Zeckendorf Quotes

While the vision he had shown in building Trump Tower remained, the discipline he had summoned to get the skyscraper built evaporated. Emboldened by easy money and a laudatory press, Donald went on a massive and ill-considered shopping spree. Among the projects he juggled was a promising expanse on the West Side on the same turf where Zeckendorf wanted to erect Atomic City, and Donald gave the development-in-waiting an equally retro, Jetsons-like label: Television City. As Donald wheelied along, fine-tuning his performance as the business world’s answer to Evel Knievel, the media lavished whopping reams of attention on him. For the most part, reporters didn’t cover Donald’s ventures because what he did was smart. They covered Donald’s doings because what he did was fun to watch. Whether any of them recognized that what they were watching was a slow-motion car crash didn’t matter. It was the ’80s.

the book Zeckendorf: The Autobiography of the Man who Played a Real-Life Game of Monopoly and Won the Largest Real Estate Empire in History.

Zeckendorf’s autobiography was packed with colorful stories, but what fascinated me most was his strategy. Zeckendorf viewed assets as a sum of parts, so he could increase the value of the whole. Various parts were more valuable to different buyers, so Zeckendorf could maximize the value of his holding overall, in effect making 1 + 1 = 3. For example, One Park Avenue in Manhattan, which the marketplace had valued at $10 million, was ultimately worth $15 million in Zeckendorf’s hands. He calculated everything separately—the building’s title, the land, the leases, the individual mortgages. I thought this was brilliant. I adopted the approach both inside and, later, outside of the real estate industry.

have never been afraid of debt, because debt is what gives you leverage, and I also knew our projects were excellent ones. So, one day when the head of Morgan Guaranty stuck out his hand at a gathering of bankers and said, "Bill, you look like a million dollars," I could crack back, "I'd better—I owe you three million.