Draft:Roger L. Cohen

• Comment: As I said previously, merely rewording LLM-generated text usually doesn't resolve the problem of LLM usage. You should remove all text from the draft (while leaving the review templates). See Help:Your first article for general advice.
  He might meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines but it seems borderline at the moment. Note that many of these sources don't even mention Cohen and possibly shouldn't be included at all. Helpful Raccoon (talk) 19:08, 23 September 2026 (UTC)

• Comment: Please remove all LLM-generated text; ideally you should start over from a blank slate without LLMs. We do not necessarily expect you to write perfect or polished English. If you need formatting help, see Help:Introduction to editing with VisualEditor and Help:Referencing for beginners. Note that merely rewording the existing LLM-generated text is unlikely to resolve the problem of LLM usage. Helpful Raccoon (talk) 06:50, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

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Roger L. Cohen speaking at a meeting

Roger L. Cohen (October 4, 1935 to December 6, 2002) was an American commercial real estate broker and developer in the Kansas City metropolitan area. He opened Roger L. Cohen & Co. as a one-person office in 1969. The firm handled brokerage, property management, development, business sales, and consulting. It later merged into Cohen-Esrey Real Estate Services, where Cohen was co-chairman and chief executive.

He sat on the founding board of the national ERA Real Estate network and on the board of the Kansas City institution first known as Empire Bank & Trust Company and later as Mark Twain Empire Bank. He did national site selection for Gilbert/Robinson, held an ownership interest in the T.J. Cinnamons bakery chain, and was a principal of an Applebee's franchise company that operated five restaurants in the Netherlands. He chaired the boards of the Kansas City Art Institute and the local March of Dimes.

Early life and education

Central High School in St. Joseph, Missouri, which Cohen attended

Cohen was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, to Joseph and Esther Cohen. He was an Eagle Scout and graduated from Central High School there. At the University of Missouri he earned a business degree and was president of the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity. He took part in student government, the annual Savitar Frolics, and the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. After graduation he served in the United States Army as a first lieutenant. A 1980 profile described the tour as two years.

Business career

Real estate and related companies

Cohen began his business career with Sears in Chicago. In 1959, after his Army service, he moved to Kansas City and went into commercial real estate with no prior experience. The 1980 Outlook profile said he persuaded Barney Karbank to hire him at the one-person B. A. Karbank Company, later became a partner, and left to open Roger L. Cohen & Co. as his own one-person office in 1969.

By 1980 the practice had 25 sales associates. The same profile called it one of the Kansas City area's larger commercial and industrial real-estate firms. It combined brokerage, leasing, property management, and development. Cohen also operated Cohen Asset Management Co., the mergers-and-acquisitions firm National Business Brokers, and the small-business advisory firm Financial Consultants Inc.

A 1977 National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Mahaffie House in Olathe, Kansas, listed Roger L. Cohen & Company as the property's owner. The address on the form was No. 1 Hanover Building, 15 West 10th Street, Kansas City, Missouri.

Work included downtown leasing as well as Freeway Business Park and Atrium-on-the-Plaza, a 40-unit townhouse development south of the Kansas City Art Institute. The City Center Square assignment more than doubled the building's occupancy during 1979 and produced about $47 million in leases. The Outlook profile described one 25-year lease as the largest single transaction the firm believed had then been negotiated in the area.

The firm belonged to Office Network Inc., a national association of commercial and industrial real-estate firms. In a February 1983 letter kept with the Kansas House Committee on Commercial and Financial Institutions, Cohen gave his title as chairman of the board of Roger L. Cohen & Co. He supported legislation that he said would stimulate business activity and revenue in Kansas.

Cohen's firm later merged with a company led by Robert Esrey to form Cohen-Esrey Real Estate Services. Cohen was co-chairman of the board and chief executive. A business-news article published after his death discussed his role at the company and reported that it led a local list of the area's largest commercial real-estate firms.

In 2000, The Pitch identified Cohen and Steve Block as the developers of the 33-acre Glover Plan at Linwood Boulevard and Gillham Road, a proposed $66 million project anchored by Costco and Home Depot and backed by proposed public financing. Architects and residents quoted in the article criticized the suburban, big-box design. Other residents and council members wanted the project to move ahead after years of delay and vacant land.

