Overview

This is a revealing true business story centred on the greedy international tycoons who declared war over the world's hottest property - the Empire State Building. It reveals the 11th hour deal-breaking secrets; a tale of international competition, cross-cultural misunderstanding, family rivalry, and raw greed. Before it is over, several participants will go to prison, and a surprise death and legal standoff will place the property under the control of the unlikeliest character.

Full Product Details

9780471403944

Table of Contents

Reviews

If you thought King Kong was the only monster who laid claim to the Empire State Building, guess again. This highly entertaining, well-researched volume about the all-out, high-stakes battle in the 1980s and '90s over ownership and control of one of Manhattan's premier edifices is a cross between great business writing and even greater gossip. Built in 1929, the Empire State Building was bought in 1961 by Henry Helmsley and Lawrence Wein, who quickly resold it but retained a 114-year lease. When the Helmsley empire began to crack in the late 1980s (wife Leone went to jail for tax fraud), the building was nearly bought by jailed Japanese investor Hideki Yokoi, who used his illegitimate daughter, Kiiko Nakahara, and her husband, Jean-Paul Renoir, as fronts. When that deal fell through, Nakahara and Renoir secretly bought the building themselves, entering a deal with Donald Trump to try to shake the Helmsley lease. After Nakahara and Renoir were jailed in France in 1996 for the alleged theft of real estate, Trump and Leona Helmsley entered into a gigantic legal and public relations battle for control of the building. Pacelle, who writes for the Wall Street Journal, is scrupulous in detailing the legal angles and how shifts in the world economy and U.S. business both affected and were affected by all this skullduggery. He also has great fun with the bizarre cast of characters, who plot and connive against one another in what reads like a cross between film noir and a Harold Robbins novel. In the end, though, the Empire State Building remains a beauty, not destroyed by these beasts. (Nov.)<br> Forecast: Expect solid sales in the Empire State and among real estate mavens, boosted by anexcerpt in the Wall Street Journal. ( Publishers Weekly, July 23, 2001) <p> Although New York City's Empire State Building is no longer the tallest building in the world, it unquestionable stands tall in the hearts and minds of the legions of tourists who flock to it each day. How did this building enter the realm of pop-culture iconography? Empire, a much-needed chronicle of the most famous skyscraper in the world, answers that question and more. Pacelle, who covered the recent ownership struggle for the building in the Wall Street Journal, describes its allure, indicating how it has become the ultimate prize in the commercial real estate ownership sweepstakes, possibly in the world. An eccentric Japanese billionaire, Hideki Yokoi, and various members of his extended family feature prominently in the scenario, but the cast of characters also includes such real estate tycoons as Donald Trump and Leona Helmsley. Although the story (and litigation trail) can get a bit complicated, it's vividly told and often gripping, evoking the best and worst in all of the participants. More history of the building and a clearer ownership schematic would have been helpful, but Pacelle clearly delivers the goods. Highly recommended for larger public libraries. -Richard Drezen, Washington Post, New York City Bureau. ( Library Journal, September 1, 2001) <p> By tragic default, the Empire State Building has regained its rank as the tallest building in New York City. The restored status, of course, results form the cataclysmic terrorist attack that obliterated the World Trade Center in September. The earth's tallest structure from 1931 until the 1972 opening of the first of the World Trade Center'stwin towers, the Empire State Building not only altered but defined New York City's skyline.<br> Although other construction projects in this country and abroad subsequently stretched higher into the sky, the Empire State Building remains in the company of the Great Wall of China and the Eiffel Tower as one of the most recognizable structures on the planet. In Empire, completed before September's attack, author Mitchell Pacelle delivers a thrilling history of the mythic building, which has drawn its share of suicidal souls and was the site of a 1997 shooting rampage by a Palestinian visitor.<br> The leveling of the World Trade Center by two aircraft recalled the day in 1945 when the Empire State Building itself was struck by an Army Air Corps B-25 bomber lost in dense fog. Fourteen lives were lost, the fire was extinguished in four hours, and the building opened for business two days later, thus erasing any questions about its structural integrity.<br> Pacelle recounts these and other sensational moments in the life of the building, but the real strength of his book lies in the story of the infighting and negotiating for ownership of the skyscraper--the stuff that might land on a newspaper's business pages rather than on the front page. In much more than a simple story about ambitious architecture, Pacelle, a Wall Street Journal reporter, describes what the Empire State Building's 3.8 million annual visitors cannot see from its observation deck, and some of his disclosures are bewildering. For instance, real estate tycoon Donald Trump finagled half-interest in the partnership that owns the building without putting up a nickel. The owners have no clout in operating the building andreceive only a puny percent of its income, most of which goes to a lease-holding group controlled by Trump rival Leona Helmsley. For most of the last decade, nobody knew who really owned the skyscraper.