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1674-7 Whitman Family TUE JUL 14 1987 ED: FINAL SECTION: LIVING TODAY PAGE: 1C LENGTH: 46 . 84" LONG ILLUST: photo: Stanley WHITMAN * (W) with model, BAL HARBOUR SHOPS SOURCE: GELAREH ASAYESH Herald Staff Writer DATELINE: MEMO: A MAN AND HIS MALL MEET STANLEY WHITMAN, THE MAN WHO DEVELOPED BAL HARBOUR SHOPS-AND STARTED A REVOLUTION RETAILING When the board game Snob came out two years ago, Stanley Whitman, millionaire developer of Bal Harbour Shops, ordered 100 sets. The game, a fantasy shopping spree, reflected Bal Harbour Shops as Whitman sees it: set among oil wells and a Palm Beach estate, sharing space with Beverly Hills ' Rodeo Drive and New York' s Fifth Avenue. Once, Whitman sent crates of mangoes to merchants in the same spirit Julia Tuttle sent orange blossoms to Henry Flagler: to lure. He designed a brochure more than a foot long so it would not fit in the average wastebasket. He bought a chunk of land off 96th Street in Bal Harbour, and while he debated whether to call it Harbour Square or Bal Harbour Shops, others called it Whitman' s Folly. It was 1957 and fashion revolved around shopping streets such as Lincoln Road in Miami Beach and Coral Gables ' Miracle Mile. The Mall at 163rd Street, Dade ' s first, was a year old. "When he did Bal Harbour, shopping centers were still finding their way in suburbia, " says Frank Spink, director of residential research at the Urban Land Institute. "He was way ahead of his time in realizing there could be a specialized center. " Whitman planned his mall in the middle of empty fields. "Lincoln Road was still the key, " recalls Hunter Moss, real estate counselor and past president of the Urban Land Institute. "And Stanley comes up with this thing way north. It was Stanley' s folly. " Today, the words Bal Harbour are almost as magical as Beverly Hills. Bal Harbour has it all: Neiman Marcus, Saks, Bonwit Teller and a host of fancy stores from A (Andrew Geller) to Z ( Zorro) . Since it opened in 1966, it has grown from one level to three, with space for more. Saks Fifth Avenue is preparing an expansion that will make the Bal Harbour store its largest in Florida -- bigger than the one at Worth Avenue, bigger than the Dadeland store. At a time when specialty centers are becoming more and more common, Bal Harbour is a prototype. Bakery Centre developer Martin Margulies recently wanted advice on his latest enterprise. He came to Whitman. "He ' s the best in the business, " Margulies says. "He ' s like a kind of guru. " But outside business circles, few recognize Whitman' s name. Although Bal Harbour is famous, few have heard of the man behind the mall. Stanley Whitman was born a millionaire' s son. His father, William, printed catalogs for Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Montgomery Ward and owned a home on the 18th hole of the Skokie Golf Course in the Chicago suburbs. The Whitmans had planned to have their winter home in Beverly Hills, but got sidetracked in Miami Beach. The three boys, Bill, Stanley and Dudley, grew up in a palatial home at 33rd Street and Collins Avenue, with the Atlantic surf lapping their back yard. Mother Leona Whitman was a socialite who loved to give parties for 500 on a dance floor set into the dune, an orchestra playing in the moonlight. FEW INDULGENCES Her son Stanley, 68, and his wife Dorothy have lived since 1949 in a three-bedroom house in Miami Shores. They make occasional appearances at the exclusive Bath Club. His indulgences are few: a pale yellow Mercedes, the oak trees in his back yard, strawberry ice cream. He would have loved to have added another: a home on the Indian Creek golf course, surrounded by the blue waters of the bay. But Dorothy is not interested. "I don' t live on the beach because I married a woman from New Jersey, " Whitman says . "I tried to get my wife years ago to move to Indian Creek Island. She said, ' I don' t know those people. ' " He is not fashionable -- a favorite jacket is one he bought 20 years ago from one of Bal Harbour' s first tenants, Maus & Hoffman. They've rewoven the elbows for him several times since. His ambitions are limited to the one shopping center, which he sometimes prowls with a hand-held tape recorder, making note of imperfections: chewing gum on the pavement, a sign that is too large, wilting flowers. COOKIE-CUTTER MALLS "I 've never wanted to be a DeBartolo and build shopping centers all over, spend my life on an airplane, " Whitman says. "To me that' s the pits. I would rather do this one as well as I can than 50 of those cookie-cutter centers. " His father was a moralist who did not believe in spoiling his sons. Whitman says he earned his allowance working in the school cafeteria. His first car was a Ford Model T that he bought at 16 . Dad didn't pay for it. His mother had a talent for accumulating money matched only by her love of it. A widow for most of her sons ' adult lives, she was reputed to own more real estate on the beach than anyone except Carl Fisher. She is the closest Stanley comes to having a hero. "She was one of the smartest people the Lord created, " Whitman says. "The best negotiator I ever saw. The George Saxes, the Victor Posners, she'd eat them up for breakfast and they'd never know it. She was much tougher than any of her sons. " MOTHER'S BLESSING Stanley, the only of the three to take an active role in the family business, began selling real estate after serving in the Navy and working as a sales manager of a Pepsi plant in Asbury Park, N.J. He recalls complaining to his mother once about a colleague who made more money from his desk than Whitman did pounding the pavement. "Son, " Leona said, "what your head won' t do, your feet must. " Yet when Stanley embarked on what was to become his life ' s work, a shopping center nine years in the planning, Leona backed him up. "The only person who felt all along I could pull it off was my mother, " he says. "She thought I could do anything. " Whitman managed the family' s stores on Lincoln Road. That experience spawned Bal Harbour. Lincoln Road introduced him to the upscale New York merchants. As the I older mall declined, Whitman