LEAVING AGAIN (#82): The grand opening Celebration for City Center was on May 10, 1985. It was a big night and I felt I was celebrating the biggest thing I had ever done in my life. Influenced by my good friend Vince Giordano and his 12 piece big band, I booked the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra for the entertainment.
Against Wittner’s wishes, the Celebration was dedicated to Bob James and Henry Girard, two of our original partners who had died in 1983. Wittner received so many compliments on “his idea”, that he finally quit complaining.
The future seemed bright. The hard work seemed like it was paying off. Pier park was on the horizon.
City Center had its controversies. Wittner had persuaded Alan Harvey, St. Petersburg City Manager from 1980 to 1985, to invest in the Presidential Inn. Alan thought he was helping provide an amenity the city needed, “The St. Petersburg Times” thought there was a conflict of interest since the city built the parking garage for City Center. Alan had to resign. What a shame. He was a good guy just trying to help the city.
I had been working closely with the owners of the Wine Cellar Restaurant for a restaurant of the first floor of the South Tower. We spent hours with Sharyn Jacobsen designing a restaurant with a striking Art Deco theme. It would have been stunning. The lease was negotiated, all of the furnishings and equipment had been picked. Three days before the lease was to be signed, Wittner decided the owners had to personally guarantee the 10 year lease. I told him no attorney would let the owners sign a personal guarantee for something as risky as a new restaurant in downtown St. Petersburg when redevelopment was only beginning.
I was meeting the owners at one of their houses on a Sunday. I remember it was the day of my God Daughter’s Christening. I had to leave for the meeting and couldn’t go to lunch with Linda and the family. Their lawyers had already approved the lease and I had said I was brining a bottle of Dom Perignon to celebrate.
Wittner thought we could just slip in the Personal Guarantee at the last minute, they might not even notice. I couldn’t try that. The first thing I did when I arrived was to point out the addition of the Personal Guarantee and tell them they shouldn’t sign until they talked with their lawyer. They called their lawyer and he said there could be no Personal Guarantee. The entire deal fell through, as I knew it would. I kept the bottle of Champagne.
Mary Rainey, wife of County Commissioner Chuck Rainey, opened Rainey Travel on the first floor of City Center. Since this was a new and unproven location, there was a 50% reduction in the rent for the first year. Before the year was up, Chuck Rainey came to see me. He shut the door to my office and said, “Wittner hasn’t come through with the business he promised. Don’t even think about raising Mary’s rent. I have lawyers that work for me for free. They’ll keep Wittner tied up for years.” I said, “I understand Commissioner Rainey. There shouldn’t be any problem.” I talked to Wittner and he listened to me. The rent stayed as it was for the balance of the 3 year term of the lease. I think Wittner was a bit scared of Chuck, and wisely so.
While City Center was still in the design phase, 3 hurricanes hit Houston in 1980 and 1981, causing extensive damage to high-rise office buildings. Lee Regulski decide we need to take precautions and added white metal bands at the joints of the white panels that were a striking design feature. I always hated that. To me, the bands gave the panels a dimpled look. Instead of striking glass and white marble buildings, I was always reminded of white aluminum trailers. That still bothers me, but not nearly as much as what happened when City Center was sold.
PIER PARK was a project that I loved, and I was to be the Project Manager if we could pull it off. James W. Rouse and The Rouse Company had opened Harborplace in Baltimore in 1980 and Rouse was convinced that the St. Petersburg waterfront was the perfect location for the next Harborplace. The Rouse Company would be Wittner’s partner, financing would be no problem, and I would be the Project Manager. There was a hitch. St. Petersburg’s downtown waterfront had been wisely protected and the necessary lease would require voter approval in a referendum.
“The St. Petersburg Times” had been trying to get rid of Albert Whitted Airport on the waterfront for years, so the land could be used for the expansion the St. Petersburg campus of the University of South Florida. If Pier Park were approved, it would be harder to get rid of the Airport, so the “Times” in their way campaigned against Pier Park. Despite overwhelming support from the downtown business community, Pier Park narrowly lost the referendum, and I was soon to be out of a job.
