and MU’s Discovery Ridge research park. But the project never materialized after the financial crisis put a damper on most development ventures. In August, about 200 acres of the land were sold at auction on the Boone County Courthouse steps after project representatives spent months wrangling with lenders.

Forum had also bought more than 1,000 acres of land in southern Boone County a few years ago, but Lindner had always been mum on his plans, if any, for the area.
Although most Columbians will remember Lindner for his development projects around the city, those close to him remember his commitment to family and his humor.
“Many of us will have stories and lasting fond memories of his many elaborate pranks he pulled on all of us over the years,” Mendenhall wrote