His family's KGroup is embarking on another controversial redevelopment in Canberra's north to build an indoor sports centre, but it was the smell of leather that accompanied his early foray into business.

Aged 18 and having finished high school and accountancy studies in Greece, he learned to replace stiletto and aluminium heels in the shop. He then made shoes and later copied imported shoes, which the family sold at a substantial discount to the originals.

He and older brother Doug stayed in the shoe business until 1976. During these years they bought, repaired, leased and sold commercial buildings, becoming self-taught in the property industry.

''Whatever you touched then, it was easy. Now, things have gotten harder. You expect that, there's a lot more smarter people. Before it was quite easy,'' Mr Konstantinou said.

''You used to go to the auctions, buy and by the time you left the auction room, you already had a list (of prospective buyers or tenants).''

The best and hardest lessons were yet to come. They bought a large commercial building at Pearce, only to lose most of the tenants soon after to a shiny new Woden Plaza.

''We sold it for less, got out and started building homes. In 1975 we started going commercial from residential. Competition is good. It keeps you healthy, on your toes,'' he said.

New malls forced Mr Konstantinou to keep diversifying the property portfolio, leading to the family and ACT government building the $30 million Canberra International Sports and Aquatic Centre at Belconnen.

The project was a big, contentious leap for the former shoe repairer and his sons, continuing a family tradition of taking risks, started by his father Haralambos (Harry) Konstantinou.

A shoemaker and businessman who had previously diversified into tobacco, Harry arrived in Melbourne in 1956 only to find too many Greeks for his liking.

He'd left Greece disappointed with a new superannuation regime and demands from his workers who had forgotten the bread, cheese and olives he had given them during war-time rationing.

Aged 48, he had left his two sons and daughter with his wife in Greece to finish their education. He arrived first in Victoria before pushing north into NSW and Goulburn, where he found work with Baxter Boots.

Later coming to Canberra, he worked for wages before buying two shops in Civic and in Ainslie.

When Jeff joined the shoe repair business it was expanding through 35 dry cleaners. They would often work from 5am to 7pm or 8pm. Eventually the brothers and their mother were running separate shops.

At Belconnen they converted three shops into a small factory, copying shoes they had imported. ''Some of them we called copycat. Ours used to be $50, the imported ones were $250, $300, in those days a lot of money,'' he said.

''That grew and grew so we went into Mitchell, in Winchcombe Court, and after two years there, built our own shoe factory across the road in 1984. My father didn't see that, he died in 1982.''

By the time they decided to leave the shoe industry in 2000 they were well established with property.

These days people ask him why he's active in Mitchell property, where the KGroup has its headquarters and has developed 30 commercial buildings.

He says Gungahlin's town centre won't be big enough for shops serving the fast-growing suburbs, and Mitchell will become its service centre, growing bigger and busier with bulky goods retail.