The Kingdom of New York: Knights, Knaves, Billionaires, and Beauties in the City of Big Shots

by The New York Observer

  Why do you think you’ve been able to manage a business at a young age?

  My father instilled in my siblings and myself a good work ethic. He taught us not to take anything for granted. A day off from school wasn’t an excuse to bum around—it was a mandate to get up early and go to work with Dad and listen in on his meetings. Sundays, my friends would be at football games with their fathers; I’d be in the back of my dad’s car with my pair of mini construction boots, walking job sites. Later, when I was in college and I bought some buildings, I figured, “Well, I know everything there is to know about real estate; I’ve been exposed to it all my life.” Truth is, I didn’t know anything. The best thing that I learned from my father through these experiences is not solutions to individual problems; instead, he gave me a set of tools with which to deal with problems, and with which to analyze situations. And that tool kit is applicable to a lot of different situations.

  And my father gave me a real sense of personal accountability, in the sense that it’s so easy in life to pick a million reasons why a person’s doing well and you’re not, or why this or that happened—you’ve just got to say there are things that I can control and things that I can’t control. You can only worry about the things that you can control. However, you actually control more than you think you do. So if the newspaper doesn’t get out on time—yes, it’s because a series of people missed responsibilities. I can get mad at them, or I can say to myself, “This is actually my fault that this didn’t happen.” Then I could sit with them, create together a system and say, “This is how it’s going to be from here on. I’m going to monitor you and I’m going to reward and punish you accordingly, and we’re going to make it happen.” So instead of saying, “That’s your problem,” and yelling at individuals, I can say “This is my problem; let’s work to find a way to solve it.”

  Jared Kushner is the owner and publisher of The New York Observer.

  What were your first days at The Observer like?

  Everything was chaotic. I didn’t have an assistant, I was just learning the office, I was learning the people, and before you figure out the business side—the best thing to do is: listen. So I was trying to meet with everybody, understand what they were doing, what they thought of others, who’s bullshitting, who’s not bullshitting. I was working crazy hours, probably 15-, 20-hour days trying to get my arms around everything. I knew that the paper needed big changes and it had to start with the product, which had become dull from the uncertainty and lack of direction surrounding the business.

  Something came together one night. My father had extra tickets to the Yankees playoff game against the Tigers, and the banker who was going to use them canceled. So I called Peter Kaplan and said, “What are you doing tonight?” He told me he had to be home with his family, and when I told him I had two front-row seats for the Yankees, he said he would call me back in five minutes, as Lisa would understand. So we went to the game and we were sitting there, eating hot dogs and drinking beers, and it was drizzling and we start talking and it was just pouring. We didn’t realize it; we were just talking about the paper. At one point, I looked around and Yankee Stadium was empty because everyone was underneath the bleachers. We were the only two people in heavy rain, without coats, just sitting in the front row of Yankee Stadium, having beers and getting waterlogged. And we talked about what the paper could be and what it meant. We got on the same page that night and were able to spend the focused time together that really made a difference.

  Peter’s a phenomenal guy, and a guy who’s out of The New York Times’ mold, where journalism is incredibly important. I’ve had to shake him up a little bit and say, “Journalism’s important, but it’s also a business and we’ve got to run this in certain ways, and there’s this thing called the World Wide Web and it has actually some pretty interesting ramifications for newspapers.” Then we got to the redesign of the paper. I challenged Peter to show me what the next generation of the paper was to become. The paper had become stuck, in the sense that the articles were way too long, it wasn’t visually stimulating, and I thought that people today are more responsive to shorter, easier pieces like they get on the Internet. When you want to do something long, deliberately do that, but for the most part, stay within the mold and give the reader what they are looking for with minimum effort. Reading shouldn’t be hard. You should be able to lay things out, present things to people in a way that it’s easy. I said, “I want a paper that readers will be able to read and enjoy. I want a paper that advertisers will be proud to put their advertisements into.”