<br> Trump's involvement traces to Hideki Yokoi, an entrepreneur with an unsavory background who built a multi-billion dollar empire in Japan's post-war boom. In a day when cramped, two-bedroom apartments in Tokyo were selling for $1 million, Yokoi went on an international buying binge and acquired the Manhattan colossus--the ultimate architectural trophy--for $42 million. Kiiko, his illegitimate daughter, scouted and nailed down properties for Yokoi around the world, but a series of acquisitions ended in a feud in which he accused her of stealing the 102-story structure for him.<br> Yokoi, who ordered his trousers sewn with the wallet pocket in the front to foil pickpockets, saw his dynasty collapse in Japan's financial tailspin before he died in 1998 at age 85. But the animosity between Helmsley and Trump, who had been enlisted by Kiiko in a failed attempt to break Helmsley's lease, continues to this day. Few principals emerged unscathed--some were jailed--from what Empire carefully documents as a story of greed, ego and vengeance in the world's largest Monopoly game. <br> In the hands of another writer, the financial and legal maneuverings--a complicated but critical part of the building's history--might confuse the reader, but Pacelle, mercifully, has made it easy for those of us without accounting and law degrees to understand. Some day the story will demand a sequel, and Pacelle, winner of the New York Press Club's Business Reporting Award in 1999, is the one who ought to write it. ( Bookpage, November 2001) <p> STREET FIGHT FOR A SKYSCRAPER<br> Real estate can be a sleazy business-as many reporters who cover it will attest. And it seems that the bigger the building and the bigger the city, the sleazier it gets. This may explain the plethora of family feuds, legal wrangling, political posturing, financial high jinks, and lost fortunes that are so expertly and enjoyably described in Empire: A Tale of Obsession, Betrayal, and the Battle for an Ammcan Icon, a biography of the Empire State Building by Wall Street Journal reporter Mitchell Pacelle.<br> The book appears at a time of morbid fascination with big buildings, following the attack that leveled the World Trade Center. Giants such as the Twin Towers or the Empire State are not attractive just to terrorists, however. Their size, visibility, and prestige make them targets also for some of the most ruthless and driven business people in the world. If Pacelle's prose does not always rise to the heights of the skyscraper whose history it describes the book nonetheless manages to bring alive in great detail the vivid characters who built it, bought it, and battled for its control. In doing so, Empire also gives the reader an overview of one of the greatest urban generators of wealth: real estate. What oil is to Texas, real estate is to New York, and the city's real estate pooh-bahs, such as Donald Trump, Leona Helmsley, and Peter Malkin, all play a part in the story of the Empire State Building.<br> Readers may feel they already know enough about some of these people. We've all heard how the tabloids dubbed Leona Helmsley the Queen of Mean, and that at her 1989 trial for tax evasion, her housekeeper quoted her as saying that paying taxes was just for the little people. It's common knowledge that Donald Trump has an outsize ego and outlandish ideas: He considered remaking the upper floors of the Empire State into luxury condos. So, wisely, Pacelle shapes his story around a less well-known figure: Hideki Yokoi, a Japanese businessman with a penchant for collecting trophy properties, including French chateaus, English castles, and, of course, the Empire State Building. According to the author, Yokoi used a front man to buy the property from Prudential Insurance Co. in 1991 for only $42 million. His illegitimate daughter, Kiiko Nakahara, would later say that he bought it for her. The low price was the result of a 1961 decision by Prudential to lease the entire building to a partnership--ultimately controlled by Harry and Leona Helmsley and Peter Malkin--for a period of 114 years. Annual rent for that lease is currently, only $1.9 million. Unencumbered by that lease, the building could be worth $1 billion.<br> Yokoi's fortune worsened in the early 1990s, however, when the Japanese economic bubble burst. That resulted in an alliance with Trump, who Yokoi hoped would be able to raise cash from the Empire State by devising a way to break the lease--and thus save Yokoi's remaining properties in Japan and Europe.<br> But the purchase is only the beginning of what turns into a lengthy, globe-spanning soap opera. HarryHe

Author Information

MITCHELL PACELLE is an award-winning journalist who has covered business for The Wall Street Journal over the past eleven years. He has won the New York Press Club's 1999 Business Reporting award, was a finalist for UCLA's Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, and was part of the team nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the collapse of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available