Stan Pate, In His Own Words | Part II: The Titan

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second installment of our in-depth four-part profile series on Tuscaloosa developer Stan Pate, which focuses on his business career. Be on the lookout for Part III of the series, which will be about his involvement in politics.

Part III will be published on Sunday, April 16.

TUSCALOOSA, AL — Truth be told, I'd never seen a cryptocurrency mining operation up close and was slack-jawed when I stood inside a structure made of several converted storage containers that, apart from an aisle, were filled wall-to-wall with servers, wires, and fans.

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It was like standing in a wind tunnel inside a greenhouse. Hot air swirling, white noise. Yet, it was a uniform and efficient system of passive income ... if you knew what you were looking at.

This is the Stan Pate of the 21st Century — fascinated with any burgeoning technology geared toward streamlining systems that typically see their utility and stability taken for granted or altogether ignored before breaking into the mainstream.

The cryptocurrency stuff is a relatively new venture that is just one of many in Pate's widely diverse portfolio, but one that underscores his forward-thinking nature and by-any-means-necessary approach to commerce.

Pate staunchly believes that embracing technology to boost the country's manufacturing capabilities is the best route for reinvigorating the national economy. And many folks across the political and economic spectrum today would tend to agree, however novel the viewpoint may seem at present.

"We need to get to a place where American workers are managing robots," Pate told me in our third sit-down interview for this series. "Just look at [Mercedes Benz U.S. International in Vance], at the number of robots and people managing them. We’ve just scratched the surface. Artificial intelligence is moving fast and there’s a lot of concern about what the results will be. But that's just scratching the surface, too."

Don't let Pate's latest interests in electronic commerce and full-scale automation fool you, though. He still very much prefers to operate in a world of sweat, toil, and handshakes — concepts he wants to see brought back to the United States in the form of manufacturing jobs.

But for starters, and as mentioned in Part I of this series, Pate's professional commandments are "Stan's Laws" — a carefully curated list of learned wisdom and personal philosophies that Pate keeps in his office printed on an aged piece of yellowed parchment. He's said numerous people have expressed interest in one day owning the original piece and said he intended to probate the artifact to someone in his will.

Since they are indeed his "Laws," Pate is free to engross the list, which can be noted with the 20th Law — the only one handwritten on the parchment in black pen. And judging by the same penmanship in the corner, which is signed "LSP IV," the laws were last amended on Dec. 27, 2022.

So, as a primer before reporting at length on Pate's business career, it's imperative to provide you with "Stan's Laws" as a guidepost for understanding his approach to business.

'Stan's Laws'

* denotes handwritten update to list

1. If anything can go wrong, Fix It! (To hell with Murphy)
2. When given a choice — Take Both!
3. Multiple projects lead to multiple successes.
4. Start at the top then work your way up.
5. Do it by the book ... but be the author!
6. When forced to compromise, ask for more.
7. If you can't beat them, join them, then beat them.
8. If it's worth doing, it's got to be done right now.
9. If you can't win, change the rules.
10. If you can't change the rules, then ignore them.
11. Perfection is not optional.
12. When faced without a challenge, make one.
13. "No" simply means begin again at one level higher.
14. Don't walk when you can run.
15. Bureaucracy is a challenge to be conquered with a righteous attitude, a tolerance for stupidity, and a bulldozer when necessary.
16. When in doubt: THINK!
17. Patience is a virtue, but persistence to the point of success is a blessing.
18. The squeaky wheel gets replaced.
19. The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live.
20. A fish dies by his mouth.*

'Multiple Projects ... Multiple Successes'

After being voted "Most Likely to Succeed" his senior year at Tuscaloosa County High School, Pate didn't take long to begin his work as a chemical engineer through a co-op program at the University of Alabama. Through this academic pursuit, Pate found himself employed by a plant north of the Black Warrior River owned by Fallek-Lankro Corp.

According to business records, the small firm was incorporated in 1976 and later would be folded into Diamond Shamrock as part of a merger in the early 80s.

But it was during these shoe leather years that Pate earned the trust and flexibility to pursue different projects around the plant, gaining the necessary experience that would serve him so well to the present day.

