It was in 1955, for instance, that I met with a singularly impressive man, and later a most loyal friend, Robert R. Young, the fighting financier who headed the Alleghany Corporation. In 1956 Alleghany lent us twenty million dollars. It was this money that permitted us to go on with our Denver project, as well as others that might otherwise have been washed out. But when Young first met me, it was his railroad chief, Alfred Perlman, who was able to tell him something of who we were. This was because of what we had done and were doing in Perlman's home town, Denver.
At this time I was putting in forty thousand miles or more of traveling per year. Much of this was in our own plane, for by 1957 we owned and operated a DC-3 picked up from Robert Young. At first we took over the plane as a favor to Young; some of his dissident stockholders had attacked his having a company plane as an extravagance, although today, of course, it is considered a necessary convenience for a man in his position. We gave Mr. Young full access to the plane whenever he needed it, but in the course of trips up, down, and across the Atlantic seaboard as well as to the Midwest, that hard-worked plane became well-nigh indispensable to Webb & Knapp. Our pilot was Donald Gex, a competent and gracious gentleman who now flies for Peter Grace of W. R. Grace and Company. With its small galley, well-stocked bar, and comfortable office space, our DC-3 provided an excellent way of doing business while getting to where business was. On trips to Denver, which was far for a slow-moving DC-3, I traveled by faster, if less commodious, commercial airlines but even here there was a certain pattern to my trips. Normally I was accompanied by two, three, or more aides. We went first class. If, as often happened, there was an empty seat beside me, I would dump any papers I was carrying on this seat, making it a form of office desk, or I might call one or another associate over to sit beside me for a talk, the stewardesses, meanwhile, seeing to it that our highball glasses did not get too dry.
On arrival at Denver our party would be greeted at the gates by a group from our local office plus a number of reporters and photographers and maybe one or two business people with whom we were currently dealing. Striding along with this group in tow while playing a game of queries and quips with newsmen, we usually stopped for a while at the airline's hospitality room for a more formal press conference. Then, out in front of the terminal I would climb into the waiting limousine, chauffeured by the driver-superintendent who was always assigned to me, and we would wheel into town.
One particularly useful aspect of being in Denver is that I could rise at six or seven in the morning and, because of the difference between Mountain and Eastern time, call New York to catch people just as they came into their offices, but in Denver official business began with an eight-o'clock breakfast and command performance for our staff. Here, over a breakfast of melon or grapefruit, scrambled eggs and bacon, and English muffins, topped off with a spoonful of honey, we would go over details of local operations and get the word on any new development in town. As word of our business breakfasts got around, more and more Denver realtors and businessmen made it a habit to drop in on us. These extended sessions might wind up at 9:30 or later, after which I would get out to the building site or visit around town. Our local people were trained and primed so they were aware who owned what, who their bankers were, who was buying, who was selling, and what the status was of any major and many minor properties in town. A trip through town with them thus became an automatic real-estate reconnaissance trip. Not uncommonly I would be asked to make a speech to some local group; sometimes there was some small ceremony at one of our own properties. Webb & Knapp had so many projects going in so many other places that I seldom stayed in Denver more than one or two days at a stretch, and often, if running late, we (courtesy of the mayor's office) would leave town for the airport behind a pair of siren-equipped motorcycle troopers.
It was in the course of one such visit in 1956 that, while sitting in my hotel room getting a haircut, I bought half-ownership of the new local television station, KBTV, from its promoter-owner, John Mullins. Mullins is a shrewd, hard-line show-business type from the West Coast who was easy to get along with. Though the station seemed promising, he could raise no local money, which came as no surprise to me. He seemed to know his field and have plenty of imagination. So I joined him as a partner for $750,000 in what proved a very good investment. John drew me into a number of convivial escapades of one type or another.
One of my Denver forays ended up on the front page of The Rocky Mountain News, which, ironically, did not perturb me but did disturb and annoy Palmer Hoyt, publisher of The Denver Post. Since this incident has become part of the underground legend, I may as well tell it.
Newspapers and local publicity have always been important to Webb & Knapp operations, and though we had started out with opposition, dislike, and distrust on the part of The Denver Post, we always got generous support from even-tempered Jack Foster of The Rocky Mountain News, for whose backing I was grateful.
I also struck up a good friendship with the town's third force in publishing, Gene Cervi, founder and publisher of Cervi's Rocky Mountain Journal. Cervi is a delightful and spontaneous companion, and the very caricature of a crusading, liberal publisher. If hemlock were still in fashion, a certain percentage of Denver's would-be autocrats would be all for having Gene quaff a cup just for his health, but their votes would be negated by the others, who were too curious to see what he might say next. Almost by definition, this rebel with two hundred causes was on the outs with the town's inner circle. Seeing in me a challenger of local vested interests as well as of Denver's status quo, he gave us strong support. This backing did me no good among local establishment circles, where from time to time we endeavored to develop a little financial backing, but I was glad of it nonetheless, and Cervi's weekly paper did help counteract the bad image of us that the Post for so long projected to the general public.
