Walentas, David and Jane (2017/08/22)

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JULIE GOLIA: Okay, so this is Julie Golia. It is August 22, 2017. I'm here at

1 Main Street in Dumbo to do an oral history with David and Jane Walentas. Socan I ask each of you to state your name and your birthday?

JANE WALENTAS: Hi, I'm Jane Walentas. I was born [date redacted for privacy]

1944. My maiden name is Zimmerman.

DAVID WALENTAS: And I'm David Walentas. I was born [date redacted for privacy]

1938. Oh. [laughter]

JULIE GOLIA: Jane, I'm going to actually just -- I'm going to --

JANE WALENTAS: I'm going to take this off.

JULIE GOLIA: Good idea.

JANE WALENTAS: It's clacking.

JULIE GOLIA: David, let's start with you. Just tell me a little bit about where

you're from.

DAVID WALENTAS: I was born in Rochester, New York, 1938. My parents were low

middle class. My father was a postal clerk at the post office. My mother was a1:00housewife. I have a brother who is nine and a half months older. I was prematureand the runt of the litter. Want me to keep talking? So, I don't know. When Iwas five or six my father had a stroke and was paralyzed, and my mother had towork and take care of my father, so my brother and I were literally farmed outto these farm families that, I don't know, friends of friends. So at age six Iwas somewhere between an orphan and an indentured slave. I lived in a -- farmswith outhouse and a pump in the kitchen and a wood stove, and we used to get upin the morning and milk cows and shovel sh*t and take the school bus and comehome and shovel sh*t and milk cows. And on Saturday to take a bath we used to2:00pump water out of the well, heat it on the wood stove, poor it into a tub on thekitchen floor and take a bath. So me, I like hot showers and a -- clean sheets,and people talk to me about camping. I don't do camping. When my father finallydied about ten years later, seven or eight years later when I was about fifteen,so then I was in Rochester, went to finish grade school. Went to high school inRochester, Benjamin Franklin High School, I got kicked out of every school Iever went to, grade school, high school, and University of Virginia. Never forbeing dumb. So I was in the principal's office -- oh, here's another good storybefore we get to that. When I was in high school my friends had -- you know,3:00started to have cars. It was 1956, but we were poor, so I picked up the paperone morning, and there was a George Washington Day sale. It was February inRochester. It was cold. First one in line got a car for ninety-nine cents, andthe second one was $9.99, so I hoped on the bus and went down, spent the weekendin a used car lot sleeping in the used cars, and I was second in line. On Mondaymorning I bought a '47 Plymouth for $9.99. Drove it for -- must have drove itfor five or six years and finally blew a piston coming off the mountain down inVirginia coming -- rolling back from Hollins College. It was -- so it was -- soanyway, so I was in the principal's office once I got kicked out, and they had a4:00poster on the wall that said Navy ROTC. As for me, I was a smart kid, never knewanyone who went to college but I was smart. So I took the test, and on the backof the test it had 50 schools that had the Navy program. You had to pick theschool that you wanted to go to, so it was alphabetical. I got down the middleit said Harvard. I heard of Harvard, so I circled Harvard, and being a smartkid, well, I got to pick a school nobody ever heard of, so down near the bottomI said University of Virginia. I never heard of it. I said it's probably warmdown there, right. I was up in Rochester. So I ended up at UVA.

JULIE GOLIA: What was Rochester like when you were growing up?

DAVID WALENTAS: Rochester was great then. It was a real solid middle class town,

good industry. Eastman Kodak, half the people in Rochester work for EastmanKodak or knew somebody, or they had Xerox and Bausch and Lomb and Ritter Dental5:00and strong, and then, you know, Kodak buried their head in the sand, inventeddigital photography and buried it and went bankrupt. We went -- we actually wentback up to Rochester, I don't know, three or four years ago they called me fromDemocrat and Chronicle and said, "You know, we found you. You did Dumbo, andcome and tell us how to -- what we should do up here." So we went up there. It'sa wreck. It's really ugly. So anyway, in high school I was -- I a smart student.I wasn't a scholar, but you know, I took the math exam. It was the only questionwhether I could get a perfect score on the regions rather than pass it, so Inever got kicked out for being dumb, but I ran track and cross country andplayed basket -- wasn't a good basketball player, but they gave me a letter, but6:00I was a good runner. I ran the mile and ran cross country, won the championshipevery year. So I ended up at UVA, arrived with my bags, never saw the school,took -- I wanted to be an architect, but architecture was a five year program,and I had a four year scholarship, so I ended up in the engineering school. Andmy third year -- so I took a Navy cruise in the summer because I was in the NavyROTC. That was the first time I took a Navy cruise. My third year I got kickedout for -- at that time UVA was an all-male school, so to date we had to rolldown to Hollins and Sweet Briar and girls' colleges, and summon my '47 Plymouth.We used to roll over to Hollins and down to Sweet Briar, and so we would tripdown to Hollins. We got in a little trouble, and we got suspended for conduct7:00unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, which wasn't much, but it wasn't much ofa prank. But anyway, so I lost my Navy scholarship, which turned out to be -- tobe good, actually. I'd finished three years. They let me finish that semester,so I only had one year to go, and I was -- I only got suspended for onesemester, but because of course rotation in engineering I had to stay out a fullyear. So I went home and worked and borrowed some money and got another littlescholarship and came back and finished. Graduated 1962, '56, '60, maybe '61,yeah, '61. I graduated '61, and then pay off my loans, I took a job at -- up atThule, Greenland, the air base up in northern Greenland, as a laborer working on8:00a construction project.

JULIE GOLIA: How did you find that job?

DAVID WALENTAS: I don't know. Some kids in my fraternity house were -- had done

it, and so worked as a laborer for the summer. We had the midnight sun, so we'dwork ten-hour days and live on the base, and it was free room and board, andwe'd play softball at midnight. And my job was cleaning septic tanks. We used tojump in the tanks and scrape the sh*t off the wall, and so me, I can do anything --

JULIE GOLIA: That's amazing.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- because they paid me. So then by November -- by November it

was dark pretty much 24 hours a day, so I left. I flew to Copenhagen becauseGreenland's owned by the Danes. Fell in love with a Danish nurse I met on the9:00street and spent a week there, and hitchhiked down through Europe. My brotherwas in the Air Force in Madrid, so I stayed with him for the winter, met anEnglish girl there that was selling encyclopedias to the -- to the Air Force,but anyway, came March I was out of money and had no way of getting home. So Iended up in Casablanca with a VW that I bought. I had -- at that time you couldget Virginia tags by mail, and so I had Virginia tags. Anyway, I had a VW. Iended up in Casablanca sleeping in a Arab youth hostel for a nickel a night onstraw mats, and I went down to the docks every day trying to find a ship thatwould let me work my way back to New York because I had no money, and I hadnobody to call. My mother had no idea where I was. If I had died in an Arab10:00youth hostel, they were like deserters from the German Army and derelicts anddruggies and -- so finally a little Danish freighter came in, and I went aboardand told the captain I had worked in Greenland and I loved the Danes, and I wasa poor student. He said, "Okay, come aboard. You can work your way back." He wasgoing -- stopping in Lisbon and coming back to New York City. So then I said,"But you got to bring my Volkswagen." So I actually talked him into putting myVolkswagen on the ship, bringing me and my Volkswagen back to New York. Westopped in Lisbon to take on some freight and came across the North Atlantic,ran into a big storm and everybody kind of got seasick. And landed in one ofthese piers in Brooklyn, came under the Verrazano Bridge. They were justbuilding it. This was 1962. Landed one of these piers, they took the Volkswagenoff the ship, just jumped in the car with a couple of the Danish kids that were11:00in the crew and drove off the dock, and the kids -- one of the Danish kids said,you know, come with us. I went downtown. I sold a pint a blood for ten dollars.I filled up my Volkswagen. I had lunch, and I drove to Rochester. That's a true story.

JULIE GOLIA: What did your mom say?

DAVID WALENTAS: She was glad to see me. She hadn't seen me in a year. Had no

idea where I was, but that happened again, she had no idea where I was. So letme just -- so while I was in Casablanca I met a kid who -- sorry --

JULIE GOLIA: Going to ask you to start over.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- who was in the -- who was one of the original Peace Corps

founders. So he talked me into applying to the Peace Corps, so I applied to thePeace Corps, and I applied to Darden Business School. I got accepted to the12:00Peace Corps to go to South America, Bolivia, I think, to dig sewers or dosomething, irrigation, and a few weeks later I accepted to Darden. So I sent thePeace Corps their tickets back and went to Darden Business School '62 to '64. Igraduated '64, and I took a job overseas. I wanted to pay of my loans and seethe world. So I took a job with the Singer company. I worked in Australia andJapan for a couple of years. And I actually got married in Japan to a girl that-- from home. That lasted about a year, but -- never told my -- never told mymother about that either. She doesn't know where I was. So then I quit and cameback to New York in about '66, maybe '67 because I just wanted to be a real13:00estate developer. So --

JULIE GOLIA: Did you -- did you think that you -- did you always plan to end up

in New York? Did you think you would be -- did you ever think you would stay inVirginia or Rochester?

DAVID WALENTAS: I wasn't staying in Rochester. I wasn't staying in Virginia. I

don't know that I ever really thought about it. I was sticking with survival. Iwas getting through college. I was paying off my loans. I was staying alive. Idon't think -- I never thought that I would come to New York and become one ofthe big real estate developers. I always wanted to be a real estate developer. Ithought if you owned a little five-story building, couple of apartments, I don'tknow -- I never dreamed. I was never a big dreamer. What else can I tell you?

JULIE GOLIA: Well, I think that's a good place to pause because I'd like to go

14:00over to Jane and just kind of do what we just --

JANE WALENTAS: Do the same thing?

JULIE GOLIA: -- what we just did. So tell me a little bit about where you're from.

JANE WALENTAS: I'm from Teaneck, New Jersey. I had a very happy childhood, nice

upper-middle class family. My father was a dentist. I was the kid that wasalways drawing pictures, and unlike David who ended up in the principal's officemy pictures went to display in the principal's office. That's the differencebetween us. Yeah, I was, you know, the kid that always did the bulletin boardsin the hallway and the decorations for the dances and editor of the yearbook and-- I mean art editor, sorry, not editor. So art was always part of my life, andlike I said, I had a very nice childhood, very happy childhood. I worked as akid, babysat and had summer jobs and had a boyfriend. I had a brother who's --15:00passed away a few years ago. We were close growing up, not so as adults. Iintroduced him to his first wife, and that didn't really work out. So yeah, mychildhood was very normal, happy, nice. I was just -- always wanted to be anartist. Wanted to work for Walt Disney as a little kid, that was what I think hedid, and then as I got older I had a boyfriend whose family was in theadvertising business, and I was exposed to advertising in New York, and I wantedto be an art director. That's -- oh, sorry. I knew about being an art directorthen, and that's -- to me that was very glamorous and was when Mad Men was Madmen, and that's what I aspired to. I always knew I wanted to come to New York. I16:00think when I was 11 I said, "I'm out of here. I'm going to New York when I'm oldenough." And then I went to College in Philadelphia to an art school, small artschool, Moore College of Art. I really wanted to go to RISD, and I applied earlyand didn't get in. It was -- I had -- even though I was the talented kid, Ididn't have a lot of art background, education. My school didn't offer verymuch, and I didn't get into RISD early, and my brother was at the University ofPennsylvania and was dating girls at Moore College Park, and he said, "There'sthis great school here." And I went to see it and really loved it and lovedPhilly, and so I went to Moore. I had a great education. I absolutely loved17:00being in art school. I loved being in a big city. I was very successful as astudent. I then competed for a fellowship. When we graduated, in each departmentthere was a traveling fellowship, they called it, and I didn't win thefellowship. My best -- not my best friend, one of my friends got it, but I hadto have a plan for what you were going to do. I think it was just $1,000actually. You were supposed to travel or work or do something abroad, and I gota job in Torino, Italy with a design studio called Armand De Testa. So I didn'tget the fellowship, but I had the job, and I figured I might as well go do it.Pam, who got the fellowship, ended up falling in love on the student ship on theway to Europe, got married, and never did anything with it, but that's beside18:00the point. So I worked in Torino -- oh first -- I'm sorry, first I traveled.That whole summer I traveled a lot. I travelled with a friend from school. Wetook a student ship over. I think it was elven hundred kids, nine days on astudent ship to -- we went to London, and then Sally and I travelled throughoutEurope, mostly on a Eurail pass, five dollars a day. That was in the years offive dollars a day.

JULIE GOLIA: Had you ever been to Europe?

JANE WALENTAS: No, I had never been to Europe.

JULIE GOLIA: What was that like?

JANE WALENTAS: Oh, it was fabulous, and having an art background, we had studied

all the art and just all the art history, and so started in London and then tookthe ferry to Paris and to Le Havre and train into Paris, and the sun was risingover Paris, and my first croissant in the railroad station. It was awesome. And19:00then traveled down to Italy. I went to Turin and met my boss who I was going tobe working for, who was -- he liked young women. Anyway, and then we continuedtraveling, and we went to Greece, and then I went to Spain. I took a Turkishfreighter to Spain because it was a cheap way to get from Athens to Barcelona.And then I travelled through Spain alone, had a relative in southern Spain, adistant cousin who I stayed with, and then spent time in Madrid. Actually, I metsome guy. David fell in love with the Danish nurses. I fell in love with theItalian film makers. Anyway, I met some guy in Madrid who was making a film,supposedly, I guess so, and we used to hang out at a café, and actually had my20:00picture taken, and it was on the front page of, I think, La Stampa was theItalian newspaper, as some dress designer, which wasn't true, but they -- eitherthey misunderstood or made it up because I was off to Italy to work in thestudio. So I went and worked in Torino for studio Testa. They wouldn't let me inthe art department because I was a woman, and they only had men in the artdepartment. So then -- it was great. I shared an office with a German copywriter who spoke English, and they would bring us our cappuccino and croissantssent to the office every morning, and then if I needed art supplies I would callsomebody who would bring me supplies. Anyway, I was there till, I guess,January, and came home and started looking for a job and an apartment, and got a21:00job in a package design studio, and lived --

JULIE GOLIA: Here in New York?