THE SALE OF CITY CENTER was an incredible deal for Wittner and the tenant partners. The sales price was computed on existing rents, with those rents projected to increase based on the rate of inflation. The Buyers never figured out that the rents were artificially high because the tenants were part owners, and that once existing leases expired, they would be renew for much less. The building was sold for $27 Million using my Broker’s license. I had worked for Wittner for six years, with his arm around my shoulder telling me that we were working for low salaries, but a big bonus. For 6 years I listened to that him brag that “People are our most important product.”
A Facebook friend with a law firm in City Center invested $5,000 in the limited partnership, thinking it would be a tax write off. His return was $38,000. I was stunned when Wittner told me my bonus was $10,000.
Wittner said he was sorry we had a misunderstanding. He offered me a chance for a big bonus for repeating a City Center Project in Sarasota. “This time we’ll put it in writing!” He explained that my bonus was more than Ira Mitlin’s bonus “because we used your Broker’s license.”
I took a trick from Chuck Rainey’s playbook. I closed the double doors to Wittner’s big office, put my hands on his desk and leaned in as close as I could, and said through gritted teeth, “You are too cheap for your own good. I can’t believe you are screwing Ira too. I quit and I am going to sue your sorry ass!”
My bonus was increased to $19,361 on the condition that part of it be used to pay off the note I had signed for the Wittner Center Crossroads investment discussed below. Wittner had not insisted on cash, but had let his employees sign a Promissory Note. I also had to agree to come to a going away party to show there were “No hard feelings.”
WITTNER CENTER CROSSROADS was a 5 story office building in a great location on 66th Street North, just south of 22nd Street and the Tyrone Square Mall. It was designed during the energy crisis to be energy efficient. The windows ran vertically and were shaded by a design feature of a fin that ran on each side. It was attractive from the outside, but a bit claustrophobic on the inside. Your eyes are used to a wide horizontal window, not a narrow vertical window.
WITTNER cashed out of the building by “allowing” his employees and tenants to buy the building through a limited partnership. Once he had his money, Wittner didn’t care. He refused to lower rents to market rate. Rather than a full building at market rates, we had an empty building asking high rents.
When the full provisions of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 came into effect, only people actually in the real estate business (like Wittner or trump) could write off their total losses from a property. The rest of us were limited to a total of $3,000 per year in write offs. The Wittner Center Crossroads went into foreclosure and get this! We not only lost our total investment, but through recapature, we had to pay taxes on our prorate share of its mortgage. I had kept this asset through the divorce, Linda didn’t want it, so I not only lost my $11,875 investment, but I had to pay an additional $2,000 in taxes. That was a lot of money back then.
After the loss of my investment upon the foreclosure of the Wittner Center Crossroads and after paying income tax on the recapture of my share of its mortgage, my City Center bonus netted $5486. Wittner was now a very rich man, but my bonus for 6 years of hard work was less than $1,000 a year. Looking back, I honestly still can’t believe it. Poor Ira Mitlin. I loved him as much as I hated Wittner. We should have asked Chuck Rainey for the names of his lawyers.
Tom Paxton just posthumously won two 2021 Grammy Awards for the last song he wrote, “I Remember Everything.” In 2018 he won a Grammy for “When I Get To Heaven”, which has a line in which he says he is going to “forgive everybody ever done me any harm.” I seriously started to think about that when I made the Musical Documentary “John Prine: The Gulfport Years 2005 – 2020.
I used to have a list. Now Wittner is the only one I knew personally that I can’t and will never forgive. Not only for what he did to Linda and me, but ever more for what he did to Ira and Beverly Mitlin. That SOB Wittner not only cheated Ira on his City Center bonus and on Crossroads, but let him into another “deal” that ended up costing Ira much more money. I know that Ira never forgave Wittner either.
Cathy once joked, “Oh, Wittner’s first name is Ted. I thought it was That Son Of A Bitch.” After the Kavanaugh hearings I decided I would no longer use that or a similar term, Mother F@@ker, because I felt they were sexist slurs against all woman. Then the problem was, what to use its place? Big Dick almost seemed like a compliment that I was sure Wittner couldn’t measure up to. Poopy pants seemed too polite. I finally decided on “That Piece of SH@T Wittner”, although Turd Wittner was a close second.