"When I wasn’t in school, I was out there," he told me of working at the plant. "I had the third floor of the office building and it had a conference table, so I would take a sleeping bag and quilts and sleep on the conference table. It had a shower room and a break room. I could order pizza. I think one time I went about a month in the summertime and never went home. You can be in the classroom and study, get your calculator out, but it's much more fun to be in a chemical plant 2-3 days straight on little sleep."

These were important years for Pate, who cut his teeth digging into every job around the plant that he could, putting in the long hours to learn from those around him. All this while getting up-close exposure to the business side of the operation.

"I was having a good time," he recalled. "It’s what a young chemical engineer should be doing ... flexing that muscle called your brain."

Pate loved the freedom to pursue his own interests around the plant and parlayed his passion and experience into efforts around the operation that not only paid big bonuses but gave him the confidence needed to go into business for himself one day.

And yet, these halcyon days for Pate would be short-lived as inevitable changes ultimately prompted him to begin thinking hard about his long-term goals.

Indeed, the plant eventually was sold to Diamond Shamrock Agricultural Equipment, Inc. as part of a merger deal in 1981, bringing with it a wholesale culture change from the flexible meritocracy where Pate had thrived.

"The unique thing about getting that kind of experience is it positioned me to go on and kind of do my own thing," Pate explained. "When [Diamond Shamrock] came in, it was much different than operating in a small plant. They brought big employee manuals and a lot of structure. They discouraged working the number of hours I was working. It was somewhat of the culture that, if you’re working that many hours, maybe you’re not qualified to do your job. Where I thought you were supposed to be getting a pat on the back, I was kind of getting a black mark."

As fortune would have it, though, Pate — prior to setting out on his own — had already started to dabble in the surplus equipment sector, buying valuable machinery and equipment for bargain prices to then be used for expansion projects he was overseeing at the plant.

"Where I really got exposed to the business I’m still in was when we needed to expand the plant to make a different product," he recalled. "There was a budget developed, a time frame to get it built in. We were in a similar [economic] environment [as today] because that was the late 70s, early 80s when interest rates went to 22%. Supply chains were very difficult and deliveries were very long. The deliveries for some of the essential pieces for that plant were longer than the time frame I was given to get it up and running."

Pate then set out to find a workaround for the issues. In an age before the internet, Pate spent much of his time thumbing through engineering trade magazines looking for sales ads of used or surplus equipment for the plant's expansion.

This was at a time, he explained, that many chemical plants were being decommissioned and domestic manufacturing was moving en masse to Mexico and other cheaper labor markets with less-stringent environmental regulations.

But his "Ah-Ha" moment came when he stumbled upon a valuable piece of equipment in Cleveland, Ohio, that was advertised in a trade magazine.

Pate's longstanding love of aviation and flying has been widely documented — something you will learn more about later in this series. But in the early 1980s and on the eve of his first big break, he had never even been on an airplane.

Nonetheless determined, he caught a Delta Airlines flight from Birmingham to Cleveland, ending up in an Ohio scrap yard and expecting the operators to welcome a willing customer with open arms.

Instead, he was met with indifference and pointed to where the piece of equipment was.

It would be this first purchase that would change the course of his career, the landscape of Tuscaloosa County and countless other locations across the United States.

"I had to take a ladder and climbed over into the piece of equipment and you could still see chalk marks from where it was fabricated," he said, still amazed after all these years. "The guys that had it had it for scrap value. So I bought it, then I got on a pretty good pace of buying equipment that was needed to build that plant from surplus. Some was brand new, but most was from surplus.

"And that's where I got exposed to surplus equipment and recognized there were big margins in it," he added. "And for the people in it, most of them didn’t understand what they had because the industry was controlled by the scrap companies."

Pate found a passion in this kind of wide-margin wheeling and dealing, in addition to making a name for himself in the company. He even got to the point where the company allowed him to use his knowledge, discretion and connections to make his own purchases separate from those for the plant.

Back in Tuscaloosa, the Gulf States Paper mill — at the current location of Nucor Steel Corp. — was shuttered by the Warner family after a widely publicized strike and the company's concurrent investment in a large-scale manufacturing operation in Demopolis.