JANE WALENTAS: Here in New York, yeah, on 49th between 5th and Madison. Oh no,

49th -- no, Sacks is between 5th and Madison. 49th between Madison and Park --no -- anyway, it was on 49th.

JULIE GOLIA: Jane, when you were -- not too go back too far, but when you were

young you were growing up in New Jersey. Did you -- I know you wanted to -- youwere like, "I'm moving to New York." Did you come to New York when you were little?

JANE WALENTAS: Yes, we came to New York a lot. My parents would bring us to New

York, and they had friends who lived in New York, so yeah I had good exposure toNew York City. My father had an old college roommate who lived on Park and 72nd,and I always thought that was very glamorous, and other friends of theirs. Yeah,I had a lot of exposure.

JULIE GOLIA: What were your impressions of New York?

JANE WALENTAS: I loved it. I just couldn't wait to leave Teaneck and live in New

22:00York. Not that I hated Teaneck. It was a wonderful town in the '50s and '60s,but I loved -- I always knew I wanted to come to New York, always, and be a bigdeal art director. And that boyfriend that I had, he was -- that was in highschool. He was a real childhood sweetheart for many years. I was very close withhis family, and they really exposed me to advertising in New York. I used to goto the theater with them a lot. Really had a real nice introduction to New YorkCity, and then as a teenager later as -- you know, when we drove, we would comein Saturday night and have dates in New York. So yeah, I also had a friend whomoved out of Teaneck, Howard Fast's daughter, actually, the writer Howard Fast,Rachel Fast. They left Teaneck and moved to 5th Avenue, so -- and she went into23:00Dalton, so that was a big impression too, you know, these New York City privateschool kids was pretty impressionable. And then in college I had a friend whoseparents had an apartment at the Sherry-Netherland, and we used to come in andstay there. And that too -- I always said my last stop will be theSherry-Netherland. I mean, it was all very glamorous. I had, you know, realexposure to a lot of New York City glamour. I liked it.

JULIE GOLIA: So when you got back from Italy?

JANE WALENTAS: So I got back from Italy. I worked for -- I worked for a package

design studio for about a year, and like all young people, you know, you wantedto -- there was nowhere to go there anymore, so I changed jobs, and I went to amarketing consultant firm as an art director, my first real art director job.24:00Oh, I lived with two roommates on the Upper East Side, three of us in a onebedroom apartment, one or two closets, one bathroom, before cell phones. We allhad to share that telephone and fight over the phone bill every month. And we --at some point, I might be jumping ahead, but at some point we were all earningenough money to get our own apartments after our three year lease was up. Andthat's when I met David, who, as I look for apartments I met David, and mysearch for another apartment, we'll tell that -- I guess we'll get to that storylater. And then after another year or two probably I left that job and went towork for Avon, and I was at Avon for several years as an art director, very25:00happy, had my first American Express card, single girl, very cool. And thensomeone that I knew at Avon, barely, went to Estee Lauder to the executive artdirector at Estee Lauder, and he called me to come to Lauder to be the Cliniqueart director. So I went to Lauder, and I had a very nice, long career there. Iwas lucky. I worked for Ronald Lauder who -- and we were the same age and hadboth gone to college in Philadelphia. We didn't know each other, but it was anice coincidence that he was my boss along with someone named Carol Philips, whohad started Clinique for the Lauder. So it was a great job, and it couldn't havebeen better.

JULIE GOLIA: Talk -- give me -- give me a sense of what it was like to work in

that field in New York at that time.

JANE WALENTAS: Well, first of all, for a woman it was very nice being in the

26:00cosmetic industry. I always thought I would work for a big advertising agency. Ijust ended up in cosmetics by accident because the packaging studio I worked forhad mostly cosmetic accounts, and the same with the next job, so I ended up incosmetics, so it was very nice working in a company that was -- I mean, EsteeLauder was practically all women. There were very few men there, but also inthose days, in the '60s, '70s, into the '80s, creative was really it, and if youwere an art director or a copy writer you were very well respected. I thinktoday it's quite different. The whole industry is different today, but creative,you know, Mary Wells from Wells Rich Greene and Doyle Dane Bernbach. It was allabout creative, and so -- so it was easy. I had no problems, and you know,27:00sexual harassment, you know, it -- I never considered it harassment. There wascertainly flirting in the office and -- I never felt harassed at all. I mean,there was joking around and -- but it was fine. It was all very lovely. I mean,it was just the way it was. So it was great. I loved it. I absolutely loved myjob, and still my identity is tied up with being an art director really eventhough today I couldn't get a job with computers, but the whole industry is justtotally different. And cosmetics was very heady. It was, you know, working withgreat photographers. I worked with Victor Skrebneski and top models, KarenGraham, all the top models of the day. Oh yeah, I forgot I -- at one point Iquit my job because I had this great idea, I forgot about this, to do a28:00catalogue that was called The Best of New York, and it was before -- onlyHorchow was really the only catalog around. There weren't catalogs like thereare today. So I had this idea to go to all the stores in New York and produce acatalog that they would all have a page in, and I would charge them a littlecommission -- or a little rate to go into the catalog, and then I would takesome percentage of sales. So I had this idea around, I don't know, I think itwas in the summer, and David said -- we were married by then. David said,"Great, do it. You just have to be out by Christmas." So yeah, I -- yeah, it waslike August. So I -- what I did was a waived the fee to -- for stores to go intoit, and it was great. Avedon shot the fashion. I had a great copy writer write29:00the copy. It was beautiful. But it didn't make any money, you know, I gave itaway, but a lot of great stores were in it, Dean and DeLuca, Godiva Chocolates,Jaeger sweaters, Dunhill, anyway, so --

JULIE GOLIA: How was it disseminated? Did you make -- was it mail?

JANE WALENTAS: I got a mailing list, yeah. It -- and I -- you know, it was

printed in Chicago and mailed, and it was beautiful. It's still beautiful, butDavid said, you know, we have our real estate business. We don't need to be inthe catalog business, so I quite, and then I went back to Estee Lauder,actually. They took me back on a -- on a -- sort of as a freelance person, yeah.They kept me on a retainer, and I did special projects for them, yeah.30:00

JULIE GOLIA: Let's go back and pick up where you guys met. So let's -- I want to

hear about -- we got to hear about the start of Two Trees --

DAVID WALENTAS: Right.

JULIE GOLIA: -- because you had already started that before you and Jane met. So

tell me, you're back in New York --

DAVID WALENTAS: I'm back in New York. I had a wife who I -- she was from

Rochester, but -- and she had been working in the Philippines as a teacher, andwe got married in Japan. I never told my mother, but we got married in Japan,and brought her back to New York, and it wasn't going to work out, so --

JULIE GOLIA: Wait, was she on the boat with you?

DAVID WALENTAS: No.

JANE WALENTAS: No.

DAVID WALENTAS: No, no, no.

JANE WALENTAS: That wouldn't have been her style. From what I understand they never

DAVID WALENTAS: So I took her home to her mother, returned her to Rochester, and

I had met a -- in business school there were three or four of us that livedtogether. One of them was -- had a farmhouse in Charlottesville and he was in31:00business school. Anyway, so Jan Mirsky was one of my roommates there, and he hadgone to work for WR Grace, when he graduated from business school, in thetreasures' office, and there he met Jeff Byers , whose family were Graces. Hismother was a Grace. So he got a job there because of his family, and they becamefriends. So we wound up -- I wanted to get into the real estate business. Itried to borrow $10,000 from City Bank. They threw me out. And I was like -- Ihad a job. I was working for Pete Murray Mitchell. I was making $15,000 a yearor something, and so Jeff -- Jeff became a partner, and he raised some moneyfrom friends and family, and we bought a crappy little building up on 78Manhattan Avenue, 104th and Manhattan Avenue. So we made the classic mistake. We32:00bought the best building in the worst spot, and I was working out of myapartment. I would go up there and collect rent and take the dimes out of thewashing machine. That's when I met Jane. We also bought a -- that was our firstbuilding, and then we bought a building on 309 West 57th Street, and then webought a building at 55 Park. Real Estate was real cheap. We bought 55 Park, ifI can remember, it was like, I don't know, twelve stories maybe, two apartmentson a floor, one in the front, one in the back. I think we paid like 5 or$600,000 for it. This was 19 -- let's see. We started in -- when did we start,33:00'60 --

JANE WALENTAS: 7 -- '68.

DAVID WALENTAS: --'67, '68 --

JANE WALENTAS: We met in '69.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- '68 I guess. Yeah, it'll be fifty years next years. So 196 --

real estate was dirt cheap. So I was working out of my apartment. I lived at 55Park. I was working out of my apartment. I was a one man band, and I had sent mywife back to Rochester, and so I was lonely, and I was, you know, separated, soI had a rental agent rent an apartment on 57th Street. And I said look, I justwant to rent to young good looking women. Tell them they have to be interviewedby the landlord. So he was pimping for me. He was sending me girls up to myapartment. So Jane came up and knocked on the door. You work at home, you know,you don't have to get dressed. You have shorts and a tee shirt, barefoot. So Igo to the door, and I'm thirty years old, and she looks at me. She says, "Is Mr.34:00Walentas home?" I said, "I'm Mr. Walentas, little girl. Come in." So I hit onher right away. We had dinner that night, actually. She rented an apartment on57th Street. And it's been a great trip. You know in the movie they have castingcouches? I had apartments.

JULIE GOLIA: What was your impression? What did it look like through your eyes?

JANE WALENTAS: First of all, these was something in those days called

semiprofessional apartments, which enabled the landlord to get the apartment offrent control.

DAVID WALENTAS: No, you just get a premium. You didn't get it off, but you got

ten percent more rent or 15 percent. I don't know.

JANE WALENTAS: So for the tenant it was still a cheaper apartment, and you had

to qualify to be semiprofessional in that you had to work at home, so I did --even though I had a full time job I did freelance at home. So I wanted to35:00qualify to be semipro. So that's why it was under that guise, I guess, that theysaid I had to meet the landlord to qualify for semipro, so I did. Yeah, when wemet, that day, I came to meet David to be interviewed, and then I was working ona job. I was working in the Seagrams building at the time just a few blocks fromthis apartment, so I had to go finish my job, and then he said come back andwe'll have dinner. And I did.

DAVID WALENTAS: I cooked dinner for her. That right?

JANE WALENTAS: And I said, this is who I want to marry.

JULIE GOLIA: I'm so sorry. I need you to say that again. I did not even realize

my phone was on. Forgive me.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, I didn't say it. I thought, this is who I want to marry,

when I met him. I -- I -- that's my recollection. I had this boyfriend, that36:00same boyfriend from high school through college. On and off, back and forth, andwe had just sort of broken up, and when I met David I said, I'm over that one.This is for me. But he wasn't easy because he --

DAVID WALENTAS: I was a diamond in the rough.

JANE WALENTAS: Right, see he was, you know, just separated, and I was -- I

understood that. I think on that -- I think that he night he said, "By the way,I've been married, and I'm never getting married again." I didn't need thatmuch. Anyway, so that's what I thought. I thought he was great. He told me thestory about the car, the -- that did it.

JULIE GOLIA: And how long did you -- were you guys dating before you got married?

DAVID WALENTAS: I don't know. On and off for five, six years?

JANE WALENTAS: No, four years.

DAVID WALENTAS: Four?

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah. Yeah, we met in '69. We got married in '73.

DAVID WALENTAS: Oh, four years.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, I finally decided he's going to get married again it might

37:00as well be me, so I pushed. I pushed him.

DAVID WALENTAS: We got it together. She got it all together in about a week. We

got married in a restaurant. What was the name, Nichols? The --

JANE WALENTAS: Café Nicholson.

DAVID WALENTAS: Café Nicholson, it's out of business now. It's up under the

59th Street bridge. I don't know if you knew it. It's a great, great little spot.

JANE WALENTAS: It was a very popular, very romantic. Kooky place.

DAVID WALENTAS: So we had -- I think we had like six or eight couples and a

judge and got married. They're all dead or gone or -- no, there's one couplewho's still together.

JANE WALENTAS: Dick Beatty.

DAVID WALENTAS: Dick and Diana Beatty.

JANE WALENTAS: Dick and Diana Beatty.

DAVID WALENTAS: Other than that they're dead, gone, divorced.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, we had sixteen people at our wedding, two tables of eight.

JULIE GOLIA: What year was it?

JANE WALENTAS: '73, February 10.

DAVID WALENTAS: We've had a great trip together. It's amazing, amazing.

JANE WALENTAS: Then David went and had a motorcycle crash. This is in the

38:00outline. Oh, then I quit my job again. That's really when I left Estee Lauder,yeah. Yeah, yeah.

DAVID WALENTAS: But the Lauders ended up being good friends, and were actually

partners, which most people don't know. They were my original partners in Dumbo.There'd be no Dumbo without Ronald Lauder, who is up for anything.

JULIE GOLIA: So let's talk about that. Quickly, before we do, tell me about

having Jed

DAVID WALENTAS: It's easy. Once you learn how to do it it's easy.

JULIE GOLIA: An anecdote is that he was born the day Nixon resigned. Actually --

yeah, he was. Nixon announced --39:00

DAVID WALENTAS: His resignation.

JULIE GOLIA: On [date redacted for privacy], that he was resign -- he actually

resigned, I guess, the next day. So we were at NYU hospital. I had a very easy,quick labor, and he was born at NYU.

