NEW YORK SHARES

Karl Eller">Karl Eller — a decade's-long Arizona business leader, former owner of Eller Media and the namesake of the University of Arizona's Eller College of Management — is in critical condition at a California hospital after falling from his bicycle, the Arizona Republic is reporting.

Eller, who turns 84 June 20, is in a medically induced coma and not stable enough to return to his Phoenix home, according to his wife, Stevie Eller">Stevie Eller. The couple has homes in Phoenix and the San Diego area.

Eller is a true Arizona business success story. Born in Illinois, he moved to Tucson as a boy in the 1930s and later attended the University of Arizona    University of Arizona Latest from The Business Journals Billboard magnate Karl Eller in coma after bicycle fallCooperative effort: Arizona Sun Corridor plan’s success depends on all working togetherSun Corridor already is an economic reality, but needs nurturing Follow this company . He returned to Chicago after college to work in advertising, which led to him eventually scraping together the $5 million needed to buy out a regional arm of a national billboard company in the early 1960s.

That move propelled Eller's career, which spanned the decades in Arizona and included a stint as CEO of Circle K. Under his leadership, the convenience store chain grew from about 1,000 to 5,000 stores across the county, a direction the market could not sustain.

Eller resigned from Circle K in 1990, a week before the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. He personally was $100 million in debt at the time and refused to file for personal bankruptcy protection, opting instead to call his creditors and investors to cobble together enough money to launch a comeback.

Two years after exiting Circle K, he launched Eller Media, which became the largest outdoor billboard business in the nation. Five years later, he sold it for more than $1 billion, the Republic reports.

Over the years Eller has made a significant stamp on Arizona, helping to bring the Phoenix Suns to Phoenix, and the Arizona Cardinals and Fiesta Bowl game to Tempe at the time. He also was part owner of the Phoenix Suns when the team started out in 1968, and he was the man who hired Jerry Colangelo">Jerry Colangelo away from the Chicago Bulls to run the new team. Colangelo would go on to become arguably the biggest sports mogul in Arizona history, not only leading the Suns, but also bringing baseball to the Valley with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 1998 and having his hands in many other sports-related efforts.