1674-9 Tony Goldman 251 of 283, 2 Terms
mh NEW YORKER GAMBLES ON REVIVING SOUTH BEACH 09/15/1986
THE MIAMI HERALD
Copyright (c) 1986, The Miami Herald
DATE: Monday, September 15, 1986 EDITION: FINAL
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 9BM LENGTH: 148 lines
ILLUSTRATION: photo: Tony GOLDMAN
SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: DORY OWENS Herald Business Writer 024
MEMO: IN THE SPOTLIGHT CJ�
NEW YORKER GAMBLES ON REVIVING SOUTH BEACH
WHEN Tony Goldman arrived in Miami 2 1/2 years ago, he strolled into
Coconut Grove Realty wearing faded denim 3ea , a T-shirt and sunglasses.
The New York investor had been priced out of his hometown and wanted to
tour the Grove with Vincent Pastore, part owner of the realty company. He
proceeded to shop for real estate the way other people shop for produce at the
corner grocery.
"I'll take that one, " he told Pastore. "And that one. And that one." His
$2.3 million investment bought him Ted Stahl Interiors, Coconuts, the Peacock
Cafe and the neighboring Masonic Lodge, all in the heart of the village.
Two years later, Goldman asked Pastore to show him the Art Deco district
on South Miami Beach, which he had learned about through friends. After an
initial gasp of excitement as they rounded the corner of Fifth Street onto
Ocean Drive, Goldman launched another buying spree.
/D-/ He bought three hotels, a vacant lot and an apartment building on Ocean
rive and another building on Collins Avenue at a total cost of $2.6 million.
While he intends to remain only a landlord in the Grove, he claims he
will be a major force in the rebirth of Ocean Drive. And there is considerable
speculation that he is right.
"When you sell to a real estate investor, you don't see that much change,
usually just the renovation of a building, " Pastore said. "Tony is a real
estate investor, but he's also an art collector, a restaurateur and has
entertainment (expertise) to boot. With that you get a lot more than roof
patching. "
"Goldman's track record speaks for itself. The man worked magic in the
SoHo district of New York, " said Woody Graber, spokesman for the Miami Beach
Development Corp., a nonprofit group charged with stimulating economic growth
in the area south of Dade Boulevard.
"There are people with vision and there are people who follow people with
vision. Tony Goldman is a person with
vision, " Graber said. His comment was not made without cause.
Goldman, 42, is intense, bubbling with ideas, wit and comments on life.
He turned five brownstones on Manhattan's West Side into a fortune by buying
low and selling high. He transformed a garbage truck garage in SoHo into a
restaurant, wine bar and nightclub. He displayed the work of local artists on
a graffiti wall nearby and called it public art.
Goldman, adopted at birth, was reared by Charles and Tillie Goldman. He
was a woman's coat manufacturer; she a person consumed by civic work and an
interest in the arts. Goldman grew up in an affluent home in Manhattan's Upper
East Side, playing catch with his brother amid Monet and Renoir paintings. He
took
piano lessons and accompanied his mother to New York Philharmonic
performances. To this day he calls himself one of the luckiest people he
knows.
He began his work career at 15 in Camden, N.J., coat factories owned by
his father, working in the cutting room, in sewing, pressing, shipping, "doing
everything but signing checks, " he said. "I got a basic understanding of the
working man there, " he said recently. "I learned that washing dishes is just
as important as running the company if it's Saturday night and the dishwasher
isn't working."
Goldman says he suffered from dyslexia and had difficulty with written
academics. He excelled in performing and communicative arts, however, and
studied drama at Emerson
College in Boston. While there he married Janet, his wife of 12 years before
their divorce eight years ago.
After graduating from college, he veered away from his father's business.
"If you take your family's money, you'll always be a slave to it," he
said.
Instead he spent two years working in his uncle's real estate investment
and management company in New York before striking out on his own. He got his
start by borrowing money to buy the brownstone apartment buildings on the West
Side and renting them.
The neighborhood, depressed and undervalued at the time, became a
fashionable residential area, and prices soared.
