America’s
biggest
real estate
project ...ever
2013 FastestGrowing
Companies
5 Years
After the
Meltdown
What Does Treasury
Secretary Jack Lew Want?
By Tory Newmyer
By Shawn Tully
Manhattan’s
$20 billion
Hudson Yards
project
now under
construction
september 16, 2013
FORTUNE.COM
the
Man
behind
the
LARGEST
REAL
ESTATE
PROJECT
in U.S.
History
With the $20 billion
Hudson Yards
development, billionaire
developer Stephen Ross
is set to reinvent a huge
swath of New York City.
by shawn tully
Photograph by stephen wilkes
Stephen Ross is pitching
the dream, with an extra dollop of hyperbole. The founder
and chairman of Related
Cos. is standing on a dilapidated branch of an ancient
ele­vated railway, known as
the High Line, that runs
through the Chelsea neighborhood on the West Side of
Manhattan near the Hudson
River. Below him is a bleak
industrial ­landscape—a vast
rail-yard complex packed
with the trains that feed
Pennsylvania Station, surrounded by a patchwork of
parking lots and auto-­repair
shops. “This is not how New
York should look!” exclaims
Ross over the drone of the locomotives on a sunny morning. “We will change that.
You’re looking at something
that will be far greater than
Rocke­feller ­Center—that
will be the new heart of New
York City.” ¶ Pointing with a
roll of blueprints, the master
real estate developer sketches
the skyline of a future city
Ross stands on an unfinished section of
the High Line park in Manhattan. The 17
buildings in the Hudson Yards project will
be built on massive concrete platforms
on top of the rail yards behind him.
September 16, 2013 fortune
fortune September 16, 2013
EE
ST
R
RD
33
premier residential address, arose over sunken
rail lines in the 19th century.
Fortunately for Ross, forces are coalescing to give the Hudson Yards project strong
momentum. The Manhattan real estate market
has rebounded from the financial crisis. And
the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is
spending $2.4 billion on the first major subway
extension on the West Side of Manhattan in
more than half a century. A new branch of the
No. 7 subway line will go from Times Square
to a terminus adjacent to Hudson Yards, connecting the once-isolated area to Midtown and
Grand Central Terminal by mid-2014.
It all appears to be coming together for Ross,
72, a real estate titan at the top of his game. With
a fortune estimated at $6 billion and a side job
as the owner of the Miami Dolphins (he took a
controlling interest in 2009 for a total price of
$1.1 billion), Ross could have chosen to settle
into a cushy, jet-setting retirement. Instead
he’s taking on a slate of ambitious projects
around the globe. In Abu Dhabi, Related is
co-­developing the 280-acre Al Maryah Island
complex, one of the largest real estate projects ever in the Middle East. In Brazil, Ross is
building two luxury condo towers in São Paulo
in partnership with his longtime pal Jorge Pérez,
who founded the similarly named, Florida-based
Related Group, of which Ross’s Related owns
a 25% share. Then there’s the Grand Avenue
­urban-renewal project in downtown Los Angeles, where Related has begun work on a complex
that will include hotels, stores, and apartments
covering three city blocks. Back in New York, Related is also leading the historic rebirth of barren
­Willets Point, a 23-acre area in Queens around
Citi Field, home to the New York Mets.
But it is Hudson Yards that will be the
crowning achievement of his long career. Ross
took on the project during the depths of the
financial crisis. It was his vision of what could
be and the force of his personality that overrode the risks of starting with no tenants or
financing. And now that work has begun on
the site, the lawyer-turned-developer is overseeing it with the same relentless attention to
detail that he brings to all his projects. Ross
granted Fortune an exclusive look into how he
runs his business and described how his long
career in real estate prepared him for attempting a project as outrageously ambitious as
Hudson Yards.
graphic: nicolas rapp
within a city by describing where landmarks will rise over the next
decade. He gestures toward the site of two silver skyscrapers to
come, one a new headquarters for Coach, the other reportedly set
to be occupied by Time Warner. Jutting out from the Time Warner
tower will be a triangular, open-air observation deck at a height of
1,053 feet that, Ross boasts, “will be a few feet higher than the deck
at the Empire State Building!” The two office behemoths will bookend New York City’s biggest retail mall, an ultra-luxury emporium
the size of an entire city block and at least five stories tall. Its 14
restaurants will feature an exclusive menu of celebrity chefs, from
Daniel Boulud to Thomas Keller, in a complex curated by master
restaurateur Danny Meyer. The new metropolis, says Ross, “will
display the work of more great architects in one place” than any
other development anywhere in the world, showcasing the contrasting designs of luminaries such as David Childs, Robert Stern, David
Rockwell, William Pedersen, and Elizabeth Diller.