After making a fortune and achieving national acclaim with the company's E-Z Opener line, the Tuscaloosa mill was closed for good and its amenities were divided up piecemeal to interested buyers. And as Pate continued to amass surplus gear for his company's plant expansion, he stumbled upon an opportunity in his own backyard that would result in his first major financial break.

Indeed, at one of the liquidation auctions at Gulf States, some of the equipment from the paper mill's power plant were up for bid — namely several powder grinding machines known as Raymond roller mills.

On the auction block, Pate was able to purchase the machines for $50 each. It's worth noting that Pate said he had only seen the Raymond roller mills in books or magazines and figured the worst that could happen from the purchase would be to lose out on his meager investment.

"I wound up selling those things ... for $50,000 apiece," he told me. "I set a goal after that, that if I could make three times what I was making as an engineer, I’ll leave that profession."

This also came at a time when the plant he had invested so much time and energy into was in the midst of a workforce culture change. And when asked by a Human Resources official the cliché question of where he saw his future self within the company, Pate knew it was time to move on.

For him, it was C-suite or bust.

"I decided it was time for me to go," he said. "I had gotten bit by the bug."

'Don't Walk When You Can Run'

According to business records filed with the Alabama Secretary of State's Office, Transamerican Equipment Corp. was officially incorporated on Nov. 5, 1982.

This would be Pate's first solo venture and a company he still owns today, which was recently converted into an LLC.

To this day, the company deals in equipment for the chemical, electrical petrochemical, refinery, and paper industries. As I walked through just the large operation on Industrial Park Drive, I couldn't help but notice a warehouse full of stainless steel tanks, similar to those seen in a brewery.

At present, the company reports over 5,000 items in stock, while occupying 40 acres and over a million square feet of storage space across the country. What this reporter saw in Tuscaloosa was a mere anecdote compared to Pate's true footprint.

But in those early days, one of Pate's most important follow-up investments came from a military base in Chattanooga — particularly an ammonium nitrate plant on the base that was being parceled out at the auction block.

The one piece of machinery that caught the young developer's eye was a 4.8 million-gallon stainless steel tank.

Purchasing the tank for $100,000, he was able to turn around and sell it for $1.5 million. When Pate explains this formative business deal, he also provides insight into problems in international business that he continues to oppose when lobbying lawmakers.

"I got paid to move [the tank] and re-erect it," he said. "We did something unique there to save a lot of money. I took apart that nitric acid plant and sold most of it to China. China was buying up plants everywhere. They would relocate them, take the smallest parts, like a bolt or screw, and package it and send it over there. They take our industry or take a plant over there and re-erect it and sell us the stuff back. To watch China, over the last 40 years, essentially take manufacturing from this country and essentially sell us the goods back. I can only hope we get our manufacturing back in this country and the jobs are there for Americans."

Geopolitics and macroeconomics aside, Pate in the meantime stacked up one successful deal after another following the Chattanooga windfall and slowly amassed more influence than most of his contemporaries.

And the testimony from the movers and shakers of the community varies, as seen with the local legislative delegation during the recent spat over renaming a bridge for Pate's father. Indeed, Tuscaloosa Patch has reported on the difficulty to find any influential citizens or policymakers willing to speak out against the developer on the record.

This is likely because of Pate's scorched-earth, retaliatory nature when he feels slighted or betrayed — a sentiment mulled over by several in Tuscaloosa County's legislative delegation amid the public debate over the bridge renaming.

Think back to the airplane banner calling for the impeachment of former Alabama Gov. Bob Riley that flew around Pasadena in 2010 ahead of the BCS National Championship Game. Pate's pockets are deep and his self-admitted propensity for retaliation is unrivaled.

Pate's present headlines struck a chord at the local level, with the Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama's Board of Directors, in a thinly veiled rebuke of the Senate resolution, issuing its own resolution in March urging the local legislative delegation to seek community feedback before renaming any infrastructure in the county.

