From The Top: Ali Setork, DynaCom Management
By David Sharos For The Sun July 12, 2012 8:00PM
Naperville resident and entrepreneur Ali Setork, 60, launched a commercial management and development company known as DynaCom Management in his retirement. | Submitted
Updated: August 17, 2012 6:29AM
What does a successful college professor do when retirement beckons? Some might write books or give guest lectures. Others might travel or decide to become a consultant. But for Naperville resident and entrepreneur Ali Setork, 60, the answer was to launch a commercial management and development company known as DynaCom Management Inc.
Setork’s real estate experience isn’t the stuff of overnight wonder. He has more than 25 years’ experience to go along with considerable academic work that includes a doctorate in engineering/mathematics, a masters’ degree in mechanical engineering and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. He has taught in various universities in Illinois for more than 20 years.
Setork has lived in Naperville for more than 20 years, and while teaching, he worked with residential real estate before deciding to sell off his interests and move to the commercial side.
“We had a lot of investments in residential property, which I managed while I was still teaching at the college level, and I switched over to the commercial side before I retired from teaching,” Setork said. “Today, we have a total of seven properties that we feel best address the needs of our clients.”
Setork said clients who have leased spaced in buildings that line the I-88 corridor all enjoy a host of amenities, including some of the best and most progressive technology around.
“I was a professor at Governor State and a member of the faculty that taught computer science, and because of my high-tech background, we brought that into our office buildings,” Setork said. “The name DynaCom means dynamic communication and our office buildings all come with high-speed Internet and a lot of technological features that we can control from our management office and even at home.”
Other building features include temperature controls for each room, lighting, locks and security functions, and closed circuit cameras. Each of the buildings houses about 20 clients, ranging from marketing firms, accountants and lawyers, to high-tech tenants such as T-Mobile and fiber optic companies.
Naperville resident Terry Klein, 68, says he has known Setork both personally and professionally for a number of years and believes his friend “handles risk management better than anyone I know.”
“I actually met Ali at a health club about 15 years ago when he was involved in residential real estate, and I found he was a wonderful person,” Klein said. “I also feel he is a brilliant businessman who has a vision and a better mental outlook on the business scene than most people. There was a vacant parcel in the northwest corner of Naperville that he bought years ago and developed it, and since then he’s been constantly adding to his portfolio.”
Klein adds that Setork is also a devoted local resident who gives back to the community through such organizations as the Naperville Development Partnership Committee, the city of Naperville Building Review Board, and as a board member of Spectrios — a nonprofit organization that helps those who are visually impaired.
White Sox trainer Herm Schneider is also a friend of Setork and calls him “a truly genuine and kind person.”
“He likes to bring people together and is someone who never has a bad day,” Schneider observed. “Obviously he’s a successful and shrewd businessman, but he’s as genuine as they come, and a guy who really loves people.”
Setork said living and working in Naperville has been “a wonderful experience.”
He also has a new project poised to begin next year on 75th Street, now that the economy has begun to recover.
“We had permits for the site about four years ago, but we shut things down as the downturn of the economy put things on hold,” he said. “We’re ready to start construction again and hope to get things going next year.”
DynaCom owns 12.13 acres of land fronting the 75th Street corridor in south Naperville, where the iMed Campus, a 100,000-square-feet state-of-the-art medical building, will be located.
