Word: hurwitz
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...next interstate exit -- are locked in a battle over the last of California's privately owned ancient redwoods. Doug Thron, 24, a nature photographer, became an environmentalist after he saw the wild land in Richardson, Texas, he had hiked as a boy paved with malls and condos. Charles Hurwitz, 54, raided and leveraged his way to an '80s-style fortune, acquiring a random bag of companies, including Kaiser Aluminum and the Pacific Lumber Co. From his Houston headquarters, Hurwitz seems puzzled that other people care about some big trees Pacific owns in Humboldt County, California...
...there is to the notion of anyone's owning such a place loses force among the trees. Here the concept of unregulated private property, much admired by logging outfits, is an empty legalism.But the fact is that Headwaters and miles beyond it are owned, as is Pacific Lumber, by Hurwitz's Houston-based Maxxam company. After he grabbed Pacific in a 1986 hostile takeover, paid for largely with junk bonds issued by Drexel Burnham Lambert's Michael Milken, Hurwitz visited Pacific's mills at Scotia. "There's a story about the golden rule," he told employees...
Hero or villain? Hurwitz didn't fire anybody; he hired more workers and added a fourth mill. He continued a Pacific Lumber practice of giving a college scholarship to every employee's child who finished high school. Top hourly pay runs about $15 to $16 an hour, in an area of high unemployment. When he refinanced Pacific's debt a year ago, issuing $620 million in high-interest bonds to pay off $510 million in junkers, the fact that he also paid Maxxam a $25 million dividend from the new debt raised only murmurs. That was how the big boys...
Deep in the Headwaters forest, as these matters simmered, activist Thron spent his day making photos, then hiked back down the trail after dark. Last fall Hurwitz's lawyers threatened to sue Thron unless he ceased his photographic raids and stopped giving the Headwaters show. He and Ingrey kept on trucking. The two were married last week in Arcata and plan to hit the road with fresh slides...
...have this great piece of fate that someone was able to use technology in an utterly musical fashion like this," says Nonesuch general manager Robert Hurwitz. "When people hear it, they don't realize the role of technology, and they don't think it is a piano roll...