The Post, in time, underwent a turnabout in its attitude toward Webb & Knapp. Palmer Hoyt, one of the finest newspapermen in the country, had been extremely skeptical of me, but we wound up great friends with a mutual feeling of respect, because Webb & Knapp did deliver to Denver the things he hoped we would, but didn't believe we could. At first, I am sure, he could not help but be influenced in his judgments by the people he associated with socially, but eventually he saw that they were the ones who should be criticized and that we were the ones who should be supported. He courageously reversed his stand. The change began when he realized that I would put up a hotel, though I inadvertently put this developing friendship to the test while playing hooky with my TV partner, John Mullins.
Once a year The Denver Post collects a chosen assortment of Western businessmen, politicians, and personalities, hires a train, and takes its guests up to Cheyenne, Wyoming, for a gala "Frontier Days" festival. Through a careful selection of guests, this junket has over the years become a prestigious affair and a great promotional device for The Denver Post. Palmer Hoyt graciously invited me to attend this gathering of regional influentials. I was then pouring millions of dollars into Denver developments to create a renaissance in that town, while developing dozens of other projects around the country. I'm not sure if I was there as a local businessman or outside luminary, but Palmer, now an ally, wanted to expose me to leading regional business people, and vice versa. Because I was grateful for his efforts and because I always enjoy that kind of gathering, I was delighted to accept. I showed up for the trip in Western costume complete with a red vest, my grandfather's Colt .45 pistols, and a Rocky Mountain miner's thirst.
We had a convivial trip up to Cheyenne, but pleading the fact I had to get back to New York for a conference at J. P. Morgan's, I did not stay for the whole of the program. Instead, I caught a flight back to Denver where I would take the plane to New York. Now, as it happened, a man who sat next to me on the plane to Denver was Grady Maples, a local radio announcer. We got to talking, and he mentioned that a nudist group were holding a wedding ceremony that day. He was to cover the event and asked if I wanted to s
top by with him. Life is short, its possible experiences many, and since I had time between planes, I agreed on impulse. We arrived on the scene, I still in my cowboy dress, to find the wedding party present in the altogether. The local photographers spotted me, but I declined to have any pictures taken. I jocularly announced that I would not disrobe and was in fact there as a member of the working press—as consultant to Grady. It turned out, however, that the one ringer in this nudist group was a genuine pro, "$50,000 Treasure Chest, Rose Lee," a professional stripper so named because she had insured each of her beauties for fifty thousand dollars. Miss Lee was not averse to publicity: that's why she was there. While I was talking to someone, I heard my name called, turned around, and was confronted by a "$50,000 Treasure Chest" and a battery of cameras.
Those pictures got to New York as fast as I did, and the next day I had been preceded into Morgan's executive offices by an appropriately illustrated story in the newspapers. A part of me figured, "Here is where every bank note is called and I'm out of business." Every major officer of the bank, including old man Whitney, Henry Alexander, and Tommy Lamont, arrived, and I thought they all were there to get the money I owed them before I could get out of the room. As it turned out, they were only gathering around to chuckle over my personal description of the happening out West. I had no problem whatever in renewing the notes and in actually getting some more money.
In Denver, the Post carried a sober account of its Frontier Days get-together in Wyoming, of which I was an announced honored guest, while The Rocky Mountain News gleefully produced a picture of me a la cowboy and some of the wedding guests al fresco.
Palmer Hoyt was not amused. I must admit that I was more amused than upset by the juxtaposition of my presence at two such different forms of tribal rites in modern-day America; I knew that once the tut-tutting died down, nothing important would be changed in my life or in Denver's future, which was looking most rosy.
▪ 11 ▪From Court House Square to Zeckendorf Plaza and Back
BY THE mid-1950's a building boom, instigated by us, was under wayin Denver. It began quite soon after our first "discovery" of the town in the late 1940's. The Texas Murchisons, in the form of John Murchison, followed us there. At one point he tried to buy Court House Square from me, but I was not selling, and what he did instead was buy up the choice site of the Denver Club at Seventeenth and Glenarm Place for an office building. The Denver Club, established in a fine old red-sandstone building with a pleasant lawn around it, was controlled by the old bulls who owned and ran the town. As a group they were much against change, and suspicious of outsiders, but Murchison's Texas money evidently dazzled them. For various considerations plus a ninety-nine-year lease on the top two floors of the proposed new Murchison building, the Denver Club gave up their distinctive quarters to the demolition crews.
Sad to say, the once exclusive and distinctive Denver Club has over the years been losing its position to other luncheon clubs in newer, better buildings, for, as I had predicted, new structures continued to rise in downtown Denver. After Mile High Center was finished, the newly merged Denver U.S. National Bank moved its headquarters to our new site and subsequently moved to the forefront of the local bank industry. Not to be outdone, the staid First National Bank moved into the office building that the Murchisons put up. In typical bankers' follow-the-leader style, the Colorado Federal Savings and Loan and the Western Federal Savings and Loan also moved into new buildings. More important, in some senses, some 153 oil companies eventually set up offices in Denver, attracting yet more services and industries to the town and bringing in independent money, new jobs, and new attitudes to once-closed-in Denver. It was not, however, till I finished the project at Court House Square—by putting up a modern convention hotel—that the town could be considered metropolitan. Getting that hotel started out as a problem, became a preoccupation, and finally turned into a near-obsession.
At first the immediate problems of the project were minor, and some were ludicrous. At one point, for instance, the Walter S. Cheesman Realty Company, owners of the Republic Building just across Sixteenth Street from the square, agitated to have us take out special insurance in case the great hole we had dug should swallow their building. Most of us were amused at this case of highly placed ignorance. At another point in the construction process we faced a strike, but strikes are not uncommon in construction projects. Potentially more serious was a local law prohibiting the sale of liquor within five hundred feet of a university. A hotel that can't sell liquor can't survive, and since Denver University held property just across the street from the proposed hotel, this could put us out of business. Fortunately, Colorado's governor, Edwin C. Johnson, although a dry, was too much of a realist and a politician not to see that there had to be a change in the law. With the help of the lieutenant governor we were able to get remedial legislation that permitted liquor at the hotel.
A quite expensive obstacle, in terms of cash outlay, followed the signing of the May Company–Daniels and Fisher deal when we turned Court House Square over to the department store. I then began planning for the hotel to rise alongside Court Place. When in my eagerness to get on with the project I let word of this slip out, the extra properties we needed, owned by Denver University, were under negotiation in the $250,000 range. Immediately, the school's administrators jacked their asking price to $600,000. It was only when I seriously threatened to walk out on the whole deal that they agreed on a final price of $500,000 for the properties. From a narrow, merchant's point of view, the university's opportunistic sharp trading was excusable and in some eyes laudable, but this local highwayman's toll was, in a sense, my own doing. In Denver, I should by now have known what to expect.
A far more irritating roadblock was thrown up in front of us by our friendly local banker, old John Evans of the First National Bank. When we were first buying property on Court Place, we took over some mortgages held by the First National. The entrances and exits to the great two thousand-car garage we planned to construct under Court House Square were designed to pass below the street, under the hotel site alongside Court Place, and then up to the street level. As part of the strictly private financing of this great project, we had arranged a loan from the Chase Manhattan Bank for the garage. Part of the boilerplate, or small print, of the loan agreement asked for a right of easement from the basic mortgage holder of the property, the First National Bank of Denver. This meant that if anything went wrong with our developing the property and Chase had to take over, they would still have access to the entrances and exits to the underground garage. This is a fairly common, almost routine, courtesy that mortgage holders normally give without a second thought. Francis X. Wallace, our legal representative and office chief in Denver, called a senior bank officer of the First National about this matter and received an oral okay. But when Wallace got over to the bank with the necessary papers, the highly embarrassed executive recanted; John Evans of the First National would not grant his fellow bankers at the Chase rights of easement over that property.
When Wallace telephoned me with this present from Denver's leading businessman, I snapped, "Well, you tell that so-and-so that . . . ," but Wallace, who has a sense of humor, said, "Bill, I'm in Evans' office, you tell him," which, with a few modifications, I did. Of course, this blocking from a petty local banker could not stop us. Somewhere I dug up the cash to buy out these stick-in-the-craw mortgages, and we got on with the job of building Denver a hotel.
We needed an affiliation with a national hotel chain in order to get proper financing for finishing the project. Through 1957 we talked of setting up a Webb & Knapp hotel, but since the chain we were building up was largely a New York one, mortgagers were not willing to offer as much financing as we needed. The Equitable Insurance Company, for instance, at one point offered sixteen million dollars, but I knew we could do better, and kept trying.
Finally, in early 1958, with the hotel now rising four stories above ground and our out-of-pocket expenditures at the e
leven-million-dollar level, I persuaded Conrad Hilton to take up the lease for the hotel by offering him a most attractive deal. After making a number of changes in I. M. Pei's plans in respect to size of rooms and layout of kitchens and public rooms, he signed. On the strength of this lease, the Prudential Life Insurance Company gave us twenty-two million dollars in financing. Now we could move with dispatch on the hotel. Move we did, and at last, after almost fifteen years, our Denver ventures were coming to a close.
While the hotel was under construction, we sold Mile High Center to its principal tenant, the Denver U.S. National Bank, for sixteen million dollars. Meanwhile, I had tried to get the May Company to ease the terms in our agreement, which stated that when we took over their building at Sixteenth and Champa streets for two million dollars, we could not lease to another department store. The May Company adamantly refused to change its contract and waited for their two-million-dollar cash payment to come due. We didn't have the money, nor had we a snowflake's chance of raising anything close to it. With Webb & Knapp strained tight for cash, the problem of where to scrape up two million more dollars hung over my desk during the day, followed me to bed at night, and greeted me when I woke up. But one morning at six o'clock my bedside phone rang. It was Wallace, our Denver lawyer, saying, "Bill, you don't have to take that building."
"How is that?" I wanted to know.
"There is a lousy two-foot overhang on the edge of the lot. It clouds the title, and that is just enough so we can refuse the building."
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