Welcome to the Hudson Yards. Put simply, it is the largest private
real estate project in U.S. history—and, in fact, worthy of most of
Ross’s superlatives. Related Cos., one of the world’s largest private
real estate developers, is both the controlling owner of the site
and the developer for its planned 17 buildings. The project calls
for 18 million square feet of offices, stores, apartments, hotels, a
school, and even a mammoth, city-sponsored “culture shed” for
fashion shows and concerts. Some 55,000 people will live or work
here. Its size eclipses America’s previous largest development, the
­16.8-million-square-foot CityCenter in Las Vegas, and it’s likely to
get larger; its $20 billion estimated cost is unparalleled as well.
Related agreed to buy the rail yards from the city five years ago for
$1 billion. That’s the price tag for the official site, and it covers 26
acres, the equivalent of six city blocks, encompassing the entire
area between 30th and 33rd streets and 10th and 12th avenues.
But Related, along with its joint venture partner, the Canadian real
estate giant Oxford Properties, is greatly expanding its footprint in
the Hudson Yards neighborhood by purchasing adjacent parcels. Like
a latter-day Robert Moses, Ross has a plan that will dramatically shift
the center of gravity of America’s biggest city. New York is hungry for
modern, state-of-the-art office and apartment towers, and that’s what
the Hudson Yards will offer in a single, gigantic location. “You’ll
never see 26 acres again in the heart of a great city, where you can
build an entirely new neighborhood totally from scratch,” says Tom
Barrack, CEO of Colony Capital, a $28 billion private equity firm
specializing in real estate. Construction officially began late last
year, and the first building is scheduled to open in 2015.
Pulling off such a colossal project in the middle of New York City
won’t be easy. Besides navigating the complex, 10-year construction
schedule, Related must build hugely expensive infrastructure: The entire development will rise on top of six-foot-thick concrete platforms
that will spread, building by building, to cover the rail yards because
the trains will keep running below. The concept is actually nothing
new for New York. The northern stretch of Park Avenue, the city’s
T
Hudson Yards
HU
D
Building a
new city
within a city
Hudson Yards won’t just be the largest
development in U.S. history. It will
create a ready-made neighborhood
spanning more than 26 acres on
Manhattan’s far West Side. Over the
next decade what’s now a sprawling
rail yard will be covered by 18 mil­lion
square feet of offices, apartments, and
luxury shopping malls.
PHASE 1
NORTH TOWER—80 STORIES
SOUTH TOWER—52 STORIES
2.4-million-square-foot
commercial office tower
Projected for completion
in 2018.
1.7-million-square-foot
commercial tower
Will be home to Coach, L’Oréal USA,
SAP, and Fairway Market. Under
construction; to be completed in
2015.
E TOWER—
75 STORIES
OBSERVATION DECK
1.1-millionsquare-foot
mixed-use tower
60 floors of
residences and
11 floors to host
a 200-room
hotel. Expected to
end construction
in 2017.
Highest outdoor deck
in New York City.
RETAIL—
FIVE STORIES
750,000 square
feet of retail
space
Shops, cinemas,
restaurants,
markets, and bars.
Opening in 2017.
MADISON
SQUARE
GARDEN
EASTERN RAIL YARD, 2018
The 13-acre portion will accommodate
7 million square feet of mixed-use development,
including office, residential, hotel, retail, cultural,
and parking facilities, and at least seven acres of
public open space.
PHASE 2
GENERAL POST
OFFICE
(future Moynihan
Station)
WESTERN RAIL YARD
The western portion of the project is also
13 acres and will accommodate
6 million square feet of predominantly
residential development along with office,
retail, educational, and parking facilities.
