OT: Stephen Ross: The Billionaire Who Is Rebuilding New York
Article in Forbes about Stephen Ross
by the time that is finished, that guy is going to be lucky to be alive
he will have enough money to pay off the grim reaper
also his uncle max lived to 96
I hope he does a better job in New York than he has in Miami.
But Forbes' website is really bush league. I hate how many clicks they try to get off a single, and fairly short, story.
I liked the part about how he got fired from Wall Street for talking back to his boss then decided to start his own business when he didn't want to go through interviewing again.
Shows what hard work and a little luck can accomplish. Starting with a $10,000 loan from his parents and now being worth $3.1B.
Shows what hard work and a little luck and parents who can front you 10k can accomplish.*
I'm sure he could have gotten a loan for that amount from a bank. I don't think having parents that could front him that cash is what allowed him to "make it".
i responded too soon, anyway. the article says he also got a lot of government funding since he started with affordable housing, and got the rest of the early money by helping wealthy investors exploit tax loopholes.
i actually find it really interesting to read how this guy got his money. thanks for posting, OP.
"..and got the rest of the early money by helping wealthy investors exploit tax loopholes."
The benefits of having both a business and law degree....
And yet he can't donate a rec building better than the CCRB to his alma mater?
The guy gave $100M to the University - the single largest donation to Michigan, ever. What more do you want from him? Sheesh.
...do we want from him? How about a bell tower. The Business School really needs it's own.
And maybe a ski jump up on North Campus. That would be sweet.
"Yale could really use an international airport Mr. Burns"
Yeah. What a cheapskate.
Honestly, between the b-school and the athlete academic center, if he donates much more we'd have to name the school after him.
It might be documented somewhere in the internet ether but i have heard that when Ross donated $100 million to the business school he stipulated that the school had to spend $75 million building/renovating the b-school and had to use his construction companies, so he made a little money back. I have no problem with that at all, btw, just kind of an interesting story...
Yeah, I'm sure the school was like, "Cool Steve, we'll use whoever you want. Thanks for the hundred mil."
he walked in with a check, or is that kind of thing wired like in the movies? If I was going to drop nine figures on a donation, I think I would walk in with a check, but that's just me.
Bringing in multiple duffle bags would be way cooler, but I feel like that would cause a lot of distractions/problems for the people involved.
Probably one of those big checks they give out at golf tournaments, I would imagine. Or penny rolls.
One of you mathy-types figure out how much $100 million in pennies weighs.
55,115,565.5 pounds or 27,557.8 tons
OK, so that's probably not what he did then.
A visual representation of 10 billion pennies: http://kokogiak.com/megapenny/ten.asp
If my adding and dropping of zeros can be relied upon. 2.5g per penny, 10,000,000,000 pennies.
Money order from Western Union. Also, I wonder if he got a receipt for tax purposes. Imagine that guy's Turbotax software..."Did you make any charitable donations this year?" ... "Why yes, $100,000,000.00 actually..."
Then again, I'm sure the the guy with an LLM in tax law doesn't use Turbotax
- I don't think he wants his dollars going to his competition.
- He obviously thinks he has the best company in the world.
I realize you said you had no problems with it and whatnot, but there might have been reasons beyond making a few bucks back (which I agree, even if that was the case it's totally fine).
yeah, that seems pretty obvious, i was more just going for 'cool story, bro' than my exact feelings.
If Ross had walked in and said "My company is building you a new business school, we'll call you when it's done" that probably wouldn't work either. So they had to figure out the best way to get it all done in the way that both parties wanted it done. He still paid for it.
Yeah. It's more along the lines of donating his company's services, and figuring out how much that was worth. But it's probably easier for tax/legal purposes to give them the money first.
Though his construction company may have won the bid to build the new B-school, it would be highly illegal for a no-contest contract to be issued. Michigan, as a public institution, is obligated to accept the bid of the lowest competant bidder.
Eh, $20 to the secretary gets you an envelope containing the cost of hte other bids.
Couldn't his bid just have been -25 million dollars?
Fancy.
Awesome project. I'm surprised he was able to get financing for something that large in the current environment.
Damn-
That's a huge project! Pretty remarkable!
Glad he also supports UM!
Good for him. That area of Midtown is God awful. If he can turn that area of Manhattan around then he deserves all the priase.
It's coming around though. Last summer when I was there we had dinner in Hell's Kitchen which has a lot more than it used to. The restaurant was 44 &X, which was very good and reasonably priced.
at 57th and 11th. It's got a charm all its own. I miss the commute from Jersey.
I wish he started rebuilding the bronx instead. The place could use some help, and I can't understand why no one has developed it more. I guess Steve is leaving something for me to develop once I make it big. I hope I could give enough money to U of M someday too, so I could name a building after__________(excluding myself).
Suggestions?
Well, Detroit needs even more help than the Bronx, but there aren't any $12 billion projects in the pipeline.
This isn't charity. The expectation is that this project will eventually pay off, business-wise. The Bronx is much more of a gamble for a big business venture than Manhattan. Businesses may not want to be based there.
The problem with the Bronx, and even the blighted areas into Yonkers and around the Hudson River, is low-income housing and Legal Aid. The issue goes back to the 70s and 80s when tenants in the Bronx, unable to continue paying rent and facing eviction proceedings, began receiving advice from Legal Aid to file as poor persons, demand reasonable accomodation, and stay eviction proceedings. Building owners faced a growing number of holdover tenants, to the point where overhead exceeded rental streams.
Coupled with sprawl and the growth of low-income zoning regulations, effectively requiring buildings to house additional low-income tenants, proper building owners quickly fled. In their place, slumlords took over. Depending on how you look at it, they ran the buildings as well as possible based on limited revenue streams, or they ran them into the ground.
Housing culture in the Bronx is on full display daily in Landlord/Tenant court. Constant stays requested from eviction, constant holdovers filed, it's a headache. Nobody in their right mind would develop there.