DAVID WALENTAS: In the morning.

JANE WALENTAS: In the morning. Anyway, oh -- when I didn't -- I'm sorry --

David's birthday was [date redacted for privacy], and I had a dinner party forhim, so we had flowers, and then I went into labor that -- later. So when I wentto the hospital, first of all, I had had my hair done because the dinner partywas his birthday, and I took all the flowers, and I was in great shape, and Ihad a really easy birth, delivery. David wanted -- he had a lunch date. He wentand had lunch, and the doctor went back to Qual, and I was left. Anyway, they --40:00someone came in. NBC came into the hospital, wanted to do a story about a motherwho had gave birth when the president resigned, and they chose me because myhair was good, and I was in good shape, and I had all these flowers. I was like,fine. So Jed and I were on NBC. It was -- it was the nightly news, the sixo'clock news. Well, all night, I guess, they would play it. What was it like tohave a child born when the president resigned? I think I actually said it hurt.I mean, you know, and they wanted to know if I was going to name the babyRichard after Nixon or -- it was kind of silly. But what was amazing, I had anold boyfriend, worked at NBC, actually, and he got me a tape of it. I still -- Ihave the tape. Because I didn't really see it when it was on the news, but I sawit afterwards and years later, and it was a man on the street thing, you know.41:00Mrs. Walentas in the hospital and the guy down at the newsstand, and they werehere on Water Street looking at this building interviewing one of the policemenfrom our precinct now. So they were here in Dumbo the day Jed was born askingabout -- it is crazy.

JULIE GOLIA: That's remarkable.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, it is. It's all in the tape. It's really something. There's

a piece of history for you.

JULIE GOLIA: That's amazing.

JANE WALENTAS: I know. It was pretty shocking.

DAVID WALENTAS: Wasn't your question why we had Jed?

JULIE GOLIA: Not why but what it was like.

JANE WALENTAS: Oh, it was great.

DAVID WALENTAS: And Jed was always --

JANE WALENTAS: A star.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- a star. He was really a easy kid. Everybody loved him. He was smart.

JANE WALENTAS: He was adorable. He was always everybody's favorite. Always, I

didn't take it that seriously.

DAVID WALENTAS: He started out on TV the day he was born, so.

JANE WALENTAS: Right, and then we were on Geraldo. We were on Geraldo Show for

another thing, breastfeeding versus bottle feeding. Our pediatrician nominated42:00us for that one. I don't have a tape of that though. Yeah, he was always a goodstudent, loved school, good little athlete, always lots of enthusiasm foreverything. Was a huge baseball fan. From the time he was like four he knewevery statistic, I think. We never had a television, which I think was atremendous impact on Jed. We didn't have TV. Neither of us liked it, so he was areal doer. He would, at age three, I think, four, he would build amazing blockconstructions. And when we lived in SoHo there was a lumber yard just a fewdoors from our loft, and he would go in there and get scraps of wood, and he wasalways making things as a little kid. And we let him, you know, have a hammerand tools. I used to come home from work -- well, it happened once. It didn't43:00happen often. We had an elderly nanny. I came home from work, the front doorcame off. He had unscrewed all the screws in the hinges.

DAVID WALENTAS: His bedroom.

JANE WALENTAS: I thought it was the front door.

DAVID WALENTAS: No, it was his bedroom.

JANE WALENTAS: Anyway, he was always building, always with tools, always a

pleasure. He was a good athlete.

DAVID WALENTAS: Or bouncing balls. He would -- bouncing balls.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, he'd have a ball. He's a good -- he was just easy, and it

was the three of us did everything together. We skied. He skied. He became agreat skier, better than us. We played tennis. He became a great tennis player.We traveled with him. We did nice trips as he got older, went to Africa andEgypt, and he went to summer camp every summer, which he loved. He was alwaysvery independent, loved to go off with anyone and -- and he worked in David's44:00office as a little kid, you know, running errands, and then he worked for BeyerBlinder Belle. We got him a job at Beyer Blinder Belle. We paid him because --

DAVID WALENTAS: We paid Beyer Blinder to pay him.

JANE WALENTAS: He was in high school, you know, it was -- but still. It was a

tremendous influence. He had tremendous exposure to everything. We had a goodfriend whose brother produced all the big rock concerts, still does, HarrietDelsener, Ron Delsener. Jed grew up with Harriet. She was a neighbor of ours, soas a little kid he got tickets to every concert, you know. He had that kind of --

DAVID WALENTAS: We had -- we had another friend in Canada, Elwin Court.

JANE WALENTAS: Oh, right.

DAVID WALENTAS: He was a, I don't know, vice president of network for NBC, and

45:00they did all the super bowl and the tennis.

JANE WALENTAS: French Open.

DAVID WALENTAS: French Open and Wimbledon and I don't know, so when Jed walked

their dog and became -- they didn't have children, so they kind of adopted him.So when Jed was about 12 maybe, I'm not sure, he was supposed to be doing his --he had midterm exams in January, and he was watching the playoffs, the football- I told him to turn off the tube and you know study his homework for his exam,and he said, "If you were a good daddy you would take me to the Super Bowl." Isaid, "You want to go to the Super Bowl," I said, "you get six A's in June, andwe'll go to the Super Bowl next year." And then I said, because you can't makethings too difficult. I said, "You know what, get five As and B, but if you geta B minus you got to get an A plus, or if you get a -- I want five A's and a B."46:00We went to the Super Bowl every year. I don't know what he did with his teachers.

JANE WALENTAS: And then usually they were out west, out in California. He would

take the red eye back. We'd stay, and he'd take the red eye back and go for his-- one of his exams because it was during exam week really. When we were movingfrom SoHo to -- David decided he really wanted to move uptown and be near -- hisoffice was on 57th Street, and it was late, it was like in April, and Jed had togo to school uptown then. He had gone to Grace Church. So he only wanted to goto Trinity School because John McEnroe went there. He was a big tennis fan, andluckily I had, through Evelyn Lauder, Leonard Lauder's wife -- she had me doTrinity School's annual report every year because she was on the board at47:00Trinity. Their boys went there. So I -- it wasn't my favorite thing to do, but Ihad to do it for her in my spare time, and I met the headmaster, so I called andsaid, you know, "We're moving uptown," and so off Jed went to Trinity. He had totake the ERBs and you know, but he certainly did well on all those, and I don't know.

JULIE GOLIA: That's a good transition, the Lauders. So let's talk about -- let's

talk about getting to Dumbo.

DAVID WALENTAS: Getting to Dumbo, it's been a trip. We were in business maybe

ten years or eight or nine years. We started in '68, so this was '78, so aboutten years. We were -- I'd say we were small time real estate developers. We weresubstantial. We were early in SoHo. We used to buy buildings there or 300 with50 cash, and now they want 50 million. We bought apartments in Atlanta and48:00Baltimore and -- but we weren't real developers. We would convert existingbuildings from industrial to apartments or co-ops at those times. We did -- webought the -- so we were in SoHo. We bought the silk building in NoHo, and --and when we were there I asked one of the kids, you know, SoHo, NoHo, what'snext? And some kid said Dumbo. I said, where the f*ck is Dumbo? So he said, youknow, over between the bridges, down under the Manhattan bridge. So I came overhere. The River Café was just opened. Walked around the neighborhood, and waslike, wow, what a great neighborhood. So there's one sign on the -- sign on the49:00building. It was one little building, Gair 1, with a for sale sign on it, andHelmsley Spear was the broker, and so I called him up Helmsley. He said yeah,we'll sell it to you, and it was about 50 or 60,000 feet, $10 a foot. I said,you know, that's cheap enough, but somebody should buy this whole neighborhoodand really, you know, one building, small building, doesn't make much of a dent.He said, "We own it. We'll sell it to you." So we bought two million square feetfor six dollars a foot. But I didn't have any money, and my partner, actually,Jeff, had died a couple of years before in '60 -- when did he die, '66, '60 --50:00

JANE WALENTAS: No, '70 --

DAVID WALENTAS: Oh, '76.

JANE WALENTAS: -- '78, '78, yeah.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- '77, '78. We had that big recession in '74, and we were kind

of, you know, starting out, and we had some real estate and -- but we weren'tbig, but -- but we were solvent, and we had some loans, but bank went broke, andthe FDIC had the loan, and we were paying our interest, so they didn't call me.They had plenty of non-performing loans, so. But Jeff had a -- Jeff was great,but he had a lot of other things. He was living very big. Everybody thought hewas the richest, best looking kid in New York because he was married to BillPaley's daughter Hillary, and his mother was a Grace, and his family, theBeyers, were a big steel company in Pittsburg, so they were very -- and he'dgone to Yale and -- and he had -- so he had a couple of banks from his Yale51:00friends, you know, City Bank, and I think JP Morgan. And he'd borrow a hundredfrom one and spend it and spend it, borrow 200 and pay the other one back, andthat recession he got a couple of million in debt, and he had built such an auraaround himself. He just couldn't live without that aura. Everybody thought hewas the richest, best looking kid in New York. He was on the New York Times bestdressed list, and he had a very successful gallery, Bykert Gallery, which, hejust bought their art, you know, Chuck Close, and -- so he jumped out thewindow, and I was blamed for it because I wasn't part of his circle really. Butit turned out I was the only one that was really solvent. So that was -- thatplayed into other things that happened, but. So where were we? That was -- so52:00then we came to -- we had done the silk building, and the Lauders were partnersin that with me. That was right after Jeff died. And we made, you know, it wassuccessful, and we did well. So then we saw Dumbo, and I went to Ronald, andRonald was -- Ronald was a player for anything. He was a younger brother andgrew up a little richer and didn't have a responsibility for running thecompany, and so he was a player, and you know, he got involved in Europe,Eastern Europe, and he was a player. So he wanted to do it with -- he broughtLeonard over here, and that was before the bridge was paved and had the winefrom the studs on the deck, and it was a cold day in January, February, f*ckingfreezing. And we brought Leonard over here, and the wine is overheard, and the53:00neighborhood's a derelict wreck, and Leonard looked at me. He said, "You'ref*cking crazy." He said, "Zeckendorf went broke with deals like this." ButRonald was a player, so I didn't know till the day we closed whether they weregoing to come up. They put up six million. We had six million in debt, and webought it. And I used -- then I -- I would stand on the corner out here onWashington and Water Street and I would look at the whole neighborhood, and Iwould say, "What the f*ck did I do?" My legs would shake. So like, where do Istart? So it's been a trip.

JULIE GOLIA: Let me ask you, when you came here on the first day, I'd like to

know both of you --

JANE WALENTAS: I wasn't with him.

JULIE GOLIA: I know, but then the first time that you ever came with him after

that, what was it about this neighborhood? What did you see?

DAVID WALENTAS: Well, it was all here. I mean, what I never could understand is

54:00for 20 years nobody could see it, but it was all here. The bridges were here.The river was here. The BQE was here. The subways were here. The buildings werethese spectacular, you know, early poured-concrete industrial buildings and thesmaller brick-and-heavy-timber buildings, the cobble stone streets. Theneighborhood had natural boundaries with the river, the BQE, the bridges.Transportation was great. The views, you can see sitting here, quitespectacular. I could never understand, and Jane and I, we could never understandwhat people couldn't see.

JANE WALENTAS: For me though, for me though, in addition to what David just

said, for me, being right on the river was what was amazing to me because inManhattan we had all these highways around the river. Here you could put your55:00feet in the river, and in fact, people do. I just -- for me that was amazing.

DAVID WALENTAS: Right, and the BQE ran around it rather than through it.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, so to be right on the river like that I felt was very --

DAVID WALENTAS: And the buildings were phenomenal.

JANE WALENTAS: -- amazing, yeah.

DAVID WALENTAS: I mean --

JANE WALENTAS: I mean, he's got his real estate slant. I have my nature slant.

And the sky for me, too.

DAVID WALENTAS: Spectacular, I mean, it was a no brainer. And fortunately nobody

could see it, and even when we converted this first building to condos, I wouldbring bankers up, and be right here in this apartment, building was vacant, andthen the views are here, and everything's here, and we were going to sell -- wewere going to sell apartments for $300 a foot. We were in real cheap, and thebankers would look around, and they'd say, "Well, where's the grocery store?"I'd say, "There's no f*cking grocery store here. When there are people here56:00there'll be a grocery store, but look at these views, and look at thisneighborhood and the transportation. We'll make a grocery store, not sodifficult." Nobody got it. Anyway, lucky me.

JULIE GOLIA: So you buy.

DAVID WALENTAS: We buy.

JULIE GOLIA: You got -- how many -- two --

DAVID WALENTAS: Two million square feet for twelve million dollars, so virtually

the whole neighborhood, and we picked up a couple of other little buildings, butthe big package. So I don't know, stuff was renting f0r two, three dollars afoot, and --

JULIE GOLIA: And who was here?

DAVID WALENTAS: The tenants were mostly record storage, some schmatta

manufactures. Sweeney was a metal trades business. That actually had an optionto buy the building for a million and a half dollars and -- but they were around57:00twelve stories there or tenstories, and they said, "For nothing we wouldn't buythis building." They moved to a one story building out in Flatbush someplacewhere they could bring steel in and process it and ship it out the other sideand get their trucks in. Nobody wants to manufacture on ten stories. Thisbuilding was occupied by a company called Atlantic Gum Paper Tape. They made gumpaper tape. They used to wrap boxes with it when I was a kid and worked in adepartment store. Again, they were paying two bucks a foot rent, and their leasecame up, and I said, I'll renew it. They said, "For nothing we wouldn't stayhere. We're going to New Jersey where we can get a one story building and accessto the freeways and the trains." You know, Cuomo came down here when he wasrunning for governor and said, you know, "If I get elected I'm going to protectmanufacturing." I used to say Jesus can't protect manufacturing. It's been going58:00out of business for fifty years, and they're not going to manufacture, and todaywe have more kids working here than ever in history, thousands of kids. They'remanufacturing data. They're working on computers. They're a digital generation.That's the future of manufacturing in the city. But politicians, unfortunately,are short term people. They have to get elected every two years or four years.My time horizon's been, you know forty years.