As the story began making the rounds in the news cycle, the frustration among the delegation built against the resolution's sponsor, Republican State Sen. Gerald Allen. But as far as came to be noted by this reporter as of the publication of this story, the Chamber resolution was met mostly with crickets in the community and did little to shake the local delegation from its stupor.

The present frustration, yet lack of individual criticism on the record for Allen or Pate relating to the bridge renaming, is telling, indeed. However, Pate has generated plenty of controversy since hitting it big and forming Pate Holdings, LLC, in September 1997.

Since then, most on the opposite side of the spectrum can trace their consternation with Pate to the eve of the 2010s, particularly his 2009 purchase of the McFarland Mall from Ward McFarland Inc.

As Morton wrote for the Tuscaloosa News in 2017, Pate's relationship with the late James Hinton Sr. — the owner and chair of R. L. Zeigler Company, Inc., who Pate viewed as a mentor — was the "emotional connection" that led him to purchase the McFarland Mall property. After the buildings fell into serious disrepair over the years, Pate teased numerous possibilities for the property, including a world-class sports tournament facility.

In February 2021, Pate tore down the main structures that once made up the mall, but explained to Patch this week that his desire to move forward with developing the property has been hobbled by the standing lease agreements. The demolition was a big event, as I reported at the time, complete with a flatbed truck and boombox blasting Travis Tritt's "It's A Great Day To Be Alive."

"When I bought it from the McFarlands, they had all kinds of leases staggered around," he told me this week. "For Dollar Tree, the term of their lease is in sight, and you can’t explain that to the public. If you were renting an apartment from me for 10 years, I can’t tear it down at year eight."

The Midtown Village deal was another massive feather in Pate's cap, but one that saw him pitted against Tuscaloosa City Hall in a spat that has only intensified with each passing year, well after the ink dried and Pate cashed out his stakes in the venture. Indeed, as the Tuscaloosa News reported, Pate had to sell a large portion of land along McFarland Boulevard to an outside development firm so the Midtown Village concept could become reality.

"When I started that project, I went to the [City of Tuscaloosa], went to the city planner and went to the city engineer and asked what they thought about the project and if they would oppose me," Pate told me by phone while on a business trip in the Caribbean. "And they said, 'It doesn't matter, you can’t get it done.' So, I proceeded to create a war room and talk about a strategy to start at the corner [of 15th Street and McFarland Boulevard] and go south and go west and build as big a block as I could."

Pate ended up purchasing 88 different lots for the Midtown project and said he was even encouraged by longtime Republican U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby to "think bigger" regarding his vision for the property.

"What I did is, I saw, in my opinion, a very under-improved special commercial site," he told Patch. "I actually was standing at CVS on the corner and looking there and thinking about the 1940s-era housing and how this is the best site [for development] in Tuscaloosa. So, I just decided to go for it. And 88 houses and about $11 million later, I had a site."

Despite the opposition he faced at every turn for the Midtown project, he argued, at present — if one considers the tax base and the number of employees — Midtown Village is the biggest economic driver in Tuscaloosa.

"I get people calling me all the time wanting to write books on the Midtown deal," Pate told me during a sit-down interview earlier this week. "It's one of those things where I would hope my Daddy would be proud of how it was planned and executed, from start to finish."

Pate retained a stake in the project until a few years ago and, despite not being able to develop it on his own, he still considers Midtown Village one of his most important contributions to Tuscaloosa — a true legacy development.

"I had a visit from [former Alabama All-American linebacker and Dallas Cowboy] Lee Roy Jordan and he called and wanted to come by and I said sure," Pate recalled. "He showed up at the office in one hour and wanted me to do a deal with some of his partners. So, I did a deal with some of them, kept some interest in [Midtown], then ultimately sold it. The 'Good Old Boys' did everything they could to drown me there. They thought that was the last stand, like General Custer. But I ended up with a wheelbarrow on the way to the bank and it was full of cash."

When Pate says "Good Old Boys," he is referring to a subsection of his peers in the local business community and political circles — something that will be dissected at length in Part III of this series. It's a cabal he claims works in concert to thwart his efforts at every turn and one he says he continues to outsmart.

