William Zeckendorf Quotes
19 quotes from William Zeckendorf — American real estate developer who transformed the Manhattan skyline..
“It is always wise when dealing away from home to have influential local partners.”
“A citizen of a small town can, through circumstances or design, come to know almost everyone in the community.”
“One of the best ways to determine the value of vast holdings is to have someone make you a bona-fide offer for them.”
“The stars must have been right when we met, for each of these men had individual visions about Montreal which matched mine, so we could work together.”
“Any real-estate man is interested in twenty-two acres of singly owned midtown city property.”
“A prime requisite for a successful program is a mayor strong enough to control the local demagogues and predators who inevitably rise up to attack or to fatten off a great development.”
“Through lack of imagination and of boldness in execution the project died stillborn.”
“It takes much more than the razing of slums and putting up of clean new apartments to revitalize a great area stricken with a combination of social and economic ills.”
“It takes much more than the razing of slums and putting up of clean new apartments to revitalize a great area stricken with a combination of social and economic ills: revitalizing parts of a city's core calls for a change in its human chemistry.”
“Much of the intricacy and interest of Montreal flowed from the curious, unwritten rules of coexistence between the French and English of Canada.”
“I was principle troubleshooter for Webb & Knapp and would not have it any other way.”
“Can I talk off the record? Well, what I say, and I don't think you will want to repeat, is: 'I'm the guy that got the girl pregnant. Those fellows you see around here are merely the obstetricians.”
“You never can tell till you try.”
“So widely accepted is Pei's eminence today that it is difficult to realize that twenty-five years ago his relative inexperience and obscurity helped capture the imagination of his most important client.”
“They are calmly rational. They just go quietly about the things that they are doing and seem to be able to accommodate the changes as they happen.”
“It was a matter of my personality. I like to build.”
“Who wants to have the pressures of generating earnings for Wall Street and all the attendant publicity? I prefer the anonymity to the notoriety. I started out way up at the top with publicity. It's a double-edged sword.”
“Because of that large chain of command, things started getting away from us. We got out of touch.”
“Our strategy was to focus on the high end, because that is where we saw strength in the market today. If we saw strength in the West 30's and the West 40's, we would go there.”