JULIE GOLIA: So '80, '79, '80, you --

DAVID WALENTAS: This was '79, '78, '79.

JULIE GOLIA: Okay, so you bought the buildings. What's your vision at that

point, and what did you do first?

DAVID WALENTAS: Well, our vision at that time was back office space for Wall

Street. The neighborhood was zoned manufacturing, so you couldn't do residential59:00as a right, and so we met with -- it was after one of the black outs, and we metwith Lehman Brothers. The hell was his name?

JANE WALENTAS: Well, there was Lew Glucksman and Schwarzler.

DAVID WALENTAS: Lew Glucksman, Lew Glucksman was chairmen of Lehman Brothers, so

we met with Lew up here, and we shook hands, and he was going to move their backoffice operation here. It was a separate grid. And so we started to prepare alease, and a month or two later Glucksman was gone and Lehman Brothers was outof business, and I was in the sh*t. And at the same time Ken Lipper, who hadbeen a partner of ours, actually, he worked at Lehman Brothers with Jeff, who60:00went from WR Grace to Lehman Brothers, and they hired Jeff because hisfather-in-law was Bill Paley, and they hired Lipper because he was a smartJewish kid from the Bronx, but he married -- he married a rich Jewish girl --

JANE WALENTAS: Gruss.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- Gruss, who was like the richest Jew on Wall Street. And he --

and he -- he and Jeff worked at Lehman Brothers, and he just worshipped Jeff. Hewas a poor, homely kid from the Bronx, and Jeff was a handsome star, and in myopinion today they would both be gay, if the truth be known. And they worked forKoch who was a little light in his loafers. So Jeff -- so Lipper had worshipped61:00Jeff, and he blamed me for Jeff's suicide. At that time we were processing theEmpire stores, and I was the designated developer, and Ken was economic whateverto Koch, and he killed the project. It was personal. He killed it. There's astory in New York Magazine. Roger Star said, "Jeff -- Lipper told me he blamedDavid." So I was in the sh*t, but my ace in the hole was we had all thesemanufacturing jobs, and Cuomo had stopped here on one of his election toursmaking speeches, and he was going to protect manufacturing. So we concocted a62:00deal with the state. I said I was going to throw all the manufacturing --

manufacturers out, and the governor was going to come in and rent this building

for -- for the Department of Labor, who was relocating from the World TradeCenter, and I was going to give all the manufacturers a ten-year lease, and sowe shook hands, and we went public. We said we're not renewing leases, and thegovernor came in and was white knight. [laughter] You do what -- when you haveyour back against the wall you do what you have to do. So we made a deal. Wegave all the manufacturers leases. And we got the Department of Labor, whichsaved us, and then

JULIE GOLIA: In this building?

DAVID WALENTAS: In this building, yeah, they took the whole building with a

ten-year lease, and -- and then Laird Thompson replaced Lipper at City. She knew63:00Lipper had f*cked me, so she gave us the health and -- oh no, the child servicesfor Sweeney, which kept us alive, and then the Department of Labor after tenyears, the lease was up, and they didn't want to be here, and the bank that hadthe mortgage went bankrupt and -- who bought it? HSBC bought the loan, it was$20 million, and we ended up -- we bought it back for six, and then by then wefinally got the city to change the zoning from manufacturing permit toresidential, so I had all the improvements here, and I bought the mortgage backcheap and --

JULIE GOLIA: And that year, the zoning change, was '97?

DAVID WALENTAS: No, I think it was a year or two before that. Maybe, maybe -- '95.

64:00

JANE WALENTAS: '94 because Jed graduated in '92, worked for Trump for like --

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, we might've gotten the zoning changes in '95 because we

completed the building in '97 maybe, so maybe '96. I'm not sure.

JULIE GOLIA: Now that's a long time that you guys --

DAVID WALENTAS: Long drink.

JANE WALENTAS: Oh yeah.

DAVID WALENTAS: Long breathe.

JULIE GOLIA: Had you been basically -- how --

DAVID WALENTAS: Hanging on.

JULIE GOLIA: At what point did you --

DAVID WALENTAS: Hanging on.

JULIE GOLIA: Was that it?

DAVID WALENTAS: Hanging on.

JULIE GOLIA: Did you know that it was going to --

JANE WALENTAS: Be okay? Yeah.

JULIE GOLIA: -- that they were going to eventually, like --

DAVID WALENTAS: I wouldn't quit. My partners -- my partners all quit. We bought

them out, or they gave me back their pieces. We were using our credit cards to-- we didn't pay our taxes for years, but takes the city time to foreclose. Iwasn't quitting.

JULIE GOLIA: I mean, that must have been --

JANE WALENTAS: That's when we bought the farm though, too because you were very

65:00discouraged here. Yeah, we bought the farm.

DAVID WALENTAS: In '93 we bought the farm. Yeah, well we had some revenue. By

then we had revenue from Sweeney.

JANE WALENTAS: Well, yeah, yeah, but I mean you were -- you were very, I don't

want to say depressed. You weren't truly depressed but discouraged about it. Youstopped coming over here.

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, because there was nothing I could do.

JANE WALENTAS: Right, right.

DAVID WALENTAS: But we had -- then we had tenants. We rented Gair 1 and 2 to

city agencies. We rented Sweeney's to city agencies. We had revenue. Thisbuilding was rented.

JANE WALENTAS: But it wasn't happening. The Empire Stores wasn't happening.

DAVID WALENTAS: No, nothing was happening, nothing was happening. Carousel

wasn't happening. Nothing was happening.

JANE WALENTAS: That's why I remember it because I used to come over here and

work on the carousel, and I was like the only one. Like, he gave up, and I waslike, thanks a lot now, with the carousel.66:00

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, '92 the real estate market was dead. That's why -- when we

bought that trucking company. I was a trucker for a couple of years.

JULIE GOLIA: Let's talk about the carousel because that is -- you start early on

that. I mean, so tell me how the idea came to be and how you came to take it up.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, because David was supposed to do the Empire Stores on the

park in the '80s. He was the designated developer. Ken Lipper had not yet --

JULIE GOLIA: We can hear that.

DAVID WALENTAS: Oh, sorry.

DAVID WALENTAS: Right, I was the designated developer, and Lipper killed it.

JANE WALENTAS: Right, but before Lipper killed it, David was doing a plan for

the park and the Empire Stores, and he hired -- he had Jack Beyer, Beyer BlinderBelle, working on it, but also they brought in Benjamin Thompson, who was out ofCambridge and did -- well, he did --

DAVID WALENTAS: Nathaniel Hall in Boston, Seaport.

67:00

JANE WALENTAS: -- Nathaniel Hall in Boston, and he was the festival marketplace

sort of -- daddy of the festival marketplace. So Ben Thompson did the masterplan for the park, and there was nothing here. It wasn't zoned residential, andso what do you do to bring people here? According to Ben you put in a carousel,and he also wanted a big wheel, a big Ferris wheel. So I was -- I had left EsteeLauder. I was on a retainer with them. I did special projects, but I gotinvolved going to NYU. I got a master's because we were involved with the folk-- Museum of American Folk Art. David was on the board. I was chairman of theLadies Friends committee or something, and the director of the Folk Art Museumwas starting a master's program at NYU in folk art history or something. And hewas recruiting people to take his course. So I said, you know, I'll do that. Itwas only like two evenings a week or something, and I loved being back at68:00school. It was really fun, and after, I guess, a semester, I thought, this isgreat, but I shouldn't be in this folk art thing. I should be in fine arts, andso I went. I applied and got into program master's in print making because myportfolio was more geared to that from all the years -- art direction. So I hadjust finished my master's, and they decided to get this carousel, so they gaveme the job to find -- sorry -- to find the carousel, so I looked all over thecountry, and as they came up at auction. And there were-- there were -- sorry, Iwas going to say folk art -- there were carousel organizations. There were twoof them in the country, and they put out publications. They had magazines, andthey advertised when carousels were being auctioned off or sold or -- so lookedat several, and then this one in Youngstown, Ohio was being auctioned off, and69:00it was touted as one of the best ever. It was made in 1922. It was all original.So we went to the auction. It was in Youngstown, spent two days there. Thecarousel was kind of the jewel of the amusem*nt park, and the deal withauctioning was it was going to be sold horse by horse, piece by piece, and thenthey would total the bids, so we hung around while it was piece by piece, andthen they totaled it. I think it was $385,000. And they asked for a big, and wedidn't think we had a chance at getting it because there were all these bigdeals who were supposedly buying it. But David threw out the first bid, anuisance bid because we thought, we've been here forever, and then there were noother bids after all these, you know, governor from some state was going to buyit, and all these. So now we had the carousel, and at that time he was still the70:00designated developer, but nothing was really happening, so it was reallypremature to have bought this carousel. So on site we thought, what do we dowith this thing? How do we get it home? People approached us with businesscards. They were in the business of dismantling and moving carousels. We made adeal with one, and about, I don't know, maybe a month later, it showed up hereon two big tractor trailers all in pieces, filthy, dirty, covered in grease. Sowe built what's now the parking garage at 1 Main -- I'm sorry, 45 Main. It wasnot a parking garage. It was just a big underground space, and we built kind ofstalls to -- and we hung -- suspended the horses like each one was in a stall tofigure out now what to do, and I had no intention of restoring it, and I spoke71:00to people, again, in the carousel magazines. I, you know, found people who werein that business and met with them and really didn't agree at all with what theywere doing. They used to strip them chemically and then spray them withautomobile paints, and it was terrible, and there was no big rush becausenothing was happening with the park really, must have been 1984. So I went to acarousel convention. David didn't come.

JULIE GOLIA: What was that like?

JANE WALENTAS: It was terrible. You go --

DAVID WALENTAS: Carousels are a big Midwestern thing. They were in Ohio and --

JANE WALENTAS: It was down -- I mean, I love carousels. That's why I was given

the job of finding it, but it was a little much. You spend three days. It was in-- we were down in North Carolina Pullen Park and I don't know. And you ridearound in bus, you know. There are like a hundred people in their tee shirts and --72:00

DAVID WALENTAS: And they're old and fat and Midwestern.

JANE WALENTAS: And you ride the carousels, you know, and then they have -- some

of them are in carousel related businesses like tee shirts, and then they have athing where they sell all their stuff or promote it. But then they do atechnical conference, and there were two people who talk about their restorationexperience and their expertise, and there were two people who I thought weredoing really good work. So I wanted to hire one of them to come and do it, andneither of them -- they each wanted the carousel to be sent. One was inColorado. One was down south, and we didn't want to pack it up and ship itagain. So I thought, well, I'll see what I think. I'll play around with it andsee what I think. I had restored a lot of furniture just as sort of a hobbyist,never in a really professional way. I was an artist. I had a master's in fine73:00art. I also had -- because of my master's I had a very sort of academic frame ofmind where I was interested in investigating and so I hired one of them, a guy,Will Morton's his name, out of Colorado. He restored the most beautiful carouselin the country still. It's from 1906, and it's exquisite. It was built, it wasdone as an exquisite carousel, but he restored it, and that was my goal, was tohave this carousel be as beautiful as that. So I hire -- I had Will come to NewYork and spend a week with me to set up the studio and get me organized, how togo about doing this, and what I wanted to do was bring it down to its originalpaint from 1922, and I thought that I could save that paint. I thought it wouldall be in original paint and I could just varnish it by scraping it down. When I74:00look back I think I must have been nuts to have thought that I could have donethat all by myself. But that was my goal, and so he got me started with X-Actoknives and how to scrape down to that paint and document as I went, and again,because of my master's, I was documenting everything and making careful notesand writing about everything and taking photographs and doing drawings and --and I just kept doing that for years all by myself in that big studio over hereat 40 -- I guess it was 45?

DAVID WALENTAS: Different one.

JANE WALENTAS: Huh? Well the first one was a big --

DAVID WALENTAS: Different studios.

JANE WALENTAS: -- drafty, fabulous, but it was the early days of Dumbo. And then

-- so I worked alone. Oh, but with a carpenter because there were a lot ofcarpentry repairs to be made. So he and I worked together, and then I didn'twant to use chemical stripper at all because it melts the original paint, and I75:00was just scraping with my X-Acto knives, and then when I would be there, he, thecarpenter, thought I was crazy, what I was doing, and he would use stripper onthem. And I fired him finally because I just didn't want to do it that way. Andthen, because I was coming over here to Dumbo every day, and it was getting sortof tiresome and David was kind of down about the whole thing, David got me alittle apartment in the city, and we would bring the ponies over there. So Iworked in Manhattan for a while. I had like two or three ponies going at once,and by then Jed was going off to boarding school. He went to Andover, and I putdown a tarp in his room while he was away, and I worked on ponies there and outin South Hampton we'd -- I say ponies because they would fit in the car. The big76:00horses didn't. We could just put them. And I just kept doing that and doing itfor years like crazy, and then when we moved to Dumbo, then I really stopped fora while. I just, maybe once in a blue moon I would work on it, but verydiscouraged. Nothing was happening with the park. Nothing was happening here. Itwas kind of sad.

DAVID WALENTAS: And I was a trucker.

