- Glanzer Realty sold its historic downtown Newberry office to State Farm agent Ruz Ogra after 17 years, citing the shift to online real estate services.
- Ruz Ogra will open Newberry's first State Farm office in the building and continue community programs like the Little Free Pantry started by Glanzer Realty.
After 17 years in downtown Newberry, the Glanzer Realty team said a bittersweet goodbye to its historic office on Tuesday after finalizing the sale of it to a local State Farm agent.
The commercial and residential realty company’s founder Joy Glanzer told Mainstreet that owning and stewarding the building at 190 NW 266th St. had been a dream of hers since she first moved to Newberry over 50 years ago.
Glanzer, 71, a former Newberry Planning and Zoning Board chair and co-founder of the city’s Chamber of Commerce, said the large space had become too much to maintain and more than she and her daughter and business partner, Hillary Santos, needed as the housing market slowed and shifted increasingly online.
“This community has embraced me and my family and all the businesses we’ve ever had there so much,” Glanzer said. “I can never express my gratitude.”
But Glanzer Realty isn’t going away; it’s just moving into Glanzer’s home office, currently being renovated.
She said digital is the direction the real estate industry has shifted, so much so that she can’t remember the last time customers came into her downtown office for help buying a home since the information can be researched online.
Gainesville-based State Farm agent Ruz Ogra will soon open in the downtown space, which Glanzer said she couldn’t be more excited about welcoming another business owner already looking to serve the community beyond the 9-to-5 duties.
Glanzer said Ogra intends to continue running her recently launched food pantry called “Little Free Pantry” on the building’s porch and feed the feral feline O.C. (short for “Office Cat”).
“I’ve had a couple of months, you know, to get through it,” Glanzer said about the move. “In the beginning, I have to say it was pretty emotional for me because it’s hard to let go of something that’s—it’s like part of your family. I’ve never had a piece of real estate feel that way.”
As the building’s second owner in over 100 years, Glanzer said owning the downtown office came with a mission of stewardship to carry on the first owner’s community-oriented legacy.
The office started as the childhood home of Katie Obedience Cooke, also known as “Katie B,” and was built by her aunt and uncle in 1907, according to a 2002 Gainesville Sun article.
Glanzer said she once interviewed Cooke for a story in her Newberry News newspaper and deemed her the epitome of a southern gentlewoman, frequently hosting guests and serving her church.
When Cooke entered assisted living, her daughter reached out to Glanzer for help selling the home. Glanzer did sell the home, but to herself as the buyer.
Since then, she said she’s never closed the doors to offering shelter, addiction support groups, holiday feasts or a fully stocked food pantry, all with hopes of serving the community like Cooke.
“I was so happy that they wanted to enjoy this building because I felt like it belonged to the community,” she said. “Katie B had been such a huge part of Newberry for her whole life, and I just felt like this building was part of it, and it seemed to draw those in need to it. And I just happened to have the key to open the door. It became just a healing place.”
Glanzer said the door to sell the office opened this spring when one of her realtors overheard someone talking about wanting to buy it. That person was Ogra.
Ogra is a 2005 University of Florida alumnus excited about his rural expansion for State Farm—Newberry’s first—since the company began as an insurance company representing farmers. Although the office wasn’t technically for sale, Glanzer said Ogra met with her the same afternoon he’d heard about it and made an offer she couldn’t refuse.
Ogra will keep his six-and-a-half-year-old Gainesville office up and running while also working to hire the staff for the Newberry location and get plugged into the city’s network.
“We as an organization, even as State Farm, what they want to do is get to the grassroots level, basically be an agent within the community,” Ogra said. “You support the community, the community supports you; the small town feeling that you don’t get in big cities. As a business, I think we will have more people coming into the office, more social interactions, more community events, more support.”