  The Observer had so much smartness to it, but it was putting forth the material in a way that was hard to decipher, and we didn’t have a design director. It was a rough diamond that needed to be cut properly. So we brought in Nancy Butkus, who’s absolutely brilliant, has a great eye and an aesthetic, and we worked with Nancy and Tom McGeveran to come up with the tabloid idea. I thought it was absolutely phenomenal. We were a bit nervous that people wouldn’t understand a classy tab, but we kept saying, “Think New York Post goes to college.” Visually it read much better, it gave us the ability to have a full back section, which we turned into our version of a sports page: real estate. Peter and Nancy were the brains behind the operation. I was more the critical pain in the ass. I would suggest things—“Let’s do it like this,” and they’d explain why you can’t do that in newspapers. And I’d say, “Well, let’s try that anyway.” We quickened the pace of the paper, more short pieces, more images, easier entrances to the pieces.

  To use a Peter phrase, we really changed the DNA of the product. We really crashed the staff and we went from producing 30 items a week to almost 50 items a week in the paper. The metabolism of the newsroom changed dramatically. From there on out it was a mandate to close the paper on time, on budget—which is something that they never were very good at before I got there. The first week we went out with the tabloid, Peter and I went hawking papers in the snow outside Grand Central Station. I realized where the pecking order of a newspaper fell when I was trying to hand out papers and the guy next to me was handing out NYC Condoms and he was getting a lot more takers than I was at first. We later had a big party at the Four Seasons for the staff to thank everybody.

  When we were designing the tabloid version, out of respect, I kept calling Arthur and saying, “Arthur, I really want to come and show you the new paper.” And he kept saying, “I’ll call you; we’ll make a date.” And he just wouldn’t make a date. So I said to Peter, “Why does Arthur not want to see me?” And Peter said, “Well, Jared, it’s kind of like meeting your ex-wife’s new husband. For Arthur, he loves the paper, he built it.” But Arthur called me the morning the tabloid version came out. He said, “Jared, I got it and I love it. I think it’s great.”

  Illustrated by Barry Blitt

  Can you think of editorials you’ve been excited about?

  We were the first New York paper to endorse Obama. It was hard for me to do, because I really like Hillary [Clinton] a lot and respect her, and she’s as stand-up as they come as a person and I really respect her. But I felt that Obama would be a great president for the country at the time. One Sunday I was in the office and I went across the street to get a sandwich, and there were about 200 kids in the freezing cold running around with “Obama ’08” T-shirts. And I said to myself, my generation is so apathetic about politics in America, it’s amazing that a politician could inspire this reaction.

  With the editorial page, we get calls both positive and negative about the stuff we write, and one of the great things about the paper is that it really does matter to people who are important throughout the city. When you get a call from the mayor or the police commissioner or the school chancellor or any other number of people, and it happens with frequency, it’s good to feel like you’ve got a voice. When I first bought the paper, I didn’t get any of these calls, and now they come weekly. For me, it’s a great barometer of the impact and influence that the paper has. Furthermore, editorial
ly I’m always proud when we do clever articles, like the one about how Saturday Night Live was freaking out because they didn’t have an African-American to play Obama in skits. It’s stuff like that that epitomizes how clever the paper is.

  The best thing about all the reporters we have is that they’re a lot smarter than I am. We have a great stable of young aggressive reporters. One time there was a reporter working somewhere else, whose stuff I liked, and I said, “Peter, we should look at hiring him.” And Peter said, “I would, but he violates the one principle I have: Against the hiring of assholes.” The culture of the paper is really unique, and I hope that we can keep that for many years to come.

  So in two years, you’ve remade, redesigned, refocused The Observer. Any last thoughts for today?