JANE WALENTAS: You were not -- your trucking company took over -- the trucking

company. And then when we moved to Dumbo eighteen years ago, whatever year thatwas, is when I thought, this carousel is at a point of no return. I've got toeither, regardless of where it ends up, I've got to finish it. I was brought up,my father taught me about stick-to-it-ivness, and you got to finish what youstart. So then I got another -- they had put it all in storage again, and so Igot another smaller studio where just the horses fit because by then studios77:00were renting -- some of the office spaces were renting. David wouldn't give me abig huge studio anymore. And then -- and then I met -- I hired a young fella tohelp with the carpentry again and a young lady who was a sculptress here whohelped me scrape, and so it, at that point, is when it started to go forward. Idon't know. I just -- I didn't believe -- well, sometimes I guess I did. It washard to believe that it was really going to go in the park. There was so much --

DAVID WALENTAS: So many stupid f*cking people.

JANE WALENTAS: And -- no, and the Jean Nouvel building, we didn't talk about

that, over the river that got --

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, Marianna Koval was killing us, and wherever we wanted it

she didn't want it. Was like --

JANE WALENTAS: And -- and I used to get calls --

DAVID WALENTAS: -- stupid. The heights people were saying, "It's going to make

78:00too much noise. We're going to have too many -- too much noise. We're going tohear that thing up in the heights," and I said, "What are you talking about?"

JANE WALENTAS: And I would -- because it would get written up in the papers on

occasion, and I would get calls from cities all over the country who wanted tohave -- because I used to say I'd give it away, you know. And I all -- if itwasn't for David and Jed I would have given it away. I really would have. I was-- I was like, what am I doing with this crazy thing? It's like nuts. And thensomeone -- at some point someone came into the studio and -- because I thought-- before I had any staff I thought I would do it with Pratt students or youknow, do -- because at that point nothing had been painted yet. It was all justbeing scraped down to this original paint. Oh, and what I forgot to say is Irealized along the way I could not preserve that paint. I kept it there,shellacked over it to preserve it, but it was too fragile and broken, and it79:00needed to be repainted. That's why I left -- the chariots I was able to leave inthe original paint, so I always thought I would do it with volunteers or kidsfrom Pratt, and some artist was in my studio and said, "This is very serious,and you can't -- you have to treat this like it's really important." And I kindof turned my head around a little bit, and so I hired people to help me at thatpoint. That point I had a big studio. He threw me out of 70 Washington Streetfor the condos.

DAVID WALENTAS: We converted to condos.

JANE WALENTAS: I lost my little studio there, and --

DAVID WALENTAS: Come on, you got a big studio at 55.

JANE WALENTAS: Beautiful big studio and then everything was together because all

the pieces had been all over the place, and then I was able to staff up. For twoyears I had a crew of six, and from all my documentation, all my early work thatI'd done it was easy to just repaint it. It was all just there, and we had a80:00great time. It was a fun group. They were young when we started, most of thosekids. They're all now all married and have kids, and so it was great. The lasttwo years -- and then it was still a struggle to get it to the park, and it wason display in a building where 60 Water is now. It was there for two years, andI had a petition. Everybody would come in and sign the petition to get it intothe park. I had stacks of these petitions.

DAVID WALENTAS: But politicians didn't care. Nobody cared. The state parks was a

pain in the ass, and they were up in Albany, and nobody had any balls, and so wegot lucky with Wilmer.

JANE WALENTAS: Yes, are we jumping ahead too much about how it ended up in -- ?

JULIE GOLIA: Let's -- let's do it. Let's wrap that up, yeah.

DAVID WALENTAS: Well, in Patterson we placed the -- what his name was, the

81:00district attorney, what was his name?

JANE WALENTAS: No, the governor, he had been district attorney, but the

governor. What was his name, who got into trouble with the prostitutes and --

JULIE GOLIA: Oh, Spitzer.

DAVID WALENTAS: Spitzer.

JANE WALENTAS: Spitzer, thank you.

DAVID WALENTAS: Right, so Spitzer resigned, and that other guy, the Black guy --

JANE WALENTAS: Patterson.

DAVID WALENTAS: Patterson took the job, and he asked the chairman at M&T Bank,

Bob Wilmers to take over his economic development, and we had met Wilmers yearsearlier, and I'm not sure if we were doing some banking with him. Maybe we hadstarted, but not much. So we went -- we went and met with Bob Wilmers.

JANE WALENTAS: Who we really -- didn't really know.

DAVID WALENTAS: We didn't know him at all.

JANE WALENTAS: No.

DAVID WALENTAS: So we went and met with him on Park Avenue. We walk in his

82:00office, and he's got a drawing -- he's married to a French woman, and he livedand worked in Europe in Belgium. Anyway, he had a drawing of a carousel horse onhis wall.

JANE WALENTAS: I thought, boy, am I in the right place. Beautiful pencil drawing

of a carousel.

DAVID WALENTAS: So we sat down, and we gave him our pitch, and we showed him the

carousel, and we had Jean Nouvel, a French architect, was doing a building forit, and we were going to give it to the park, and so, I don't know, ten, fifteenminutes we gave him our pitch. He looked at it. He said, "What's the problem?"

JANE WALENTAS: He said, "You want to give us the carousel. You want to have Jean

Nouvel build the building, and you want to give it all to us." And we said yeah.He said, "What's the problem?"

DAVID WALENTAS: What's the -- I said, f*cking state park is in the way. He made

it happen.

JANE WALENTAS: But Carol Ash, when did Carol Ash come into it. She was in --

DAVID WALENTAS: She was before then.

JANE WALENTAS: Really?

83:00

DAVID WALENTAS: Before, yeah.

JANE WALENTAS: That's -- that terrible woman was still there, whatever? Anyway,

and it's

DAVID WALENTAS: Mougen was there. Somebody else was there. Anyway, we --

JANE WALENTAS: Regina, Regina was just there in the park.

JULIE GOLIA: Regina Myer?

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, who loved the carousel, knew David forever from, you know,

her last positions. Regina was in favor. Anyway --

DAVID WALENTAS: So Bob Wilmer we got lucky. Bob Wilmer said do it, and they held

us up for a few bucks, and -- but -- and Marianna Koval was gone by then.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, yeah.

DAVID WALENTAS: So today carousel's like a -- icon of the city. People are going

to the New York City, they go to the Statue of Liberty. They come to see the --ride on the carousel. I mean, it's really an amazing icon for the city.Shouldn't be so hard to give that away.

JULIE GOLIA: So I think it's just an amazing symbol, isn't it? Like, you started

84:00it in '84 when you guys were like, what's going to happen here? And then it --you installed it in what, '11, 2010?

JANE WALENTAS: 2011, yeah, yeah, yeah.

JULIE GOLIA: It's just -- it's like a --

DAVID WALENTAS: It was twenty-seven years.

JULIE GOLIA: Twenty-seven years, it's remarkable.

JANE WALENTAS: Been my whole adult life.

JULIE GOLIA: In the -- in the -- in the '80s, when you're here in the studio --

I have to ask you to stop that.

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, it's a bad habit. Yeah, it cracks. It cracks in your ear.

JULIE GOLIA: In the '80s you're starting the carousel. You've got largely office

tenants --

DAVID WALENTAS: No, no --

JULIE GOLIA: -- and, and manufacturing tenants.

DAVID WALENTAS: No, still manufacturing, some -- we started -- we started -- we

couldn't get office tenants because big companies have no balls and courage, andwasn't a neighborhood, so it -- we couldn't -- couldn't --85:00

JULIE GOLIA: But you had the Department of Labor, right?

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, the Department of Labor we -- we got because of that

political deal --

JULIE GOLIA: Right.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- and we got Sweeney because of a political deal, and we got a

couple of city agencies because nobody else would take them. We couldn't getoffice tenants.

JULIE GOLIA: Like your Lehmans?

JANE WALENTAS: There were printers here.

DAVID WALENTAS: There were printers here.

JANE WALENTAS: Wasn't there like a wallpaper manufacture?

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, stencil. It's tertiary kinds of things. Then we started --

we started early renting to artists --

JULIE GOLIA: So that's -- that was going to be my question.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- for studios. We were early for that. You know, we wouldn't

permit living, but we rented them studios to -- in the ground floor space we hadall this vacant ground floor space, so we literally gave it away to Peas andPickles, the Korean market and Jacques Torres. We gave him a couple of yearsfree rent, and oh, we had a French kid did a wine store.86:00

JANE WALENTAS: Wine store. Anna.

DAVID WALENTAS: Anna, we gave --

JANE WALENTAS: It became Foragers. That was started with a little --

DAVID WALENTAS: We gave them all free rent because they were vacant. It didn't

cost me anything, and --

JANE WALENTAS: The hardware store.

DAVID WALENTAS: And we wanted to have neighborhood services, and so we gave it

all away. Now they're all successful. Peas and Pickles actually we gave them acouple years free rent, and they came to me five or six years later. They boughta condo at Sweeney for a million and a half dollars. They wanted to give mecash. I said can't take a million and a half dollars in cash. It's America. Theydo a great job of it. Family all works there. They send their kids to schoolthere. American success story.

JANE WALENTAS: I found them up in the heights.

DAVID WALENTAS: We need more immigrants like that.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah.

JULIE GOLIA: Tell me about the artists who are living in the neighborhood. I

87:00know you said you rented studio space, not living, but there were a lot ofartists who are living -- and they were --

DAVID WALENTAS: Yes, not in our buildings. We learned that from SoHo and NoHo.

We've been around the block. Where a couple of buildings rented to -- and theyended up owning the building -- partners. As a matter of fact, when we boughtthe buildings from Helmsley there were two or three artists in 66 Water,whatever it is. And I told Helmsley I'm not taking title till you vacate.

JANE WALENTAS: Oh really? I never heard that.

DAVID WALENTAS: So they vacated it. We wouldn't permit that.

JULIE GOLIA: What did you learn from SoHo that made you really put your foot

down on it?

DAVID WALENTAS: Well, I mean, I was always -- as a kid I was always a fan of

Nathaniel Hall and restoration and --

JANE WALENTAS: No, I think she means about the artists. Like, you said you

88:00wouldn't --

DAVID WALENTAS: Oh yeah, for sure, oh, we learned that from SoHo too. I mean,

that's where we --

JULIE GOLIA: What happened in SoHo that made you put your foot down on that?

DAVID WALENTAS: Well, you got -- you get interim multiple dwellings, they become

your tenants. You can't get rid of them. No, you can't. You can't rent toillegals. A lot of landlords did it because they get a few more bucks and -- butthey were -- there was --

JANE WALENTAS: So there were no leases, is that what you mean?

DAVID WALENTAS: You could give them a lease, but you have to renew it then.

JANE WALENTAS: Oh.

JULIE GOLIA: Right, but there were other landlords in the neighborhood that were

just renting on cheap, undeveloped space?

DAVID WALENTAS: Right, right.

JANE WALENTAS: Here? Yeah, but none --

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, and there's still -- there's a big building here.

JANE WALENTAS: But that happened after you most -- well, I don't know.

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, no, it was all happening. We just wouldn't permit it.

There are a lot of buildings here now that the tenants own.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, but there weren't so many artists here then.

89:00

DAVID WALENTAS: No, no not so many.

JANE WALENTAS: There weren't so many artists.

DAVID WALENTAS: No, but there were a few, and it had started. Like I said,

Helmsley had a few tenants, but -- but the --

JANE WALENTAS: There were a couple but not like --

DAVID WALENTAS: The big paper, wastepaper building, that was full of them.

JANE WALENTAS: But that wasn't full of them then I don't think. Was it?

DAVID WALENTAS: I don't know full. Anyway --

JANE WALENTAS: Anyway.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- it was a lesson that we learned.

JULIE GOLIA: So -- I'm cognizant. I don't want to keep you guys too long because

we've been talking for a while. This is amazing. I -- can we talk briefly aboutthe Jean Nouvel development and what happened there, and then let's go torezoning and redeveloping?

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, yeah.

JULIE GOLIA: Sound good?

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah.

JULIE GOLIA: So --

JANE WALENTAS: You talk about the Jean Nouvel.

DAVID WALENTAS: Well, Jean Nouvel, when we -- we actually brought Jean to New

York before we did the carousel building. We had -- we had --

JANE WALENTAS: I think that's right. You want to hear about the building he did

that never happened, right?

JULIE GOLIA: That's the building over the water that never developed.

JANE WALENTAS: That never happened.

JULIE GOLIA: Yeah.

DAVID WALENTAS: All right, so we -- we were working with the state, the city, I

90:00don't know, and we were going to do a building over the water. So we hired -- we-- and Jack Beyer was our architect for years, and I said, no, I want a -- Iwant a contemporary building and maybe a foreign architect, but I want acontemporary building, so Jack was not happy. But after a few days he cooledoff. He said, "I understand. If you want to do it we'll do a littlecompetition." So we put together a little competition, and we sent it out, andJean was one of the respondents, and a guy in England --

JANE WALENTAS: Richard Rogers.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- Richard Rogers, so we --

JANE WALENTAS: Before start architects were --

DAVID WALENTAS: Right.

JANE WALENTAS: I guess the beginning of that.

DAVID WALENTAS: Right.

JANE WALENTAS: Because Rem -- Rem Koolhaas was invited, and he turned us down.

He was too busy.

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, I wouldn't deal with Rem Koolhass. He's too --

91:00

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, I know. We did -- we met with him. We met with him.

DAVID WALENTAS: I met with him, and I wouldn't -- I couldn't work with Rem Koolhaas.

JANE WALENTAS: Anyway, yeah, we met with him downstairs, actually.

DAVID WALENTAS: So we got in a plane one weekend, and we went to England and met

with Richard Rogers, saw his work, and then we -- we took the train, nighttrain, arrived in Paris at midnight and met with Jean the next day, and then weflew to --

JANE WALENTAS: Lucerne.

DAVID WALENTAS: Lucerne. He did a --

JANE WALENTAS: Switzerland.

DAVID WALENTAS: He did a --

JANE WALENTAS: Beautiful concerto.

DAVID WALENTAS: Opera house on the water in Lucerne, and drank a lot of wine,

and so we hired Jean to do the carousel building.