Cohen was a national vice president of the Society of Industrial and Office Realtors and held the Counselor of Real Estate designation. His obituary listed him as a member of the founding board of directors of Electronic Realty Associates (ERA), established in 1971 as a national real-estate franchise network. A later real-estate industry history said ERA made extensive use of fax machines to send referrals between offices. At a 2018 awards event, the Kansas City Regional Association of Realtors reported that broker Ken Block spoke about Cohen's effect on many Kansas City brokers.

Banking

Cohen was a director of Empire Bank & Trust Company and of the same institution after it became Mark Twain Empire Bank in 1980. A 1984 banking trade report identified him as a former Mark Twain Empire Bank director. The bank itself was chartered as Empire State Bank, became Empire Bank & Trust Company in 1976, was renamed Mark Twain Empire Bank in 1980, and became Mark Twain Kansas City Bank in 1984. He later was a consultant to the board of directors of Hillcrest Bank.

Restaurant ventures

By 1980, Roger L. Cohen & Co. had spent six years as the exclusive real-estate representative for Kansas City-based Gilbert/Robinson, finding sites and negotiating leases for its 35 restaurants. The concepts included Plaza III, The Leather Bottle, Houlihan's, Sam Wilson's Meat Market, and Annie's Santa Fe.

Cohen later became an owner in T.J. Cinnamons. Time credited Ted and Joyce Rice with creating the bakery concept and opening the first shop at Ward Parkway Shopping Center in January 1985. An April 1988 Los Angeles Times report said the chain had more than 200 franchised bakeries and called itself the country's largest specialty bakery chain. Public filings list the Roger L. Cohen Trust, the Rice family trust, and the Kenneth D. Hill Trust among parties to a company stock-purchase agreement. The filings also state that a management group bought T.J. Cinnamons from its founders in June 1992, when it had about 100 franchised bakeries and four company-owned ones.

A history in Seattle Met said restaurateur Rich Komen saw T.J. Cinnamons at Ward Parkway in late 1984 and tried to obtain West Coast franchise rights. When that arrangement did not go forward, Komen developed a separate concept that opened as Cinnabon in December 1985.

In the 1990s Cohen operated franchises overseas. An Applebee's International schedule filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission listed Cohen and Benoit Wesley as principals of Apple Restaurants Europe B.V. It named five restaurants the company operated in the Netherlands (Heerlen, Scheveningen, Nijmegen, Maastricht, and Geleen), with franchise-agreement dates from 1994 through 1998. A 1999 franchise schedule gave the development territory as the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. A 1995 Dutch report on the Heerlen opening quoted Wesley as describing rights in the Netherlands, Germany's Ruhr region, and Israel. The restaurants on the record were all in the Netherlands. The venture was part of Applebee's early European expansion. The chain's own history names Winnipeg, Canada, in 1994, not Europe, as its first restaurant outside the United States.

Civic and philanthropic activities

Portrait of Roger L. Cohen

The Kansas City Art Institute, whose board Cohen chaired

Cohen was a trustee and board chair of the Kansas City Art Institute. In 1994 he and his wife Joni Cohen co-chaired the opening gala of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art with Margaret Silva. A Kansas City Jewish Chronicle feature on the couple's civic and Jewish community work quoted Cohen as saying that people who had benefited from the community had a responsibility to take part in civic life.

The Pitch interviewed him in 2001, while he was the Art Institute's board chair, about the board's responsibilities, the school's endowment, and communication between faculty and trustees. By 2002 the institute's Artspace included a Roger Cohen Resource Room.

He chaired the board of Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey for several terms. KCFAA was formed in 1984 to make Kansas City the official second home of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. It presents Ailey companies in Kansas City, teaches dance to young people, and works on interracial and multicultural community partnerships.

He also sat on the board of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, the organization Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein founded in 1983 to promote understanding and cooperation between Christians and Jews.

Other posts included president of the Kansas City chapter of the Young Presidents' Organization, board chair of the local March of Dimes, officer and trustee of Temple B'nai Jehudah, board member of the R. A. Bloch Cancer Foundation, and member of the Kansas City mayor's Fast Forward Commission and Mayor's Advisory Committee.

Death and legacy

Cohen died in Palm Springs, California, on December 6, 2002, at age 67. He was a resident of Mission Hills, Kansas. His family asked that memorial contributions be made to the Roger L. Cohen Resource Library at the Kansas City Art Institute or to the De La Salle Education Center.

The Kansas City Regional Association of Realtors later put his name on annual commercial-real-estate honors, including the Roger Cohen Salesperson of the Year Award and the Roger Cohen Rookie of the Year Award.