"I go into an area five to seven years before it happens, " Goldman says.
"I like the smell of a property, and I like to be able to afford it. Advance
real estate is undervalued. Miami Beach is undervalued."
Eight years ago, while scouting for property in SoHo, Goldman discovered
a garbage truck garage on Greene Street. While only a stark shell of a
building lay before him, he envisioned a bustling restaurant complex and
leased it. "There's a fine line between vision and suicide," he said.
On Dec. 6, 1979, he opened Greene Street, a 100-foot-long room and with a
30-foot ceiling unfettered by columns. He built a balcony halfway around the
first floor, filled it with original art pieces and connected it to a
neighboring building. Eventually he spent $550,000 to buy the building.
Goldman, benefactor to numerous art organizations and a man who has given
scores of struggling artists and musicians a start, books himself into the
cabaret above Greene Street about three or four times a year and sings his
favorite jazz classics, accompanied by a longtime friend and pianist.
Two years ago, he opened the SoHo Kitchen and Bar next door to Greene
Street. Between the two, he says, he earns about $300,000 a year in profits on
sales of $3 million. He works on the third floor of the building in an open
room, surrounded by the department heads of his business.
"He can be stubborn and he changes his mind a lot because he'll think of
something better, " said Jay Wolmer, general manager of both restaurants.
"Whether you agree with him or not, you're going to have a new experience.
It's going to make you think. That's what he wants from people. "
Goldman's life is closely tied to his restaurants. He lives on the fifth
floor of the building that houses Greene Street. His ex-wife, Janet Goldman,
works in the building next door. The pair and their two teen-aged children
dine often at the restaurant, where Goldman indulges his passion for pasta and
tomato sauce.
He used a huge graffiti wall on a block he owns in the area to display
the works of local artists, regularly whiting out the pieces to make room for
new ones. On the rest of the block, Goldman installed a sculpture garden,
where the artworks are also regularly rotated.
"He brings art forward, " Janet Goldman said. "He wants to educate people,
to show them that life can be beautiful if you use and enhance what you've
got."
It is an interest he says he wants to extend to South Beach as his
projects there progress. The Park Central, currently
closed for renovation, is to reopen in November as a hotel. Later this year he
wants to open a business called the Ocean Drive-in on a parcel he's buying at
Ocean Drive and Fifth Street and a property he is in the process of buying.
The drive-in would feature hamburgers, curb service, indoor seating and live
music.
He plans to install a free public art gallery called Ocean Space in the
lobby of a building at 1200 Ocean Dr. He says the gallery will open with a
Dec. 1 exhibition by Miami artists Haydee and Sahara Scull, and he hopes to
display the work of New York artists locally.
"I want to create a pedestal for Miami artists as well as New York
artists," Goldman said.
By November 1987, he plans to open a restaurant and wine bar, to be named
Lucky's in the Park Central at 640 Ocean Dr. In addition, he says, he intends
to convert the old 100-room Metropole Hotel, in the 600 block of Collins
Avenue, into an apartment building of 30 1,000-square-foot lofts.
All of Goldman's purchases in Miami Beach and the Grove were financed by
sellers who agreed to take long-term installment payments. Goldman said he
intends to spend some $1 million to 2 million to renovate the buildings.
"It's a gamble, " he said. "There are no guarantees, but buying Madison
Avenue at top prices is a gamble when the stock market goes down 80 points in
one day. "
Like his restaurants in SoHo, Goldman said, his businesses on Ocean Drive
and Collins Avenue will help to change South Beach for the better and make his
property more valuable.
"My plan is to accumulate as much real estate as I can, learn and study
the district, the people and their sensitivities and in another year open a
restaurant and club, " he said.
"When I opened Greene Street, I knew I would affect the area around me.
The same thing will happen on Miami Beach. "
Tony Goldman
JOB: Real estate investor
PERSONAL: Age 42, divorced, lives in New York
LAST BOOK READ: Louis Barragon, Architect of Mexico
HEROES: Gandhi, Mel Brooks
PROUDEST MOMENT: Birth of his two children
BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT: Death of his father