  The thing about the redesign that is special is that it really came from Peter’s brain, but I think that my youth and inexperience and desire to be open-minded is what beat it out of him. It was a great combination of my inexperience and Peter’s vast experience coming together to form something very special. For me, these past two years at the paper have been like going to publishing school. These are interesting times in the newspaper business, but with hard work, and continued devotion, I think we have the chance to come away from this turbulence stronger than ever.

  * * *

  Illustrated by Drew Friedman

  2008

  McCain running mate Sarah Palin fries feminist circuits

  Governor Eliot Spitzer ousted in prostitution scandal; David Paterson sworn in

  Kiss my Facebook! Proud media hermits resist online social networking site

  Movie star and erstwhile Brooklyn dad Heath Ledger found dead in Soho apartment

  Climate-change couture? Fashionistas don sleeveless coats, toeless boots, wool shorts

  Bear naked tradies: Wall Street crisis starts with sale of Stearns to JPMorgan

  Park Slope power moms pine for Mad Men’s Don Draper

  Weeknight update: Jimmy Fallon chosen as Conan O’Brien’s late-night successor

  City cheers as Barack Obama elected 44th president

  2008

  JANUARY 21, 2008 BY CHRIS SHOTT

  Travis Bickle Suite

  Moroccan Tiles, Tibetan Rugs, $725 Rooms, You Talkin’ to Me, Sir? Once Stars Closed Bars, But Robert De Niro, Jay-Z, Giorgio Armani Are in Warm Towel Rack, Cold Champagne, Full-Minibar Business

  ACTOR ROBERT DE NIRO USED to be just another famous guest in the world of swanky hotels.

  Now, he’s opening his own posh lodge in downtown Manhattan.

  Standing seven stories high at the corner of Greenwich and North Moore streets, Mr. De Niro’s roughly 75,000-square-foot Greenwich Hotel, scheduled to open this spring, will include all the world-class amenities that one might expect from a wealthy, two-time Oscar winner: Moroccan tiles, Tibetan rugs, French doors, Siberian oak floors—even a fancy Tuscan-style restaurant and chichi Shibui Spa.

  Room rates will be just as extravagant, starting at $725 per night.

  And people will probably pay it—if not for the stylish surroundings, then perhaps because every other decent place in town is either entirely booked or equally expensive.

  The annual average room rate in Manhattan has escalated more than 50 percent since 2003, to nearly $300 a night, according to the city’s latest figures.

  Mr. De Niro isn’t the only A-list luminary looking to get in on the lucrative action.

  Hip-hop mogul Shawn Carter, a.k.a. Jay-Z, perhaps foreshad-owed his own foray into the business when he first unleashed the celebratory rap lyric “after the show it’s the after-party and after the party is the hotel lobby.”

  Illustrated by Barry Blitt and Robert Grossman

  The Grammy-winning former president of Def Jam records and part-time party promoter announced this past December that he, too, is planning to build a new high-end hotel in Manhattan with the help of CB Developers.

  The reported $66.4 million, 150,000-square-foot project, located on the site of an old warehouse and parking garage on West 22nd Street, will serve as the flagship for a whole new chain of luxury lodgings called J Hotels. “Everything is in a very developmental stage,” noted Mr. Carter’s publicist, who declined further comment.

  Fashion designer Giorgio Armani, meanwhile, is searching for a chic spot to create a New York counterpart to his opulent Armani Hotel & Residences in Dubai.

  JANUARY 7, 2008 BY ELIOT BROWN

  ELIOT SPITZER, BUILDER THE GOVERNOR’S SIT-DOWN: HE SEES PENN STATION AS A KIND OF HELL

  The son of a real estate developer, Eliot Spitzer became governor one year ago this week. Since then, he’s yanked the plug on a large-scale Javits Center expansion; accepted five bids for the West Side rail yards; and negotiated insurance settlements at ground zero What’s next?

  THE CITY HAS ASKED the state to be a 50/50 partner with Governors Island, but last year the state gave less money than the city. Will the state be matching the city’s commitments this year?

