Developing: My Life

Description

• Wide-ranging, captivating, and deeply introspective, the memoir of William Zeckendorf Jr. (1929-2014) documents the celebrated real estate developer s impact on New York City, Washington, D.C., and Santa Fe
• A glimpse inside the high-stakes world of real estate development, from finding a property to securing financing to hiring an architect to constructing the building to seeing it profitably occupied
• A history of New York in the 1970s and 1980s, from one of the people most responsible for its changing cityscape
• A candid and sincere assessment of the author s successes and failures, his public triumphs and equally public setbacks
In 1986, the New York Times called William Zeckendorf Jr. "Manhattan s most active real-estate developer," a judgment borne out by Zeckendorf s fascinating memoir. The second generation of a legendary family of developers, "Bill" Zeckendorf was a developer with a social conscience, not only putting up buildings but opening neglected parts of the city and transforming whole communities. Among the projects Zeckendorf chronicles in detail - and with rich documentary illustrations - are the Columbia, which set off a building boom on the Upper West Side; the four-acre Worldwide Plaza, a landmark in West Midtown; Queens West, the first residential project on the waterfront in Queens; the enormous Ronald Reagan Office Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C.; and numerous projects in Santa Fe, his beloved second home.