JANE WALENTAS: No.

DAVID WALENTAS: Or the pier building.

JANE WALENTAS: To do the pier building.

DAVID WALENTAS: And it was written up in the New York Times as the -- by Lou

Champs as the most exciting new building in New York in a generation.92:00Cantilevered right out over the water, so fortunately everybody got crazy, andit didn't happen because I would have gone broke doing that. But we met Jean. Sothen later when we were going to do the -- and Jean became the star. At thattime nobody had ever heard of Jean Nouvel in America. He hadn't --never been toAmerica, never did a building here. So then in the intervening years Jean became-- sorry. Jean became a star. He did several buildings in New York, and so whenwe did the carousel we wanted him to do the carousel, which is a small thing,but so we went to him. He said "You brought me to America. It's a great spot."He said, "I won't forget it."

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, he loved, he loved the spot. He still does. He still loves

93:00this piece of --

DAVID WALENTAS: He said, "I'll do it."

JANE WALENTAS: -- the world.

DAVID WALENTAS: So he came up with these rectangular buildings. He came up with

one building. He wanted to move it on tracks. We said, "Jean, you know,carousels are like round buildings." So he did a little round building. We said,oh, you know, we like that. He said, "What's so good about it?"

JANE WALENTAS: He said it's great. He said what's so great about it?

DAVID WALENTAS: What's so great about it? He finally said, "Look, I'm doing a

rectangle building or I'm not doing it." I said okay. So he --

JANE WALENTAS: It wasn't easy. I mean, it was a -- because we couldn't imagine

this square, you know.

DAVID WALENTAS: And acrylic was amazing material because you get a little

deformation, which kind of is like a fun house a little bit. It adds a lot ofinterest to it. The building is -- and those folding doors from Switzerland.94:00

JANE WALENTAS: But that too, I mean, I love Jean's glassy buildings that we saw

in Europe, and that's why we hired him, and all of a sudden he's doing acrylic.We said, wait, where'd that come from?

DAVID WALENTAS: But that's part of the genius of Jean --

JANE WALENTAS: It's great.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- is there's no Nouvel building. They're all very, very

individual and different, and you can't look at it and say -- it's not likeRichard Meier, right. That's a Richard Meier building.

JANE WALENTAS: And the reason for the acrylic --

DAVID WALENTAS: It's spectacular.

JANE WALENTAS: -- the reason for the acrylic is that he didn't want any

mullions, the pieces between the glass, and acrylic can actually be weldedtogether, so he wanted those two facades to be welded and have no separation,just shear 70-foot walls. And that was a huge deal to do that.

DAVID WALENTAS: You can't do that, so --

JANE WALENTAS: Well, you can. You can.

95:00

DAVID WALENTAS: Well, no, there's too much expansion. Too much expansion, so

there's a narrow gap, so we had all the genius engineers designing all kinds ofexpansion joints, and in the end, all we did was take Velcro strips and glue itto the sides of the --

JANE WALENTAS: And it's held up amazingly well.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- and take a piece of Mylar and make a little U out of it and

stick it to the Velcro.

JANE WALENTAS: It's been through the hurricane. It's been through that little

earthquake. It's been through sitting out there through everything.

DAVID WALENTAS: We just had two -- two pieces --

JANE WALENTAS: That was Jean. That was Jean's invention, you know.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- and we put --

JANE WALENTAS: It moves because it --

DAVID WALENTAS: -- Velcro tape on, and then we took Mylar and just made a little loop.

JANE WALENTAS: So it moves.

DAVID WALENTAS: And glue it, and so it can move.

JANE WALENTAS: To look at the carousel from any distance, not -- you don't have

to be so far away --

DAVID WALENTAS: You never see it.

JANE WALENTAS: It looks like a shear wall, really. It does, so that was the idea.

96:00

JULIE GOLIA: That's so interesting when you go down there right after.

DAVID WALENTAS: Right, right, you'll see it. There's a little piece of Mylar.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, every once in a while you'll see someone stick their finger

in there. It's usually an architect or an engineer who's like focused on itthinking --

DAVID WALENTAS: How did they do it?

JANE WALENTAS: "What is this? How did they do this?"

JULIE GOLIA: So interesting.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, because it does expand and contract like wood does with the

change in temperature.

JULIE GOLIA: That's amazing. That's so interesting.

JANE WALENTAS: But I just want to go back to the Nouvel building that was

supposed to be here. It was a struggle. David says, you know, it's a good thingit didn't happen because you would have gone broke, but that was -- it was areal effort to try and get that thing approved. Wasn't it?

DAVID WALENTAS: But it wasn't going to get approved. It never got approved.

JANE WALENTAS: I know, but didn't you want it to? Oh, come on.

DAVID WALENTAS: I think when we did it I wanted to, but --

JANE WALENTAS: For sure.

DAVID WALENTAS: But at that time it was -- I forgot. It was separate from the

rest of the park.

JANE WALENTAS: It was part of the park plan.

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, but --

JANE WALENTAS: It was definitely -- it was out here. It was part of the apartment.

97:00

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, but that was city-owned property.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, but it was -- it was --

DAVID WALENTAS: I don't know. I've forgotten.

JANE WALENTAS: They were joined, city and state yes.

DAVID WALENTAS: I don't know if they were together at that time.

JULIE GOLIA: What year was it?

DAVID WALENTAS: I don't know.

JULIE GOLIA: Nineties?

DAVID WALENTAS: I don't know. I've got a presentation --

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, there's a presentation. I'm looking over here. I don't know

if there's - oh, it was definitely the '90s because Jed was working with you bythen. Jed went to Europe with us for the -- with that girlfriend. Yeah, and Jedgraduated college in '92.

DAVID WALENTAS: Oh, it must have been the late '90s.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, like '96, maybe.

DAVID WALENTAS: '97, '98.

JANE WALENTAS: I don't know. When was this zoned residential?

DAVID WALENTAS: '97, '98 and we didn't --

JANE WALENTAS: Because then there weren't people living here. And they're --

DAVID WALENTAS: Ninety-six, ninety-seven, so she wasn't living here by -- I

think we converted this about '97, '96, '97.

JANE WALENTAS: Who wasn't living here?

DAVID WALENTAS: That tall blond girl, girlfriend.

98:00

JANE WALENTAS: But it was still his girlfriend. Whether she was living here --

DAVID WALENTAS: Oh, I don't know.

JANE WALENTAS: She went to Europe with us is what I said.

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, yeah.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, anyway.

JULIE GOLIA: Before we move on to the rezoning, because I'm really interested in

that, you mentioned the heights folks, some of the community groups --

DAVID WALENTAS: Terrible.

JULIE GOLIA: Can you talk to me about -

DAVID WALENTAS: Terrible people. Well, Brooklyn Heights association has opposed

everything that's ever been done down here. The truth be known they're racistantisemites that don't want anything done. They didn't want the park donebecause they didn't want Schwartzes [Blacks] from the subways coming through theneighborhood and down to the park. I used to tell them just paint thosewarehouse roofs green and tell the heights that it's a park and nobody will everknow the different because they don't want to know about it. They didn't wantanything done down here because they didn't want any traffic. And so the99:00Brooklyn Heights association vetoed everything that ever happened down here ortried to. And Marianna Koval and all those people are the worst.

JULIE GOLIA: Marianna Koval was the head of --

JANE WALENTAS: Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy and there were people in the

heights like John Watts. Do you know -- what ever happened to him?

DAVID WALENTAS: Terrible guy.

JANE WALENTAS: They sort of controlled Marianna. They really controlled how --

DAVID WALENTAS: Right, John Watts was the big money behind it.

JANE WALENTAS: And the other one, Roosevelt.

DAVID WALENTAS: Right.

JANE WALENTAS: You don't know the Roosevelt's? You don't hear about these

people. They controlled everything.

DAVID WALENTAS: I don't know if Roosevelt's still there. He worked for Lehman

Brothers. They went broke, and I don't know. Roosevelt --

JANE WALENTAS: Was he Teddy Roosevelt? Like, was that his name?

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, yeah.

JANE WALENTAS: I think so, and his wife was Connie, and they were --

DAVID WALENTAS: So they were very polite, and they would stab you in the back.

100:00

JANE WALENTAS: Right, and powerful in the heights.

DAVID WALENTAS: And right, and there were white racists up in the heights.

JANE WALENTAS: It's really different now. It's really very different now. It's amazing.

DAVID WALENTAS: It's changed a lot.

JANE WALENTAS: So they controlled the park really, that conservancy. There was

-- oh, and there was a woman who was the director of the park who they kind ofput in there. I forget her name. Briefly, before Regina, she was terrible.

DAVID WALENTAS: So we survived. When we did the rezoning, they opposed it. When

we filed to do 60 Water Street they were vocally against it. They were againstthe carousel. They were against everything that ever happened here. Now theylove it. f*ck them. And I told them so.

JANE WALENTAS: Saint Anne's warehouse was a huge battle that we still haven't --

DAVID WALENTAS: They didn't want Saint Anne's warehouse. They didn't want

101:00anything. They wanted the tobacco warehouse to stay a ruin. Terrible people. Andthey --

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, Marianna Koval, who was head of the conservancy, wanted

that space for her -- they were doing weddings in there. Would put tents inthere and they were doing weddings and making all kinds of money, and that wassupposed to be a community service or something.

DAVID WALENTAS: And I told them all so in no uncertain terms.

JANE WALENTAS: Well, it was ridiculous.

DAVID WALENTAS: So the rezoning, that really happened with Giuliani. There was a

guy there who was a very decent guy, Giuliani was not particularly, but one ofhis people, whose name I've forgotten, was very -- oh, he was the one that wasrunning for mayor in -- or for Giuliani. Anyway, I'll try to think of it. And102:00Ken Fisher was the city council person up in the heights. And that reallycontrols it, and we knew the Fishers from day one over here. The father was thebig Macca in democratic politics, and so there were two Fisher brothers, Ken andwhat was his brother's name?

JANE WALENTAS: Andy.

DAVID WALENTAS: Andy, he was the fat one.

JANE WALENTAS: Andrew.

DAVID WALENTAS: So he was on the city council, and he believed in it. He made it

happen in '95, '6, '7, whenever we did that. The -- they finally decided that wewere okay, and they weren't going to protect manufacturing, and mixed-use103:00neighborhoods were really the future of the city, and so Ken Fisher made thathappen. Brooklyn Heights association opposed it. And the day we got thatapproved, I won. We knew that with mixed-use zoning here it would be a great neighborhood.

JULIE GOLIA: So what did you say --

DAVID WALENTAS: That took twenty -- it took twenty years.

JULIE GOLIA: It only took twenty years. I mean, I imagine that the day that

happened you must have been like, all right, let's go.

DAVID WALENTAS: We won. Yup, yup, that was big. Big for the city, I mean, for

sure. I don't know, some people give it more credit than I do, but if you speakto Regina, she says Dumbo is a catalyst for all of downtown Brooklyn. And the104:00live-work and --

JANE WALENTAS: I think so too.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- all the high tech and the kids and -- and I said I think

that's a stretch, but certainly we were a big part of it, or the most visiblepart for sure. So today everybody loves me, but -- not everybody but enough.Well, it took forty years.

JULIE GOLIA: So once that was rezoned this was the first building?

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, so this building was vacant because the Department of

Labor moved out. We bought the mortgage back, and Jed was just at work for --oh, Jed worked for Trump for a year and a half when he graduated from college. Isaid you can't get a job -- can't work for me. Get a job. So he worked forTrump. Trump loves him. So I said, Jed, come and work for me. We're going toconvert the clock tower, so he and Ameesh, it's the first thing there, and theyhad no idea what they were doing. They were working --

JANE WALENTAS: That's his college friend.

DAVID WALENTAS: Around the clock, on-the-job training. He was amazing.

105:00

JANE WALENTAS: But, you know, it really wasn't called Dumbo. It was still called

Fulton Landing.

DAVID WALENTAS: Fulton Landing.

JANE WALENTAS: We always called it the Dumbo.

DAVID WALENTAS: But right, the city had called it Fulton Landing.

JANE WALENTAS: The city called it Fulton landing.

DAVID WALENTAS: Fulton Landing, so when we did this building, I said forget

about Fulton Landing. We're going to call it Dumbo Lofts. Forget about -- thereis no Fulton Landing. It's going to be Dumbo. Oh, my lawyers and consultantswere all saying, "You can't call it the Dumbo. Nobody will go there. Who wouldgo?" I said Dumbo's like magic. It's a fun name, the elephant, and it's anacronym that everybody's going to remember, right. All the geniuses said, "Oh,we can't do that."

JANE WALENTAS: And the press loved it. Press just loved it.

DAVID WALENTAS: And Jane came up with this Live, Work, Play, which you see all

over the place. That was Jane.

JANE WALENTAS: I never did. It's hard for me to believe that, but I -- because

106:00David wanted me to -- I used to do all --

DAVID WALENTAS: She was my art director.

JANE WALENTAS: -- yeah, all their stuff. And he wanted a banner that -- one of

those vertical banners that you see on these buildings, and it said like, youknow, work spaces, you know, living, whatever, apartments, studio. And we had --we had been in Africa. It was that elephant -- two elephants put together,right. So I said I'm just going to say live, work, and play because theelephants were like playing. Anyway, then everybody copied it forever. Iwouldn't even remember that I did that.

DAVID WALENTAS: You did it.

JANE WALENTAS: Jed, Jed said you really did that. Anyway --

JULIE GOLIA: Once this was converted, who were -- who was moving into the neighborhood?

DAVID WALENTAS: Well, the first people here were -- because they were big

apartments --

JANE WALENTAS: I think it's very -- I think it's very interesting, the history,

the early --107:00

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, because they were big apartments it was very attractive to families.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, but they weren't families.