SUBWAY STOP (north of project)
The extension of the No. 7 subway line
will connect the Hudson Yards to the
rest of the transit system.
Offers direct access to the North
Tower and opens in 2014.
10T
PUBLIC
SQUARE
HA
VEN
UE
A monumental
sculpture will be
at the center of
the space.
CULTURE SHED
33
RD
ST
R
EE
T
Will host a range of
art, design, and
performance
activities starting
in 2018.
11
TH
AV
E
E
30
TH
ST
R
EE
T
NU
SCHOOL
WE
750-seat K–8
public school
ST
S
IDE
HU
DS
ON
RIV
ER
HI
D TOWER—
70 STORIES
GH
WA
Y
HUDSON YARDS
REDEVELOPMENT
PROJECT
800,000-square-foot
residential tower
The first residential
building to be
completed, in 2017.
E
PLATFORM
HIGH LINE
The real estate development
requires the construction of
platforms over the active rail yard.
Elevated freight rail line
transformed into a public park
on Manhattan’s West Side.
N.Y.C.
N
S
W
Hudson Yards
I
f there’s one quality that sets Ross apart from other
major developers, it’s his skill at orchestrating highly complex
projects. He specializes in keeping all the elements in balance,
planning to ensure that the inevitable downward shifts in
rents and prices during a multiyear project don’t derail it along
the way. Ross’s approach to building Related, which he founded in
1972, reflects his view that developers get in trouble not because
their projects won’t eventually thrive, but because they lack core
financial strength and hence run out of cash in tough markets. Most
developers sell their apartment buildings and retail centers once
they’re completed and move on to the next deal. Related’s strategy is
to own and manage the projects it builds.
Today Related has a $20 billion portfolio, primarily consisting of
shopping malls and apartments—lots of apartments. The company
owns 5,000 mostly upscale rental apartments in 20 buildings in
New York City, making it one of the Big Apple’s largest landlords.
And it has another 1,000 rental units in Boston, San Francisco, and
Chicago. Ross got his start in affordable housing, and that market
remains a bedrock for Related: The company’s portfolio of 45,000
below-market-rate apartments in 19 states is among the largest in
the nation. Though Related declines to disclose its free cash flow,
Fortune estimates that it’s several hundred million dollars a year.
That big, recurring income stream gives Related a stability rare in
the development world.
With such a solid financial base, Ross is willing to take huge
risks on gigantic, long-term projects that spook his rivals. “He’ll
take it right to the edge,” says Rafael Cestero, who served as New
York’s affordable-housing chief under Mayor Michael Bloomberg,
“but he never goes over.” Ross is a master at sequencing jobs so that
the tenants or buyers he attracts at the start cover a big chunk of
the eventual costs, even if he generates no profit from those early
deals. That’s the strategy at the Hudson Yards, where the office
space is essentially a loss leader for the highly lucrative stores and
apartments that will arrive much later.
It’s a playbook that Ross has used before. He has become the
biggest practitioner in the U.S. of what’s called mixed-use development. Rather than specialize in apartments, retail, or office buildings, today Ross not only builds all three but also blends them into
fully integrated neighborhoods that, though they’re built all at once,
resemble areas developed organically over decades. In his view, all
three components reinforce one another, making each more valuable than it would be alone. “Most developers don’t like mixed use,”
says Barrack. “They want to specialize. It’s a much more complex
exercise, but the potential profits are also much bigger.”
That approach has helped make Ross perhaps the leading private figure in a real estate revolution in New York in recent years.
Bloomberg’s greatest accomplishment in his 12 years as New York
City’s mayor was to rezone large swaths of underutilized land from
industrial and commercial uses, for which demand was extinct, to
fortune September 16, 2013
residential and office use. “We were accused
of being too close to Ross,” says former deputy
mayor Dan Doctoroff, now CEO of Bloomberg
LP, “but Ross was the only developer willing
to step up on projects like the Hudson Yards.
He was also the best at mixed use. Ross shared
Bloomberg’s vision of New York more than any
other developer.”
