Word: marasco
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Marasco is a character straight out of an early David Mamet play: a smooth-talking real estate kingpin whose boyish enthusiasm is at war with his gray-flecked hair. For more than two decades, Marasco, 46, has erected shopping centers and sports arenas throughout the Southwest. He never had global ambitions. But then he had a crazy dream: a huge open-air shopping and entertainment complex located in the San Diego suburb of San Ysidro--but connected to Tijuana, Mexico, by its very own 525-ft. pedestrian bridge. Marasco says he wants "to make the whole border-crossing experience full...
...tough enough these days, as any American builder can attest, to comply with regulations of the EPA, EEOC, OSHA and a Scrabble board of other U.S. agencies. But when Marasco proposed his International Gateway of the Americas--$225 million worth of shops, restaurants, offices and hotel rooms spread over 67 acres--he also had to deal with U.S. Customs, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and the federal, state and city governments on the Mexican side. Marasco observes that "it requires a great deal of, um, flexibility...
From the start, Marasco--an Italian American who speaks little Spanish--didn't know whether to giggle or weep at the frequent miscommunications. Whenever his team mentioned a border crossing that they knew as Virginia Avenue, Mexican officials suddenly began discussing a route they called El Chaparral. It took nearly a year before Marasco realized they were talking about the same port of entry...