He even quoted the Italian diplomat and kingmaker Niccolo Machiavelli to me, saying: "It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both."

These are all notions that very much track with Pate's widely documented approach to business and even more so when taking into account his hardscrabble youth, with his most formative years dominated by grief, hunger, loneliness and abuse.

As he told me in an interview last week, Pate laments the difficulty he's had with applying the advice of "no man should live on an island" to his day-to-day life.

In Pate's business operations, he has found his success and made his fortune by being the Alpha and Omega. But at this point in the saga, it should be expected that there's more to the story.

Indeed, separate from Pate's titanic dominance in the business world — a topic that is often too boring for public consumption in the world of daily news — he has maintained a reputation for grabbing headlines for his extracurricular activities.

Award-winning journalist Jason Morton, during his time at the Tuscaloosa News, was responsible for arguably the most extensive reporting to date regarding these years — including a 2017 profile on Pate that re-examined many of the controversies that are still gossiped about today.

More than a decade before the profile headline appeared in the newspaper, though, Morton reported in 2005 when Pate was found guilty of harassment due to his refusal to give up a drink before leaving a bar in Temerson Square.

Indeed, Municipal Judge Madelene Hollingsworth sentenced Pate to 30 days in jail and $250 in court costs, along with mandatory enrollment in an anger management course. His jail stay was suspended for two years after Pate initially pleaded innocent.

But among the buzz-worthy storylines mentioned in the last true profile written about Pate, one chapter will be remembered well by many in Tuscaloosa: The shotgun incident at the Santa Fe Cattle Co. that resulted in Pate being convicted of menacing and ultimately exonerated of the charges by the Alabama Supreme Court.

According to court documents obtained by Patch, Santa Fe Cattle Co. had been leasing the space from Pate, before failing to make rent payments and ultimately going bankrupt, forcing its closure.

On Sept. 30, 2009, Pate was informed that Santa Fe employees were trespassing on the property — supposedly removing leased restaurant equipment from the premises and cleaning the building before finally moving out.

After one of Pate's associates and several Tuscaloosa Police officers responded to the call at the eatery, it was determined that the dispute was a civil matter not requiring law enforcement involvement.

Following this decision by TPD, though, Pate showed up and argued with police that they had balked in their duty to prevent trespassers on his property and that he would "get rid of the trespassers himself."

Court documents show that TPD officers did inform the former employees to leave the location, to which everyone obliged other than one individual who said he needed to retrieve a personal laptop from inside.

As this was going on, Pate had reportedly walked to the back of the property to do his own inspection, before returning to see the man still inside the business.

The same court records say Pate yelled at the man and told him to get out of the building or he was going to "stomp [his] ass."

The man then testified in court that he went straight to his car and got in, before looking up to see Pate standing in front of his car pointing the shotgun at him and telling him to "get off his property."

Police were still on the property after the man left and Pate summoned the officers, informing them that he had instructed the man to leave the property. He also denied ever pointing a gun at anybody.

Investigators went on to testify that, while Pate was visibly angry, they never saw him point the gun in any direction other than at the ground.

Still, Pate was charged and ultimately convicted, but not before The Tuscaloosa News reported during the early stages of proceedings that Pate wanted to plead "pissed off."

The state's highest court eventually exonerated him of the charges. Yet, despite any debate or the outcome, the story fed into Pate's mythos and only swelled his reputation as a living urban legend in Tuscaloosa.

'When faced without a challenge, make one'

Jason Morton of the Tuscaloosa News, in his thorough 2017 profile of Pate, focused his reporting on Pate's expressed intentions to scale back his business operations and move to Sweden — his highly publicized second home.

It was big news at the time and a story Pate told me sticks with him to this day.

Pate told the newspaper he would remain involved in some ongoing projects, such as the McFarland Mall and its revitalization, dubbed Encore Tuscaloosa. But the developer insisted he would, for the most part, remove himself and his business — Pate Holdings — from the market.

"People read a headline and they read about the first two paragraphs and don’t go all the way into the article," Pate told me when asked about the 2017 profile. "I said I was reducing the number of projects, focusing on some bigger things, and wanted to do some public service. There were a lot of questions going on at the time, so I just felt like just putting it out there. Everybody in the state thought I was retiring and moving."