I
n his wood-paneled office on the
19th floor of the Time Warner Center in
Midtown Manhattan, filled with Dolphins
and University of Michigan Wolverine
paraphernalia, Ross chronicles how his
career divides into a series of quantum leaps
to ever more daunting projects. The setting
is appropriate, since the Time Warner Center
was his first large-scale, mixed-use project and
has proved to be a valuable training ground for
Hudson Yards. There are doubters each time
he takes on a new, bigger project, says Ross. “I
always just say, ‘We’ll figure it out.’ ”
Ross grew up in Detroit, the son of an inventor of vending machines and fuel additives
whose creations often failed to make money.
As a business role model he had his uncle, Max
Fisher, a Detroit gas-station magnate and local legend who would later rescue his nephew
during hard times. While Ross was still in high
school his family moved to Miami, where he
graduated from Miami Beach Senior High
School, ranked 400th in a class of 440. He
managed to get admitted to the University of
Michigan, class of 1962, and today is a leading
benefactor of his alma mater. In 2004 he endowed the renamed Stephen M. Ross School of
Business with a $100 million gift. The ringtone
on his cellphone plays the Wolverines’ fight
song, “The Victors.”
After practicing tax law for a few years in
Detroit—“Being best known as Max Fisher’s
nephew was not the way to go through life”—
Ross ventured to Wall Street, taking a job with
Bear Stearns in 1970. It was clear from the start
that the headstrong Ross didn’t like working for
anyone else. He soon clashed over a deal with a
partner, who announced, “I have no confidence
in Ross!” Ross shot back, “I have no confidence
in you either. So go to hell!” He got fired the next
day. A $10,000 loan from his mother paid for
rent and meals while Ross sought to apply his
expertise in tax law to development.
He realized that specializing in affordable
Power broker
Ross’s first big mixed-use development was the Time Warner Center (left) in Manhattan, which opened in 2004. His Related Cos. is currently
co-developing the Al Maryah Island complex in Abu Dhabi (center), one of the largest projects in the Middle East. During the financial crisis
Related helped rescue the foreclosed-on Cosmopolitan hotel and casino project in Las Vegas.
housing had the potential to be highly lucrative,
chiefly because the tax benefits were extremely
enticing to investors. His first project was a 150unit apartment complex in Woonsocket, R.I. It’s
a business Ross has pursued ever since. Although
affordable-housing programs vary widely, the
basic formula is generally similar, and Ross mastered it. He typically raises all the construction
financing from the proceeds of low-interest municipal bonds and tax credits purchased by banks
and wealthy individuals. “The investors get the
tax credits; the cash flow goes to the developer,”
explains Ross. As a result, Ross would get to own
the buildings—and collect a stream of rents that
varied little in good times or bad—by investing
small amounts of his own cash.
By the mid-1980s, Ross had established himself as a rising star in mainstream development
as well, erecting residential towers on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. But near disaster struck
in the real estate crash of the early 1990s. “I
was worth $350 million in 1988, and by the
early 1990s, I was worse than broke,” recalls
Ross. “I owed the banks $120 million.” Confident the market would recover, Ross bought
time by allowing the banks to secure their
loans with his finished and unfinished buildings.
His uncle Max and his friend Pérez, among others, invested a total of $15 million in exchange
for equity in Related, and later cashed out for
four times their investment. Ross was able to
keep most of his properties.
But the near-death experience changed his
thinking forever. From then on, Ross shunned
the high leverage that’s routine with most developers. Today he raises around half the cost
of his projects in equity that Related and its
partners provide. Ross also learned the wisdom
of getting gobs of cash from investors when times are good.
Ross believes in finding talented people and holding on to them.
During a visit to the University of Michigan in 1988, a real estate
professor told Ross, “You’ve got to hire this kid—he’s the brightest
student I’ve ever had.” The wunderkind was Jeff Blau, who would
become Ross’s ace dealmaker. Proving that he had the chutzpah
necessary to work with Ross, Blau, whose father was a plumbing
contractor and small developer in Queens, told Ross that he needed
to get back to New York for the weekend and asked for a ride in
Ross’s plane. “I had no reason to go back to New York,” says Blau. “I
just wanted time on the plane with Stephen so he’d offer me a job.”