conceived a vision that he stuck to doggedly through years of rebuff. He planned a Lincoln Road reborn -- without any of the flaws. "He saw Lincoln Road when it was at its prime, before World War II, " says Randy Whitman, his son. "And he saw it decline. He was able to logically deduce what the problems with Lincoln Road were. "He said, 'What a natural, make it shorter, have adequate parking, have single landlord control so you keep out the junky shops. ' That sort of thing. " CONFLICTING VISIONS Whitman' s plans ran contrary to those of Robert Graham, the developer of Bal Harbour Village. Graham sold Whitman half interest in 15 acres next to the village church in exchange for developing a shopping center. Graham envisioned a food fair where Saks sits today. He wanted to call it Community Shopping Plaza. "I nearly died when I heard that name, " says Whitman. In 1957 , Whitman bought out Graham' s share and became the sole owner of the site. Family members were investors. Surfside and Bal Harbour were just beginning to grow. Miami Beach was beginning to fade. "The money was coming into this end of town, " Whitman says. "It was a no-miss. I was the only idiot who could see it. " Whitman spent almost a decade planning his shopping center. He fired two architects because they did not incorporate what he thought was essential for the perfect Lincoln Road. He wanted a center where the transition from car to store was effortless. THE RIGHT MERCHANTS The plans were drawn. But ahead were years of frustration as he tried to recruit the right merchants. Burdines was not good enough -- he wanted Bloomingdale ' s. He wanted Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. "I can' t tell you the number of hours I sat in the offices of the Gimbels and the Marcuses, " Whitman says. "And those devils wouldn't see me. "I 'd sit out there and I 'd wait until they came out of their offices. And then they'd see me. " Bal Harbour Shops opened in 1966 -- three stores, no anchor. It was 1971 before Neiman Marcus moved in. In 1976, Saks arrived. Bonwit Teller moved in in 1981 . But by then the center was already a success. Some say Bal Harbour today has lost some of its sterling quality to quantity. The center' s second floor, built in 1983, caters to the young urban professional . It includes such stores as Banana Republic, selling the kind of casual tropical wear you would never find at Martha' s boutique. "It was a little gem of a center before he added the second floor, " says Stanley Marcus, whose father founded Neiman Marcus. But others say Whitman' s Folly is really Whitman' s Triumph -- because Stanley Whitman wouldn't give up. "Whitman has always had his own convictions, " says Moss, the real estate counselor. "He had the nerve to build stores when he didn't have tenants for them. He refused to rent to Saks at their rental (price) . They didn' t come and they didn' t come until they came at Stan' s rental. He was one of the first shopping center developers I ever knew who had the nerve to charge for parking. "He ' s the kind of guy who had the nerve to do it his way. And it couldn 't help but come up a success. " ADDED TERMS: END OF DOCUMENT. THU JAN 16 1992 ED: FINAL SECTION: NEIGHBORS MB PAGE: 3 LENGTH: 13 . 32" MEDIUM ILLUST: photo: Stanley Whitman owner and developer of Bal Harbour Shops, Stanley Whitman (c) . SOURCE: NANCY SAN MARTIN Herald Staff Writer DATELINE: MEMO: MORE IN STORE NEW AT BAL HARBOUR: NINA RICCI, THE GAP After a year of construction and remodeling, Bal Harbour Shops is back in order. The mall at 9700 Collins Ave. spent about $2 million on landscaping, lighting and entrances. Millions more were spent by tenants who renovated, expanded or opened new stores. "We' re pretty well wrapped up, " said developer Stanley Whitman, who owns the mall with two brothers. Seventeen stores were renovated and several new ones were brought to the mall, Whitman said. The new stores include: Nina Ricci, featuring women' s clothing, accessories and shoes; Gold Pfeil, which carries European leather goods; La Cicogna, an Italian clothing and accessory store for children; Hugo Boss, a menswear boutique; and The Gap -- the least expensive of the new stores -- which sells men' s and women' s clothing. Bruno Magli, an Italian shoe store, is slated to open within a month. In addition, about 60 coconut palms were added around the parking lot, as were new and enlarged fountains, brighter facades and wider parking entrances with additional cashiers. Business already is booming for some of the new stores. Said Irwin Tauber, owner of La Cicogna, the only one in the state and one of four in the country: "One customer came in a couple of weeks ago and bought $32 , 000 worth of clothing. We' re very satisfied with the way sales are going. " "I think it ' s very beautiful, " Arline Kay, who has been shopping at the mall for about nine years, said of the renovation. "It' s within keeping of the original scheme of things. " The pricey Bal Harbour Shops, which occupies 17 acres, used to be the s 'te of wooden Army barracks that housed Nazi prisoners from World War II, aid University of Miami historian Paul George. Whitman purchased the land for $2 a square foot, razed the barracks and built the one-story mall, which opened in 1965 as a 105, 000-square-foot building with 30 stores, none as anchors. Whitman, who owned several stores on the Lincoln Road Mall in the 1930s, said he decided to invest in the Bal Harbour site because "the money moved north. " "As Miami grew and as Miami Beach grew, Lincoln Road started going very cheap and there was a vacuum, " he said. "This filled the vacuum. " Bal Harbour remained a one-story mall until 1982 , when a second level was added. The mall is now 450, 000 square feet and houses about 100 shops, including anchors Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. Space for a third anchor has been empty since May 1990 when Bonwit Teller closed. There are no plans yet for that space. Whitman said the mall and parking occupy all 17 acres, so he has another plan for the future. "Vertical expansion, " he said. "I expect to add to it tremendously. " ADDED TERMS: END OF DOCUMENT.