Word: zeckendorfs
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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From his circular penthouse office on Madison Avenue, Manhattan Real Estate Tycoon William Zeckendorf frequently sallies out on a limb, leaving all his competitors and creditors agape with suspense. For years, people have been expecting Zeckendorf to take a tumble, though he has always managed to regain his balance. Recently, though, Zeckendorf's balancing act has been getting more and more precarious. Last week the Alleghany Corp, complained that Zeckendorf's Webb & Knapp, Inc, had failed to pay it $570,000 in back rent on some Denver properties, and rotund Bill Zeckendorf, 57, admitted that his $400 million...
...Zeckendorf has always depended for balance on his ability to shuffle his properties about like ballast, but the shuffling has suddenly gotten a lot harder. New York City's Freedomland, which Zeckendorf hoped would catch on as a kind of Disneyland East, has turned out to be a tunnel of horrors, lost several million dollars last year. His scheme for selling his hotels and leasing them back has backfired because of falling occupancy rates and higher costs. The softening real estate market has forced him to defer many of his plans to sell off Webb & Knapp buildings to raise...
...usual, Zeckendorf hopes to pull out of his present bind by selling off properties, but that will take some doing. Webb & Knapp's recently released 1962 annual report is a textbook of corporate debt and declining assets; its long-term debt is an astonishing 83% of its assets. Webb & Knapp's finances are sometimes so complicated that its own auditors are unable to unravel them. Two months ago, outside auditors had to be called in to double-check some calculations. The result: instead of the previously reported $5,000,000 profit for 1962's second and third...
Reached in New York, William Zeckendorf, Jr., of Zeckendorf Property Corporation, said his firm had been contacted "by a bidder interested in the land." However, Zeckendorf added, "we are not involved; we have a policy opposed to bidding against a University." Zeckendorf also stated that "the backer has an obligation to make his name public...
Unaccustomed to that sort of guerrilla warfare, the British retreated in some order. They still keep their position in Zeckendorf Property Corp., an affiliate that they insisted be spun off from Webb & Knapp in 1961, where they are joint partners with Webb & Knapp with 47.5% each (the remaining sliver belongs to Alcoa). Zeckendorf Property has under way 13 promising urban development projects, including Manhattan's Lincoln Towers, and Zeckendorf plans to continue linking up with partners to build mw development projects-but to keep ouTsiders out of Webb & Knapp. He hopes that assiduous real estate trading can keep...