When Blau joined Ross full-time in 1990, Related was doing no new
projects. The development staff had shrunk from 20 to four. Blau
filled the time by commuting to Philadelphia to secure an MBA
from Wharton. Blau told Ross that he’d work for him for a couple of
years, then start his own business. “If you’re as good as you think
you are, I’ll find a way to keep you,” Ross told him. In September of
2012, Blau, 45, replaced Ross as Related’s CEO.
Blau’s tenure is a tribute to Ross’s ability to keep ambitious lieutenants supremely challenged, as well as make them rich. Ross also
recognizes that to keep such folks he needs to make them partners.
Blau and Bruce Beal, Related’s president, alone own 30% of Related, worth more than $2 billion. Unlike many New York developers, Ross—who has two daughters from his first marriage and two
stepdaughters—has no relatives in the company.
After a series of highly successful projects in the mid-’90s, Ross
and his team captured the prize that made Related a truly major
player: the Time Warner Center. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani called for
proposals to transform the decrepit New York Coliseum convention
center at Columbus Circle into a commercial hub. Ross proposed
the largest, most daring mixed-use development in Manhattan
­history. The plan was incredibly complex and extremely expensive. But Ross was confident he could make all the elements work
together. The major innovation was the extensive use of “vertical retail”—four levels of stores and a plaza of restaurants, operated by top
chefs, on the top floor. “Almost no one thought it would work,” says
Ken Himmel, a mixed-use specialist who ran the retail portion of the
project and is playing the same role at the Hudson Yards. The other
Hudson Yards
bidders put most of the retail on the ground floor, with a heavy concentration of banks and drugstores. Vertical retail, separate stores
in a multistory complex, had never worked well in Manhattan. New
Yorkers preferred department stores such as Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s. Or they shopped at the fancy boutiques on Madison Avenue.
Ross believed his approach could work, but he felt he needed to
hedge by finding a major anchor tenant for the office space. In early
1998 he wangled a five-minute slot on the schedule of Dick Parsons,
the president of Time Warner (the parent of Fortune’s publisher).
“What do you want?” asked Parsons. “There are eight companies
bidding on Columbus Circle, and they’ve all been here, and we don’t
need more space.” Ross went into full promoter mode. “Dick, this
isn’t about space. It’s about showcasing the greatest media company
in the world,” he said. Parsons grasped the brand value of having a
trophy building, in a world-class location, named for his company. “I
knew it would be an iconic place,” Parsons told Fortune. “Our deal put
Related on the map and transformed the West Side of Manhattan.”
The Time Warner Center started slowly but proved incredibly
lucrative. (If it moves to Hudson Yards, Time Warner will eventually vacate its namesake building.) Boasting upscale tenants from
Hugo Boss to Tourneau, as well as a base of mid-tier stores, the
vast shopping plazas generate spectacular rents; sales per square
foot on the ground floor approach those for the same stores on
Madison Avenue. And the prestigious restaurants, including Masa
Takayama’s Masa and Thomas Keller’s Per Se, draw crowds to the
upper level, right past the display windows of Sephora and J. Crew.
That success in blending diverse elements provides a template for
Hudson Yards.
O
n the surface, Ross’s approach to business, and
everything else, can look haphazard and improvisational. Friends variously describe Ross as loud, rough,
dramatic, and “a bull in a china shop.” “When he goes
after something, he’s like a bulldog,” says Pérez. “He
shows total single-mindedness. What amazes me is how he blends
that with an uncanny ability to keep and grow good people.” A trademark tactic is to take the opposite side of almost every argument.
He’ll pop into a meeting about a new building where almost every­one
in the room thinks it should have three uses and argue that three is
too many. Then he’ll invade the same meeting the next day and argue
that four uses is a better idea. “He argues the opposite to make you
defend your position,” says Beal, Related’s president. “He actually
hasn’t made up his mind and wants to listen to all the arguments,
from every direction.”
