Risk game : self portrait of an entrepreneur / Francis J. Greenburger, with Rebecca Paley.
Description: Dallas, TX : BenBella Books, Inc., [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016012285 (print) | LCCN 2016019515 (ebook) | ISBN 9781942952534 (trade cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781942952527 (electronic)
Subjects: LCSH: Greenburger, Francis, 1949- | Businessmen—United States—Biography. | Real estate developers—New York (State)—-Biography. | Real estate business—New York (State)
Classification: LCC HC102.5.G7184 A3 2016 (print) | LCC HC102.5.G7184 (ebook) | DDC 333.33092 [B] —dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016012285
Editing by Vy Tran
Copyediting by Stacia Seaman
Photo editing by Donna Cohen
Proofreading by Michael Fedison and Cape Cod Compositors, Inc.
Cover Portrait of Francis J. Greenburger by Ricardo Clement
Cover design by Pete Garceau
Jacket design by Sarah Dombrowsky
Text design by Aaron Edmiston
Text composition by PerfecType, Nashville, TN
Printed by Versa Press
Distributed by Perseus Distribution
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For all of my children, Alexander, Morgan, Noah, Julia,and Claire—and for their mothers, Judy and Isabelle.I hope you know how much I love each of you.
And for all my very special friends, colleagues, and peoplewho have enriched my life in such important ways.Whether you are named in this narrative or not, I think youknow who you are and how much I appreciate, care about,and value each of you.
CONTENTS
Prologue: Expect the Unexpected
CHAPTER 1 Early Remembrances of Things Past
CHAPTER 3 Teenage Literary Agent
CHAPTER 4 Reimagining My Father’s Legacy
CHAPTER 5 Coming of Age in the Real Estate Business
CHAPTER 6 Searching for Cash
CHAPTER 7 Banks in the Go-Go Eighties and the Growth of a Real Estate Empire
CHAPTER 8 The Pain of Black Monday and the Joy of a Baby Boy
CHAPTER 9 Tragedy and Rebirth
CHAPTER 10 Art as a Way of Life
CHAPTER 11 The Book of Morgan
CHAPTER 12 Pursuing Social Justice
CHAPTER 13 Intelligent Risk: An Investment Strategy
CHAPTER 14 Make Hay While the Sun Shines . . . But Carry a Large Umbrella
Epilogue: Never Ever Give Up
Acknowledgments
Apart from the caissons jutting out from the ground, the site was completely blank and silent. The enormous metal pipes that dove fifty feet down into the earth at the tip of Manhattan were exposed and useless with nothing to anchor them to the solid bedrock below. Around the empty construction site a locked fence signaled the end of progress.
This was 50 West—my legacy project as a real estate entrepreneur, a sixty-four-story tower of glass and steel that was going to alter the city skyline. It was supposed to embody my career in real estate that began with leasing office space as a sixteen-year-old high school dropout; meandered through close calls, generous mentors, terrible disappointments, and moments of great luck; and arrived at success beyond any expectation. Only, 50 West had become a $500 million mud puddle.
I had seen my share of wild swings over the course of my fifty years in the business, but the radical shift from the abundance of money during the housing bubble to the global debt crisis set off by losses in the US subprime mortgage market was, to put it mildly, unexpected and unprecedented. As a seasoned developer and investor, I knew all too well that markets can turn on a dime. And I had spent my career always looking over my shoulder for signs of trouble and keeping an ear to the ground for the sounds of crumbling economic conditions. Even so, I completely missed the signs of this disaster that I experienced through the very expensive prism of 50 West.
When, in January of 2008, we began demolishing the three buildings on the site that sat across the street from Manhattan’s Battery Park area, I was full of optimism. And why shouldn’t I have been? Arranging the financing for the project had been a given. Despite the size of the project, which cost more than $6 million in architectural plans alone, it was only a question of which bank we would allow to give us the money. That’s how flush the times were. As the starchitects we solicited to join a competition to design the property unveiled their plans before me, I felt the amazing sensation of being at the start of something great. And when my wife Isabelle and I saw the Helmut Jahn entry, I was overcome with a sense of possibility as soaring as the tower itself: We were going to do something great.
Six months later, construction
