Word: simon
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...While the Beatles were still in the heavy rock kick, Simon & Garfunkel were producing great intellect. When the Beatles can produce something like A Poem on The Underground Wall, or Sounds of Silence, they will be truly great...
This month, misfortune of another kind hit Robert E. Simon Jr., the mild-mannered millionaire developer of Reston, Va., best-known and by far the most architecturally visionary of the new towns. In a corporate reshuffle, Gulf Oil Corp. took control of the financially ailing project, kicked Simon upstairs from president and chief executive officer to a consulting role as chairman of a newly formed subsidiary, Gulf-Reston Inc. As the new boss, the oil company named Robert H. Ryan, a Pittsburgh realty consultant and onetime vice president of Boston-based Cabot, Cabot & Forbes, itself the developer of the floundering...
Urbanity in the Boondocks. Reston, which lies on 11 sq. mi. of wooded fox-hunting country 18 miles west of Washington, D.C., has long been strapped for funds. In his zeal to create a town of beauty, Simon, heir to a Manhattan real-estate duchy, plunged ahead with construction in 1962 without calculating how much his dream would cost-or even securing a loan. Simon recalls that "Reston never recovered" after the collapse of an oral deal with the Washington Gas Light Co. to supply $6,000,000 at a low interest rate. Gulf bailed him out with $15 million...
Still cash-shy despite Gulfs investment, Simon borrowed $20 million more in 1966 from John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co.-and surrendered title to most of Reston's land, for which he had paid $13 million. But expenses mounted while house sales (only 582 so far) lagged behind. Many of Reston's starkly modern town houses proved too costly ($35,000 to $47,000) to lure buyers. In an effort to assure full occupancy of the 15-story apartment tower that makes Reston a symbol of urbanity in the boondocks, rents were set too low to repay...
...Even Simon, who retains a minority interest in Reston, figures that he will recoup his $1,800,000 investment in time, if only from soaring realty values. On land that cost $1,900 an acre in 1961, Reston industrial sites already are bringing as much as $40,000 an acre...