Before the crash of 2008, Ross made two strategic gambits that
fortified Related for the turbulence ahead and provided the ballast needed to secure the Hudson Yards deal. Ross had recognized
the gathering storm. “I knew the world would change,” he says. He
remembers how his uncle Max Fisher had secured oil for his filling
stations on long-term contracts during the Great Depression when
supplies were plentiful. “He had a steady flow when scarcity hit later,
when no one else did,” recalls Ross. So Ross decided he’d take in a lot
of cash while it was plentiful. In December of 2007, he sold 25% of
Related for $1.4 billion to five investors: Michael
Dell’s MSD Capital, Goldman Sachs, the Kuwait
Investment Authority, Mubadala Development
of Abu Dhabi, and the Olayan Group of Saudi
Arabia. He used part of the cash to buy his first
stake in the Dolphins. But a large portion went
to bolster Related’s working capital.
When the real estate crash struck, Ross, Blau,
and Beal made a second fateful decision: radically changing the business to keep staff in place.
Ross announced that Related would suspend all
projects not already being built. Blau’s role was
to find jobs that Related’s people could perform to generate revenue in a bad market. “We
wanted to keep all our people so they’d be ready
to go when things turned around,” says Blau.
“We transformed our development people into
workout people.” For example, ­Related sent
100 staff members to Las Vegas to rescue the
foreclosed-on, $3 billion Cosmopolitan hotel and
casino. Related g
­ enerated substantial fees on
the project by reconfiguring it and completing
construction on schedule and on budget.
Then, in early 2008, came the opportunity
to bid on Hudson Yards—and it almost eluded
Ross. The rail yards had originally been picked
as the site for the Olympic Stadium in New
York’s campaign for the 2012 Games. But after
the games were awarded to London, Mayor
Bloomberg pivoted and asked top developers
for their visions of a metropolis-size development. Ross signed up News Corp. as an anchor
tenant and thought Related was a cinch to
win. However, in March 2008, Bear Stearns
collapsed, signaling the larger crisis to come.
News Corp. withdrew the day before the final
bids were due. Related effectively folded, and
the city chose Tishman Speyer. Ross was disconsolate. Within days he was telling anyone
who would listen that he shouldn’t have been
so cautious and rational and should have
stayed in the race, even without an anchor tenant. “When Stephen lost the first time, he went
through an unspeakable litany,” says Marty
Edelman, a real estate attorney with Paul Hastings and a longtime friend of Ross’s. “He kicked
everybody and anybody for everything. No one
escaped except the doorman—until he finally
settled on blaming himself.”
Miraculously, he got another chance: In late
September 16, 2013 fortune
(#79
May 2008, Tishman Speyer suddenly dropped out. The city, desperate to get started, offered the deal to the previous bidders. Only
Related stepped
forward. However, in negotiations with the city and the MTA,
which owned the site, Blau insisted on a major change to the terms.
The Tishman Speyer deal had called for the developer to go to
contract—essentially commit to buying the land—in four months
and start making big payments two years later, in late 2010. Blau
and Ross decided that in this dire market, they needed far more
time. If they couldn’t find tenants for several years, they’d be forced
to make the large payments to the city without any income. The
MTA agreed to charge no rent for five years after the closing.
But Ross remained nervous. He still feared that the payments could
start long before the project generated any real income. Ross hatched a
brainstorm that saved the day. He proposed that the closing be contingent on achieving three “triggers,” or benchmarks, that, once reached,
indicated a strong revival in real estate. They included measures based
on residential prices and construction activity. The triggers were conceived by Ross as a strategy to buy time, since all three had to hit before
Related could be forced to close on the land. Ross was essentially
getting an option on the Hudson Yards. It was a wise move. “Even by
early 2012, there wasn’t a tenant to be found,” says Blau. But then the
market turned. In a major coup Related signed Coach as anchor tenant
in its first tower. From that point on, the deal wasn’t in doubt. Related
officially closed on the land in April 2013, after investing $300 million
in planning, deposits with the MTA, and foundation work.
By dangling the promise of thousands of union jobs, Ross and
Blau were able to negotiate crucial cost concessions from New
York’s construction unions. It was those concessions that enabled
Related to offer Coach, Time Warner, and the other early tenants
great deals for taking most of the space in the first two towers. Ross
acknowledges that he’s breaking even at best on the early office
deals and will generate slim margins from the tenants who are
signing on, at higher rates, right now. All told, however, the Hudson
Yards should prove highly profitable for Related because the big
money is in retail and residential, and residential alone constitutes
about half the project. Today condo and rental buildings in Man-
hattan sell for almost $3,000 per square foot,
more than twice what office buildings fetch
by the same measure. Related’s edge is the
low, and frozen, cost of land, even adding the
high expense of installing platforms. “When
residential prices rise, so do land costs, which
takes away most of the profit,” says Blau. “But
we’ve locked in our land costs over many years.