  The deal is a 50/50 partnership, and we will do that in due course. I think the time lag until now has been the failure to define with any specificity what we’re doing. We’re fully funded for the next two years in terms of our ability to do the design work, the environmental reviews that we need. We’re going to be there doing our part. We have a $4.3 billion deficit right now, but in the long haul, we’ll be doing our part.

  About the Javits Center expansion—is a renovation of the facility the most likely option at this point? [Editor’s note: On Dec. 20, the day after this interview was conducted, Governor Spitzer’s development chief Patrick Foye said at a State Assembly hearing that the state would scrap any large-scale expansion plans for Javits.]

  This has been a difficult analytical process, primarily because the cost structure turned out to be very different from what we were told and what we expected…. The numbers were not what we were led to believe they were, and I don’t say that to impute anything improper; but the numbers—when people went back and we said, ‘Check the numbers, make sure we’re dealing with data that’s good’—the cost structure came in in a very different place than we anticipated, so that required some reexamination of some of the premises and some of the financing decisions that had been made.

  Illustrated by Barry Blitt and Robert Grossman

  Though isn’t an expansion a pretty strong driver of economic development?

  That’s actually something that’s been a topic of significant debate. I think for different cites, the role of [a] convention center plays a different role…. With hotel occupancy rates what they are, with the draw to New York what it is for people, tourists—44 million tourists a year, I think, is the number—it may be less critical that we actually have a convention center that is the largest in order to keep our hotels filled and to keep the tourists coming here.

  The city has tens of millions of square feet of commercial development planned, but we still have, overall, fewer jobs than in 2000. Do you think the city could be overdeveloping?

  I don’t want to quite say that if we build it, they will come; but, certainly, if we build the additional commercial space that we project we need, I have no doubt that it will be filled.

  Illustrated by Barry Blitt and Victor Juhasz

  JANUARY 21, 2008 BY GILLIAN REAGAN

  Facebook Holdouts: Proud Media Hermits, Clutching At Privacy

  There are still a few proud New Yorkers who resist conducting their social lives online, putting up their pictures and preferences for all the world to peruse. Herein, they explain their rationale

  IT SEEMS THAT MOST URBAN SOPHISTICATES these days, from politicians and celebrities to coworkers, have a profile on Facebook, the social networking Web site. The C.I.A., I.R.S., Time Inc., even MySpace, Facebook’s ostensible competition, have job networks there. To the site’s enthusiasts—and there are many; the site has 60 million users so far, with 200 million projected by the end of the year—there is no reason not to partake.

  But
not all of us are signing up: clicking on that grassy-green button that allows one to join a so-called “exclusive club” in which one may receive pertinent updates of some “friend’s” baby pictures, a new veggie burger someone tried last night, and who is slinging electronic “poo” at whose profile.

  JANUARY 28, 2008 BY SPENCER MORGAN

  HEATH LEDGER, 1979-2008

  ON THE AFTERNOON OF TUESDAY, JAN. 22, THE ACTOR HEATH LEDGER was found dead, reportedly in a fourth-floor apartment at 421 Broome Street between Crosby and Lafayette, with pills near his body, by a masseuse and the housekeeper who’d admitted her.

  By around 6:30 p.m., barricades that had been erected around the building to keep gawkers and fans clear were being removed, and the body had been taken out of the building by the county medical examiner.

  Mr. Ledger leaves behind a 2-year-old daughter, Matilda, with former fiancée Michelle Williams. An actor from a young age, he got his Hollywood break in the teen flick 10 Things I Hate About You, and an Oscar nomination for his performance in the 2005 film Brokeback Mountain. He settled temporarily with Ms. Williams in Boerum Hill and joined in local protests against the development of the Atlantic Yards by real estate developer Bruce Ratner.

  Mr. Ledger’s last big role: the Joker in The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan’s second installment of the Batman series, slated for release on July 18 by Warner Bros. “Our hearts go out to his family and friends,” said studio brass in another statement.