Despite some believing that Pate was packing it in for good, it would be the gruff, yet wildly articulate developer that would continue to grab headlines for the next decade and keep clawing out ground.

As was noted in Part I of this series, the reasoning behind this extensive profile of Stan Pate was due to recent publicity regarding a Senate resolution to rename an interstate bridge in Tuscaloosa after his father and Pate's ongoing defamation lawsuit against a group of Tuscaloosa business owners — some of the "Good Old Boys" in his opinion.

I also reported this week that the bridge resolution — sponsored by Republican State Sen. Gerald Allen of Tuscaloosa — had cleared the Senate chamber, but has yet to find a landing spot in the House of Representatives to allow for a floor vote. But it's worth noting that if the measure does make it to the floor this session, it's not likely to see much in the way of opposition in the chamber.

Still, Pate has insisted on numerous occasions in interviews with Patch that, while he appreciates and supports the idea of renaming the bridge for his father, the resolution to do so was not his idea. This is, after all, an ongoing story and one that Tuscaloosa Patch will continue to follow throughout the 2023 legislative session.

Going on in the background, though, is one of Pate's newest interests — the burgeoning medical cannabis business. Indeed, as Patch reported in December 2022, Pate sought the blessing of the Tuscaloosa City Council in moving forward on a large-scale medical cannabis grow operation within walking distance of his office on Industrial Park Drive. If granted a business license, Pate hopes the operation could serve as a state-sanctioned supplier once dispensaries open.

Pate previously said the project would include $30 million in additional modifications and new equipment added to the facility.

"Specifically, these are very sophisticated [growing operations] that involve a lot of science as to what you feed the plants, how much light you give the plants, what strain you use," Pate said in December 2022. "The goal with this plan is to do some cooperative work with the University of Alabama and research over these cannabinoids."

As Patch previously reported, the City of Tuscaloosa in August 2022 approved a measure to allow medical cannabis dispensaries to operate within the city limits once the state begins offering business licenses. This was followed by a similar measure in Northport shortly thereafter as local municipalities scrambled to rewrite their laws and get in on the ground floor to benefit from the sales tax windfall expected after the dispensaries open.

For Pate, the medical cannabis project is still very much in limbo as state leaders slog through the minutia of getting the lucrative new industry off the ground. And, at the same time, Pate is still thinking about the future — particularly for the McFarland Mall property.

"There are three big projects that have ever been built in Tuscaloosa: [McFarland Mall (1969), University Mall (1980) and Midtown Village (2007)] and that’s a long time apart — every 20 years," Pate said. "And maybe at the 20-year mark, we’ll get McFarland Mall done."

Despite the prospects and controversies swirling around him, Pate remains focused on his legacy while insisting that he prefers a simple existence.

Indeed, during every sit-down interview with Pate, this reporter has noticed that while the businessman sports weathered work boots and faded blue jeans, each of his collared shirts have his initials — LSP — stitched in fine fabric on his wrist cuffs.

And when considering the numerous urban legends that have cropped up around Pate, I couldn't help but ask about the chatter over Pate wearing pink button-down shirts when he announces the closing of a major deal.

A fan of the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Pate explained that his wardrobe is a reflection of his simplistic approach to day-to-day life.

"If you look in my closet, throughout my life, there are three kinds of shirts: white, blue and pink," Pate told me. "The blue’s for a little boy, pink's for a little girl and the white is I’ll take either one. The big pleasure in my life is to wear a tailored shirt and it takes a real man to wear pink."

Pate told me his shirts have been tailored by Ascot Chang in New York City for the past 30 years — a major point of pride for a poor boy from Buhl.

"If you want to talk about the real important things to me, then it's a tailored shirt," he added. "I wear my jeans, my boots and tailored shirts. ... All I need is a pressed shirt and none of that other shit."

Ryan Phillips is an award-winning journalist, editor and opinion columnist. He is also the founder and field editor of Tuscaloosa Patch. The views expressed in this column are his own and in no way reflective of any views held by our parent company or sponsors.