They can’t be bid up.” So Related will benefit
hugely from future gains in prices.
B
ack on the elevated rail line, Ross
points toward the Hudson Yards’
five-acre public square. He’s especially excited, he says, about the giant sculpture he has commissioned
for the site—his gift to the city and a monument
that should be worthy of the grandeur of Hudson
Yards. In typical Ross fashion, he’s holding an
epic sculpt-off, auditioning the works not of one
great sculptor, but six. The contest is rumored
to pit such legends as Anish Kapoor, Jeff Koons,
Thomas Heatherwick, and Richard Serra, or
others in their class, against one another. According to his staff, Ross is telling the famous
contestants to “raise their games,” to create
something totally unlike anything they’ve done
before. The colossal work will be many stories
high and could cost upwards of $100 million.
“This sculpture will be the greatest tourist
attraction in New York,” Ross immodestly
predicts. “It will be more than the Christmas
tree in Rockefeller Center, but 365 days a year.
It will be to this city what the Eiffel Tower is to
Paris.” As Ross knows, you don’t pull off the biggest real estate deal in U.S. history by dreaming—or talking—small. (#79553) FORTUNE is a registered trademark of Time Inc. ©2013 Time Inc. FORTUNE and Time Inc. are not affiliated with, and do not endorse products or services of, the Licensee of this reprint.
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REGARDING ANY POTENTIAL STRATEGY OR INVESTMENT. THIS OVERVIEW IS CONFIDENTIAL
AND MAY NOT BE REPRODUCED OR TRANSFERRED, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, TO ANY OTHER
PARTY WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN CONSENT OF RELATED COMPANIES OR OXFORD
PROPERTIES GROUP.
REAL ESTATE INVESTMENTS ARE SPECULATIVE AND MAY RESULT IN THE LOSS OF AN
INVESTOR’S ENTIRE INVESTMENT.
THE INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN INCLUDES (OR IS BASED IN PART ON) VALUATIONS,
ESTIMATES AND OTHER FINANCIAL DATA. BY YOUR RECEIPT OF THESE OVERVIEW MATERIALS,
YOU UNDERSTAND, ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT (I) YOU HAVE SUCH KNOWLEDGE AND
EXPERIENCE IN FINANCIAL, BUSINESS AND INVESTMENT MATTERS SO AS TO BE CAPABLE OF
EVALUATING THE MERITS AND RISKS OF AN INVESTMENT, (II) THIS INFORMATION HAS BEEN
PREPARED INTERNALLY BY THE RELATED COMPANIES, L.P AND IT HAS NOT BEEN VERIFIED OR
SUBSTANTIATED BY ANY THIRD PARTY SOURCES AND MAY NOT CONTAIN ALL OF THE
INFORMATION WHICH YOU MIGHT DEEM MATERIAL, AND (III) THIS INFORMATION SHOULD NOT
BE RELIED UPON FOR ANY PURPOSE, AND YOU WILL MAKE YOUR OWN INDEPENDENT
EVALUATION OF ANY INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS OVERVIEW. ANY INFORMATION
REGARDING VALUES ARE ESTIMATES ONLY AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED INDICATIVE OF
THE ACTUAL FINANCIAL RESULTS THAT MAY BE REALIZED ON ANY POSSIBLE FUTURE
INVESTMENT MENTIONED IN THIS OVERVIEW.
THE INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED AS RESEARCH OR
NO
INFORMATION
HEREIN
SHOULD
BE
INVESTMENT
ADVICE.
CONSIDERED A RECOMMENDATION TO PURCHASE OR SELL INTERESTS IN AN INVESTMENT. NO
WARRANTY IS GIVEN AS TO ITS COMPLETENESS OR ACCURACY OF THE INFORMATION
CONTAINED HEREIN, AND VIEWS AND OPINIONS, WHILST GIVEN IN GOOD FAITH, ARE SUBJECT TO
CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE.