Word: portman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...million Peachtree Center Plaza Hotel, which opened last week, is the latest extravaganza in the career of John C. Portman Jr. Restless, driving, so egotistical that he often antagonizes his backers, Portman, 51, is an architect who not only has done more to change hoteldom than anyone since Conrad Hilton, but also is the first major talent in his profession to own as well as design buildings. His trademark is the architecture of entertainment in cities. "I have been accused of doing up a sophisticated Disneyland for adults," he says. "I plead guilty...
Picture Window. Like Disney, Portman has turned his fantasies into profit. From one of his Atlanta office towers, he rules a series of enterprises. John Portman & Associates is an architectural firm that designs buildings and oversees their construction. Portman Properties acquires land for new projects and finds financing for them. Other smaller companies operate buildings-Portman owns an estimated $250 million worth in Atlanta, Los Angeles and San Francisco-and buy furnishings for them...
...Recently Portman's freewheeling plans have been slowed by recession and inflation at home and abroad. Financing difficulties have postponed a trade mart in Paris and a hotel for Times Square in New York City. How much he is hurting no one knows, since privately held companies do not make their financial statements public. But business should pick up as the economy improves, for the market seems to like his product...
...Portman began brashly in 1953, after graduating from the Georgia Institute of Technology and serving his apprenticeship with an Atlanta architectural firm. Says he: "I wanted to have an impact and was too impatient to wait for someone else to hire me." So he opened his own office in Atlanta. While professional groups winced-architects were thought to be in conflict of interest if they developed property-he designed a striking medical center for rental but could not get it financed. He did better with Atlanta's Merchandise Mart, a blocky 22-story building of showrooms and sales offices...
Parcel by parcel, Portman went on to buy a rundown section of Atlanta's main drag, Peachtree Street. Visions of towers danced in his head. One by one they rose to form Peachtree Center-a complex of five office buildings, two hotels, a theater, restaurants and a shopping arcade. Atlantans who visit Portman's hilltop house now joke that he installed a picture window and then built the view to be seen through...