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah --

JANE WALENTAS: They were pregnant.

DAVID WALENTAS: They were on their way. We make -- they make babies here every day.

JULIE GOLIA: Live, work, play.

DAVID WALENTAS: Exactly, people -- people would ask me who, you know, who's our

market. I said every apartment, two dogs, two kids, straight or gay, doesn'tmatter, two dogs, two kids. That was our market.

JANE WALENTAS: But -- but having lived in SoHo and seen what happened with SoHo,

that's what we pictured. There weren't families in SoHo, and we didn't -- wedidn't picture that.

DAVID WALENTAS: No.

JANE WALENTAS: The city was changing though. The demographic of the city was

changing. People were staying --

DAVID WALENTAS: And the city was more --

JANE WALENTAS: Here with children.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- safe. Schools were getting better. People wanted to stay in

108:00the city, so we caught that wave, and we had big, cheap lofts because thebuildings were so big they had to be deep. So we had -- we made these homeoffices in every apartment which are --

JANE WALENTAS: Which became nurseries probably.

DAVID WALENTAS: Which are illegal bedrooms, nurseries. So they were --

JANE WALENTAS: I pictured it like SoHo, you know, young, thirty-somethings,

professional. I don't know. You know, what happened with all the family --people moved in when they were pregnant. I thought they'd be out of here whenthe kids were two. These kids grew up here. They went to college. They're --its' amazing.

DAVID WALENTAS: And if you look in the neighborhood -- baby stores. We have pet

stores and baby stores, and we have schools and nursery schools and after schoolplay groups, and one of the girls that worked for me now runs a after school day --109:00

JANE WALENTAS: What were these apartments sold for originally?

DAVID WALENTAS: I don't know, 300 a foot, 1,000 feet, $300,000. Now they're 2 million.

JANE WALENTAS: And a lot --

DAVID WALENTAS: I made a lot of people rich.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, I was going to say. A lot of, I don't know if they were

rich kids, but kids with parents with money who were buying them the apartments.Isn't that true?

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, yeah.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, a lot of them.

DAVID WALENTAS: And then the market did run away. I mean, the market over the

last ten, fifteen years has really run away, so I rode that wave. But it's avery nice place to live. It's really a -- it's really a neighborhood community.I mean, people know their Peas & Pickles. Everybody knows Susan, and they knowthe grocers, and they know Anna. And they know Foragers, and it's like a littleneighborhood, and we curated that, you know, for mom and pops.110:00

JANE WALENTAS: And then there was this other real estate developer who -- Shia,

I guess he owned build -- owned -- owned old, not tenements but rundownbuildings here, and then he built that building, the first one, on the corner ofMain and put in a Starbucks.

DAVID WALENTAS: Oh yeah, yeah.

JANE WALENTAS: It was horrifying.

DAVID WALENTAS: He put them --

JANE WALENTAS: But he owned buildings here, I guess?

DAVID WALENTAS: Not many.

JANE WALENTAS: So he bought them?

DAVID WALENTAS: No, he bought that one. Shia did that kind of crappy building --

JANE WALENTAS: On Water -- on Front Street.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- on Front Street, that's all.

JANE WALENTAS: But when that other person came in here and built this sort of

modern building and put in a Starbucks it was --

DAVID WALENTAS: And crappy architecture and --

JANE WALENTAS: Right, to this day I've only been in that Starbucks once.

DAVID WALENTAS: We believed from the beginning doing a good job in terms of

111:00finishes and architecture and not a lot of money in it, just caring and tasteand you know --

JANE WALENTAS: Style.

DAVID WALENTAS: Which most developers don't do a good job with.

JULIE GOLIA: Did you learn lessons with -- when you redeveloped 1 Main Street

that like you applied to some of the other ones that you did later like 70 Washington.

DAVID WALENTAS: Not much, not much.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, but you did as you keep shrinking the apartments.

DAVID WALENTAS: Well --

JANE WALENTAS: Yes.

DAVID WALENTAS: No, no, no, when you deal with existing buildings you're kind of

constrained. You don't start with a clean sheet of paper, so this building wasmuch deeper than 70, so we had to make all those home offices just because itwas very deep.

JANE WALENTAS: Okay.

DAVID WALENTAS: Seventy is a lot of one bedrooms and two bedrooms, no three bedrooms.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, but the space is here, much more generous than 70 Washington.

112:00

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, because the building is -- the building is deeper.

JANE WALENTAS: Come on, the whole --

DAVID WALENTAS: Well, they're not all like this, but no, the apartment -- you

haven't been in one of the apartments.

JANE WALENTAS: At 70 Washington?

DAVID WALENTAS: No, no, downstairs here. They're not --

JANE WALENTAS: Yes, I have.

DAVID WALENTAS: They're not any bigger than 70.

JANE WALENTAS: Really?

DAVID WALENTAS: Not really.

JANE WALENTAS: Okay, anyway, I think you keep shrinking them.

JULIE GOLIA: When you redid 70, what were they going for?

DAVID WALENTAS: More for sure. On -- let's see. We did this one. We did -- I

think we did Sweeney second, and we did 70, and that's all the -- then we didthe brick and heavy timber, those are -- we only do rentals now, and the rental building.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, a lot of them were rentals.

DAVID WALENTAS: And the rental buildings are much tighter. The buildings are

smaller. The column spans are less. The ceilings are lower. And they're rentalbuildings, so there's only so much rent you can get for an apartment. You know,113:00a one bedroom apartment, whether it's 800 square feet or 500 square feet, 600square feet, it's still a living room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and you don'tget a lot more rent.

JANE WALENTAS: So I interrupted about that. Is there anything else you learned

along the way?

DAVID WALENTAS: Well, we kind of -- they evolve, the finishes get a little

better as we go, and that's true of our rental buildings. But they're not arevolution. They're just a little --

JANE WALENTAS: Evolution.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- a little evolution here and there to make them as good and as

efficient as we can.

JULIE GOLIA: Talk about -- so you foster a lot of arts organizations in the

neighborhood, Saint Anne's, Smack Mellon. I'd like to hear a little bit about --I know a lot more than I'm listing -- I'd love to hear a little bit about why114:00and how that came about.

DAVID WALENTAS: I don't know. Jane will tell you.

JANE WALENTAS: They pester us enough, and we say okay. No, it's part of our

culture and our background. For me as an artist and David, his partner, hisoriginal partner, he had that art gallery and exposed David to art and living inSoHo, and then here they started this program with artists' studios, and so artsgroups came here for various reasons.

DAVID WALENTAS: I guess we like artists, and frankly one of the secrets to our

success is following artists to neighborhoods. You don't have to be a genius forthis. See where the artists are going next, so we went from SoHo to NoHo toDumbo and followed the artists. But as Jane said, she's an artist, and I -- and115:00we love art. We're not huge collectors, but we're -- we're certainly supportive.We had to do something with our money. So I don't know.

JANE WALENTAS: And as they grew, you know, Smack Mellon was here very early,

different people owned it, ran it, and Cathleen came along and --

DAVID WALENTAS: Does a great job.

JANE WALENTAS: She's doing a good job and came to us for -- to help, and so you

help, and there's a group called Triangle that was in the World Trade Center,and they got -- their space was lost, and they came to us through -- we just metKaren through that, I guess. So we gave -- they do, every other year they inviteartists from all over the world, and they do a big -- they work for two weeksand then do an exhibit, and so they came to us to do that here. It's a long time116:00ago, and we had a lot of space and gave them a whole floor at 55, I think, wasthe first one, and -- and so then we give them, I think we still do give them space.

DAVID WALENTAS: Or low rent, I'm not sure.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, and then Studio School we give, again, I don't know if you

give them free space, Studio School, which is in Manhattan, for their sculpturedepartment. I don't know if it's free anymore. I don't know.

DAVID WALENTAS: I don't know.

JANE WALENTAS: And then there was a group called the Murray Wool Sharpe

Foundation that was in Tribeca, and Chuck Close was one of the founders of it,and we knew Chuck, and the building was sold, so they were moving here, so Davidgave them not free but at very low rent space, and then -- and they were herefor a couple of years, and then the foundation was out of money, and they cameto David and said, "We're broke, and we have to close the foundation -- close117:00the studio program." There were seventeen artists that get free studios for ayear. So we decided to adopt them, so now we run the organization, actually, andsupport it, and so -- so

DAVID WALENTAS: They get free rent.

JANE WALENTAS: They get free rent, and then -- and the artists -- there's a jury

that selects these artists. We -- last year I think we had 13, 14,000 applicantsto pick 17. It's very well-respected studio program, so we take care of them,and then I don't know, lots of others. Jed's got his favorites and --

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, we have a studio program in our --

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, he rents subsidy, I forget what they call it.

DAVID WALENTAS: Subsidy on man, I don't know.

JANE WALENTAS: We give subsidized rent to -- that's by the square foot. I don't

know. A lot of -- a lot of space to --118:00

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, 100,000 feet, I think, we have that we --

JANE WALENTAS: At a very reduced rent, and they have to qualify and yeah, a lot.

JULIE GOLIA: It's a lot.

JANE WALENTAS: A lot, yeah, and we, you know, we get thanked.

JULIE GOLIA: Why are artists good for a neighborhood?

DAVID WALENTAS: Well, I think --

JANE WALENTAS: I don't --

DAVID WALENTAS: I think what happens, interestingly --

JANE WALENTAS: -- my opinions, but.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- is artists, because of their eye and their aesthetic, they're

-- gravitate to neighborhoods that have great light and space, and so it's a --the egg kind of before the chicken.

JANE WALENTAS: It's chicken and egg, yeah.

DAVID WALENTAS: And so if you follow the artist they're probably interesting

neighborhoods and buildings, you know. That's the way SoHo was and NoHo andDumbo, and now they're in, I don't know, east New York, Flatbush. I'm not going119:00there, but I'm too old.

JANE WALENTAS: Really, Flatbush?

DAVID WALENTAS: And where are we, Dominos and --

JANE WALENTAS: Williamsburg.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- Williamsburg, kind of follow the -- follow the artist. They

started out in Greenwich Village, so went to SoHo. I don't know. It gives aninterest, and we like art. We think art's good for the city. Fortunately MikeBloomberg and Patty understood that art's a great tourist attraction. It's agreat, great quality of life thing for people that live here, work here, visitNew York. Tourism is a great business for New York people. Bring money and spendit and go home. So it's -- it's all those things that make the city a placewhere people want to be.

JANE WALENTAS: And I think about -- about all the subsidies and taking care of

all the arts groups. I think we want to hang on to them. We like them being120:00here. So that is part of it too. You know, we didn't want them to leave. Andsome of them left, but we have a lot of artists, working artists, in theneighborhood, and we like helping them because it's good. It's good for theneighborhood to have them rather than becoming 8th Street or I don't know. It'strue. It's true. Where SoHo lost -- SoHo lost itself I mean --

DAVID WALENTAS: Right, and plus --

JANE WALENTAS: -- got so expensive, and so I guess we have enough space, and

we're rich enough where we can do it.

DAVID WALENTAS: And the other thing that is kind of unique is because we really

control a neighborhood, and it has natural boundaries, nowhere in the city doesanybody have that. So we can curate. We're not going to have tattoo shops. We'renot going to have p*rno shops. We're not going to have chain stores. We can121:00curate in a subtle way what happens on the street. And that -- and that addsimmense value to all my apartments and my office space. So people want to behere, they'll pay a couple of bucks more rent if they have a good experience onthe waterfront and the park and the streets and the retail, and so when you ownthe whole neighborhood you -- you can do that because you're interested increating the most value for the whole neighborhood not just for, if you own onelittle store front you don't really give a sh*t. You want to get the highestrent, and you don't care who the f*ck it is.

JANE WALENTAS: That's why we were concerned about the Empire Stores and --

DAVID WALENTAS: It's in strong hands.

JANE WALENTAS: -- how good a job they did.

DAVID WALENTAS: It's in strong hands. They're strong people, descent, strong.

JANE WALENTAS: So we didn't want that Shia boiling green doing it --

122:00

DAVID WALENTAS: Right, right

JANE WALENTAS: -- wherever he is today.

DAVID WALENTAS: Terrible guy, terrible guy, terrible guy.

JULIE GOLIA: When we look out the window, we look at Dumbo today, did you

achieve -- I'm asking both of you -- did you achieve the vision that you hadback in 1979?

DAVID WALENTAS: Oh, I think way more. I could have never envisioned it to be so

successful in every way, you know, aesthetically, financially, having thethousands of kids that worked here. Who ever heard digital media? They weren'teven born. I mean, nobody could project that. I just knew it would be good. DidI know it would be this good? Never, but I was -- I wasn't quitting.

JANE WALENTAS: I did do a slide show, though, that was very prophetic.

DAVID WALENTAS: Imagine.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, it's -- unfortunately it's in pieces. I have -- it's a sad

123:00story. I had it made into a DVD, and it's not a good quality, and the place thatdid that, I let them keep the slide -- it was actually the sister of a goodfriend of mine. She had a studio that did all this conversion, and she went outof business and all this, so my original slide show is gone. I've got slides. Itcan be recreated, but I've got the DVD, but it talked about imagine -- it wasFulton Landing then, with bakeries baking again, and I show a croissant, boatson the river again and the ferry, and --

DAVID WALENTAS: High tech office space.

JANE WALENTAS: -- high tech office space and plenty of parking and what else?

DAVID WALENTAS: It was great.

JANE WALENTAS: It was amazing, amazing. Imagine a carousel on this waterfront.

It all happened, but bigger even.

DAVID WALENTAS: We're proud parents.

JANE WALENTAS: We used that slide show to try and sell this thing forever.

124:00George had his little office down there. We have that little room. We used tobring people over and, "Imagine," you know, "people on the streets again."

