Little Maxie
Back in 2012 (hard to believe that was 11 years ago!) I was just starting work on the New York Wheel project. That seems like a lifetime ago at this point, but then I was living with Kim at our South Street Seaport condo and as of late July, I was on payroll as the CEO of New York Wheel, which had offices at 19 State Street, a curved glass high rise building that looked out over New York Harbor towards Staten Island, the location we had secured (but not yet closed on or gotten full NYC approval for) with the Verrazano Bridge to the north and the Statue of Liberty to the south. That location was only the offices of New York Wheel for a year because our sponsoring investors wanted us closer to them uptown and they were a real estate group that had lots of property to lease to us. But for that first year we were rolling on our own, figuring out how to go about doing something no one had ever done before. There simply was nothing like a playbook on building a 630 foot observation wheel in what is arguably the most complicated city in the world, New York City. But I suppose that’s what made it interesting to me. Not being a structural engineer or really anything akin to a developer of attractions or real estate projects (though I had done some of that for a few years), I was and am a finance guy, which is why I was involved. The two biggest challenges I thought we had with the New York Wheel was financing it and getting it approved. I felt good about the former (as well as anyone can given all the uncertainties with such things) and I felt confident about the latter because the City had already told me directly that they would only go forward with the project if I was involved. Actually, that was also a condition by my initial seed funders, so its fair to say that I had good reasons for feeling this was a good thing for me to spend my time on.
One of the first things that happened of note since we signed the deal with the seed funders and the City in August was that the City wanted to do a formal press announcement to tell the world that we were moving forward with the project. Those sorts of things were absolutely not my funders’ cup of tea (they were very solid and respectable low-profile guys, which was one of the things I have always respected about them), but the City people were like all politicians and they wanted lots of publicity, especially the Borough President’s office on Staten Island since Staten Island was always short of public respect. We did a big gathering at the Staten Island Yankees (minor league farm team) stadium that was right next door to the Wheel site. All the press was there as was Mayor Bloomberg, Senator Schumer and an array of Congressmen and state and local legislators. It all got lots of profile and we almost all felt good about it…not so much my funders, who had wanted me to be the only member of the team on stage, but my partner (technically their partner too) decided he wanted his share of the limelight, which was fine with me, but not so fine with them for reasons I won’t go into here. What they did do was call me and make it clear in no uncertain terms that he was to stay behind the scenes from that point onward. That created a whole unpleasant chapter in what would become quite a six year saga with this project that would be one of my wildest career rides.
In those days, living in lower Manhattan and waffling between my somewhat successful Wall Street career of many years and my ultimate retirement (many Wall Streeters were happy to retire at the age of 60, but I was not), I was ripe for a new opportunity. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I just did what came along and by that time I was intrigued enough by the Wheel and found others equally intrigued so it seemed worth doing. I had a Vespa 250cc scooter to get around lower Manhattan and even though I was more than a bit big for it, that all felt very liberating. Then one day I got a call from the New York Observer, the real estate rag that was owned and operated by a young unknown by the name of Jared Kushner. They wanted to interview me about the New York Wheel. My principals understood that it was in our common best interest to get positive press about the project since our business plan hinged on building momentum towards a 3-4 million attendees per year attraction when we were done. Their condition was that it could only be done by me, so I agreed to meet with the reporter at a place called Battery Gardens because it was near my work and home and mostly because it looked out over the harbor at our proposed site.
The reporter’s name was Max Abelson and he was a young and very eager journalist who spent two hours asking me everything I could imagine about the project and about me. I have never been a particularly shy person as most people who know me realize, so I gladly answered every question he asked me and probably even elaborated on them somewhat. I didn’t really think too much about it since I was very busy that fall working through the approval process with the City and all its agencies. That fall we also had the drama of Super-Storm Sandy to contend with. You see, our site was right on the harbor and we had designed it based on the FEMA guidelines for construction on that particular waterfront location. That standard was sort of a 500-year flood standard that said if we built at +2 feet over that level, which was +8, we would be in compliance and all would be well with the world. Sandy had brought a tidal surge of 14 feet, so FEMA decided to change its standards by 3 feet. Everything we had designed and submitted to the City planners had to be raised by 3 feet to +13. And so it always seems to go. And then Max’s article came out.
The New York Observer made the story its cover story. Not just page one, but a full half page with a caricature of me and Mike Bloomberg riding a Ferris Wheel into the stratosphere with the title, Big Rich Marin’s Wild Ride. Kim went and bought the original drawing and it still hangs on my office wall. The article was a sensational story about an ex-banker of some modest reputation who had shifted gears after the Great Recession and its related and somewhat personal calamities and had now undertaken this amazing long shot project. It was quite an article and it seemed to set my course for the next five years. I won’t go into the histrionics of those years here, but suffice it to say that Max had correctly characterized it as a wild ride, certainly the wildest of my 45-year career.
Max Abelson has stayed in touch with me over the years. He once told me that on the strength of that NY Observer article, he was offered a job at the NY Post, and then the Wall Street Journal and then Bloomberg News, where he has been ever since. In some ways that always struck me as ironic that Max’s story with what my son called a “fun-size” version of Mike Bloomberg sitting next to me was portentous of where he would spend his wild ride. Yesterday I got an email from Max that he must send to his following since he puts a picture of himself at age five or so at the top. He has just produced a video series that’s on YouTube that he wants us all to watch. I will watch them all eventually, since I really liked the first one. It was called Genius and was a story about how genius doesn’t really exist in the financial world. It was a story with Burton Malkeil telling the audience what his famous book. A Random Walk Down Wall Street, told us in 1973, that active management is a mug’s game and that people should just use index funds. I have always said as much throughout my money management career. So, thank you little Maxie for this trip down memory lane and for becoming a sensible reporter.