JANE WALENTAS: -- again.

JULIE GOLIA: We've been talking for about two hours.

DAVID WALENTAS: That's enough.

JULIE GOLIA: I think that might be enough, but I wanted to say that, is there

anything else that we would like to cover today?

DAVID WALENTAS: No, we'll talk again.

JANE WALENTAS: I think we got it.

JULIE GOLIA: We got quite a lot. Thank you so much.

JANE WALENTAS: You're welcome.

JULIE GOLIA: I'm back with Jane and David Walentas on August 22, 2017. So I'd

love to hear a little bit more about what it has been like to bring your soninto the business.

DAVID WALENTAS: It was trying on some levels for sure. I think on balance it's

been amazingly successful. Frankly, it was very difficult for me to give up125:00control. It was my company, and I started it, and I ran it, and I didn't talk toanybody. I made decisions, and so it's hard to let go of that. Fortunately Jedwas very smart and very competent. And he brought his roommate Amish Patel withhim, who, if you're sitting in a room with, with accountants and lawyers and taxgeniuses and -- Amish is the smartest person in the room. So they're -- they'vebeen amazing. For sure we -- we bang heads. It's hard for me to give up, andthey thought they were smart, and they are, but they wanted to do it their way,126:00and so we had -- we had some transition issues. I would say on balance Iprobably did a better job with that than almost anybody could do. And over thelast -- see, he's been with me twenty-two years maybe, twenty years. He's gonefrom working for me to me working for him. And I couldn't be happier. My life isgreat. I'm healthy, happy. We're doing deals I could have never dreamed ofdoing, huge. Domino Sugar, you can't do a bigger project. Three thousand squarefeet of space, couldn't do, I wouldn't do it, unless they were doing it. So I127:00can -- I can get involved as much as I want. I can tell them what I think.Sometimes they listen. Sometimes they don't. Actually, I think I've gottensmarter in their -- in their eyes over the last ten years, you know. They camein young bucks and thought they knew it all. They've learned a lot, and I'vegotten a little smarter, I think, in their eyes. But now, it's work -- it's beengreat. It couldn't be better. I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't have them. Realestate's a very personal, family business, so if I didn't have family doing itthere's no reason to do it. I don't need the money. I don't know. What do youthink, Jane?

JANE WALENTAS: No, I think it's been amazing, you know. It's unusual for a

strong father, successful. They have great respect for each other, I think.128:00

DAVID WALENTAS: But we were never best friends as parents. I was his father.

JANE WALENTAS: I was going to say the opposite, that we always played together.

DAVID WALENTAS: We did. We did. We played together. We loved each other. There

were only the three of us, and you know, he was a kid we stuck him in the backof the little car, and he sat on the bench, and for sure we played, but he wasalways very competitive with me. He just wanted to beat me at everything.

JANE WALENTAS: Well, he's competitive.

DAVID WALENTAS: For sure.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah.

DAVID WALENTAS: But we were never best friends. I never -- as he grew up I

didn't know what he was doing. I didn't know girls he was dating or -- I don'tknow. I wasn't in his face. And we didn't demand a lot of him. He didn't have tocome to dinner every Friday night or -- I don't know. And even now that he's129:00married, we're not -- he has his friends. He's in the office every day. Somedays I see him. Some days I don't see him. But we're not in each other's faceall the time.

JANE WALENTAS: No, that's true.

JULIE GOLIA: What -- what skills or attributes did Jed bring to the table that

were different than yours?

DAVID WALENTAS: Oh, I think he's much better with people. Today -- today the

company is a big operation with 3, 400 people working. I don't know more thanten or fifteen of them. I was never good with names and faces and -- I was goodat what I did, but. It's an organization today. It's managing people, and he'svery, very good at -- he's very good at it inside the company, and he's great at130:00it, because we're -- as a developer we're in the public process, so he's greatwith the politicians, and I hate most of them. The community groups, I hate mostof them. You know, the bankers are okay, but -- so I'm not a schmoozer and apeople -- and he deals with everybody. It doesn't matter whether they'relaborers on the construction job or the subs that are working for us or he goes-- he owns a piece of the San Francisco Giants, and he goes to the White Housewhen the -- been there three times when the San Francisco Giants won the WorldSeries. He deals with everybody. Plus he's taught me how to live a little bit.

JANE WALENTAS: I couldn't teach him, but Jed did finally.

DAVID WALENTAS: Jane tried to get me to go from economy class to first class,

and she finally got me up to business class, and Jed bought an airplane. You131:00know what, it's great. It's really great.

JANE WALENTAS: Knows how to live. Jed also loved to build. You really didn't --

DAVID WALENTAS: Loves, loves to build.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, you didn't really have an interest in building.

DAVID WALENTAS: Well, because I couldn't build at that time.

JANE WALENTAS: Yes, yes.

DAVID WALENTAS: We were too young and poor, and so we did rehabs, but he took

it. I mean, he's as good a builder as there is anywhere. I mean, we're buildingsixty story buildings and Domino. He's the GC. I mean, he runs it.

JULIE GOLIA: Tell me about that, Domino.

DAVID WALENTAS: Domino is amazing. Jed -- it's Jed's project. He came to me

three, four years ago at the end of that recession. The ownership was fighting.They were in -- we bought it very cheap. Jed made friends with the partner that132:00controlled it, and he wanted to see us get it. They were getting sued by theirother partner. We stepped in, and we bought three million square feet ofdevelopment rights for about seventy or eighty dollars a foot. Today it'sprobably worth 300 a foot. First building is substantially -- I mean, we have aTCO on part of it. We're moving people in. It's 500 apartments. We started thesecond building. We're building a waterfront park. Jed -- we bought an existingapproved plan, which was not good, but we could certainly build it. Jed said,"This plan is terrible. We're going to go back to the city and redo this plan."I said, "Jed, why would we do that?" He said, "Because it's right, and we'regoing to make it better," and he did. Sharpe did a great plan. The community133:00supported it. He was great with the community. And our leverage was, when wewent to the mayor we said, "Look it, we're not doing nothing. We can do thisplan, or we can do that plan, and take your pick. We're not doing nothing." Sothey said we like your plan. So he's been amazing with it, amazing. And he gavethis little park to the -- interim park to the neighborhood groups, and he takescare of all the community people and the religious groups and the Puerto Ricansand the whatever. Don't ask. And the politicians, we got more people we donateto, and they all love him. It's great. He's amazing. Jane will tell you. I used134:00to -- I would come home every day and say your son is amazing. I can't believe.Isn't that right?

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah.

DAVID WALENTAS: For years. No, it's really fun.

JANE WALENTAS: I was going to tell the story with the plane where we needed

Jed's permission. I said it seems like yesterday he needed our permissionbecause he -- the plane is -- I mean, we all have --

DAVID WALENTAS: Right, I sign the checks, but it's in his name.

JANE WALENTAS: But it's his name really. So I called. We were stuck in Vale in

the snowstorm, and we wanted to use the plane to come home, and they said oh no,you need Jed Walentas' permission. I called Jed at like 5:00 in the morningsaid, "Would you please give us permission to come home? We're stuck in Vale."

JULIE GOLIA: I'm assuming he said yes.

JANE WALENTAS: He said send me -- actually he said sent me a text or something.

I don't know. Talk to my secretary. No, he was like --135:00

JULIE GOLIA: I want to hear about your experiences during Sandy.

JANE WALENTAS: So from the carousel point of view we thought we're prepared. We

put sand bags all around. We decided to stay home and have dinner that night,which, actually we were supposed to evacuate our building, but we decided we'renot evacuating. We're on the fifteenth floor. We're not going to get -- we'renot going to drown up here. So -- and we don't have dinner home very often.That's very rare. We go out most nights, so I made dinner, and the high tide wassupposed to be at, I think, 8:00 or something, and I guess we lost power.Anyway, I remember looking out the window. It was 5:00. We were playing136:00backgammon. And the storm was, you know, the windows, rain was pounding and therain was blowing, and I looked outside and the -- and the waves were breakingover the steps out there already, and it was like three hours before high tide,whatever that was. I said oh my god, like, this isn't even high tide. What'sgoing to happen? So then you know we had dinner by candlelight, and I was afraidthe windows were going to crash in actually. These windows were really rattlinghard. And I looked outside. All the lights went out. Lower Manhattan --

DAVID WALENTAS: Lower Manhattan.

JANE WALENTAS: Brooklyn Heights, every -- all the lights were out except the

carousel were still on. We have those LEDs. For some reason they stay on. Andthere were waves like crashing against the building like everything.

DAVID WALENTAS: It's a great photo.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, you probably know.

DAVID WALENTAS: It was a great photo.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, someone -- a neighbor took it down the street. I -- you

137:00know, we couldn't go out there. It was terrible that night, so finally we wentto sleep. I don't remember if the storm left or -- I don't know.

DAVID WALENTAS: No, we woke up the next morning.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, well that I remember. That night --

DAVID WALENTAS: Wasn't that the point I looked out the window? Water was gone,

the sun came up.

JANE WALENTAS: I remember we could see Water Street, and it was like a river,

and I thought, wow this is why this is called Water Street. We went downstairs.There was -- water had subsided, but there had been like five feet of water inthis lobby, four feet maybe.

DAVID WALENTAS: I don't know if it was five feet, but it was a couple of feet.

It was three or four feet of water, and it was all gone.

JANE WALENTAS: So the neighborhood --

DAVID WALENTAS: Streets were wet. The basem*nt of the carousel was flooded, but --

JANE WALENTAS: It was -- yeah, there was just debris in the carousel building

where the water hat floated and things were -- you know like even the trash canswere upside down, and things had been floating around, but the horses looked138:00fine, and -- but then we have this five-foot crawl space, and we open the trap door.

DAVID WALENTAS: Full of water.

JANE WALENTAS: And it was full of water, five feet of water. So -- and all our

electronics is down there, the controls that control all the doors to open --

DAVID WALENTAS: And the heating.

JANE WALENTAS: -- our heating system, our music system, the whole thing. So we

-- first step was to pump the water out, and when we pumped the water out and itdried out a little bit, within a couple of days the carousel started right up.Carousel was fine, actually. It was all the other stuff.

DAVID WALENTAS: Didn't we have trouble getting electric back on?

JANE WALENTAS: I don't remember that. Maybe, it sounds right. Sounds right,

yeah, yeah.

DAVID WALENTAS: Anyway, Jed, Jed was way on top of that.

JANE WALENTAS: So the carousel, we reopened the carousel, I think, two weeks

139:00after the storm. Couldn't open -- couldn't open our doors. They were closed.There was no heat. We brought in temporary heaters, but the carousel ran, youknow, and the little neighborhood families got -- did a bake sale the day weopened and raised like $80 or something to give to the carousel, which was cute.And we bought it -- because the organ was wrecked, actually. The organ had to goback to Ohio.

DAVID WALENTAS: The neighborhood was flooded out.

JANE WALENTAS: The neighborhood was a disaster.

DAVID WALENTAS: Our garages and the basem*nts were full of water. We got all the

cars out except one or two that couldn't get the keys or whatever. But Jed wasway on top of it. He, the night before, he got on the phone and got big pumpsfrom Pennsylvania to come in, so the -- by the next morning we had giant pumpers140:00pumping out the basem*nts. And the city actually called us and said we need yourpumps. Jed was way, way, way ahead of it.

JANE WALENTAS: And the night of the storm he was in Detroit at his World Series

game because Giants won the World Series. I think they won that night, and hehad to drive back.

DAVID WALENTAS: He drove all night from --

JANE WALENTAS: They drove all night from Detroit.

JULIE GOLIA: How long do you feel like it took the neighborhood to recover?

DAVID WALENTAS: Well, I don't know what recover means. Jacques Torres --

JANE WALENTAS: No.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- all his baking equipment -- not Jacques Torres, but --

JANE WALENTAS: Erway

DAVID WALENTAS: Erway, all his baking ovens and stuff were in the basem*nt. They

were totally flooded, so we -- so I could have my croissant in the morning, thatwas an expensive croissant, but -- so we rebuilt his space. Cost a couple141:00$100,000. He's paying a little bit of it, few thousand a month, but we made acouple of $100,000 donations, put him back in business. He was dead. Most of itpicked up pretty quickly. The garages, we pumped them out, and they were back ina couple of days. This building, the electric was out for a couple of days. Wemoved to --

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, we moved to the Wythe Hotel.

DAVID WALENTAS: -- Wythe Hotel.

JANE WALENTAS: Because there was no water in the tower. That was -- yeah.

DAVID WALENTAS: No electric, he had no elevator and no pumps for water, so there

was no reason -- so we lived in --

JANE WALENTAS: But the people downstairs were okay.

DAVID WALENTAS: Well, because they have street pressure, but they didn't have

hot water. But staying at the Wythe for a week wasn't so bad. I don't know.

JANE WALENTAS: I think Dumbo -- your buildings were back in business -- your

office space --

DAVID WALENTAS: Very quick, offices --

142:00

JANE WALENTAS: Some of the basem*nt apartments were --

DAVID WALENTAS: Yeah, we had Ger two. We had basem*nt apartments. They were

flooded, so we lost five or six apartments in the basem*nt. It took us sixmonths maybe to rebuild those, but the rest of the building was fine. No, itwasn't -- wasn't terrible at all.

JANE WALENTAS: Yeah, my recollection is you did a great job, and we were way

ahead of --

DAVID WALENTAS: Way ahead of the rest of the city.

JANE WALENTAS: -- most, yeah.

DAVID WALENTAS: Jed, Jed was really on top of that. That's it.

JULIE GOLIA: All right.

DAVID WALENTAS: It's been a great trip.

JULIE GOLIA: Thank you so much, again.

[interview interrupted]

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Walentas, David and Jane (2017/08/22) - Oral History (2024)