Sustainable Success with Douglas Durst

Welcome. This is the Insider's Edge to Real Estate Investing with James Nelson, the principal and head of Avis and Young's Tri State Investment Sales Group. In this program you'll learn game changing strategies to outperform the market. James will teach you how to source, execute and capitalize on the best real estate opportunities in New York and around the world. Now, here's your host.

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Welcome everyone to episode number 202 of the Insider's Edge to Real Estate Investing. I'm your host, James Nelson. I'm principal and head of Tri State Investment Sales for Avison Young. And with us today, we have a real treat. We have Douglas Durst with us. Douglas is the chairman and a member of the third third generation to lead the Durst Organization. Under the leadership of Douglas and his cousin Jody, the company's commercial and residential portfolio grew significantly with groundbreaking new developments. The company led the revitalization of Times Square with the development of 151West 42nd and of lower Manhattan with a joint venture development of One World Trade Center. The company also oversaw the development of the nation's first LEED platinum high rise office tower, the bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park. In this interview, we'll go back to when Douglas started with the family business in 1968 and how he helped build the firm over time. But we're also going to talk about how Douglas gave back. He's done incredible philanthropic and civic work, including his work on the Real Estate Board in New York as a Board of Governor and previously as Chairman of the Board. He also serves on other important boards like the New School as well as the Trust for Public Land. He's also involved with the theatrical arts as a board member of the Roundabout. The Finally, Douglas is a lifelong environmentalist activist. He founded the Model Organic Farm Foundation, a not for profit that operates McEnroe Organic Farms, one of the largest organic farms in New York State. So I know you're going to get a tremendous amount out of this interview, not just learning from how Douglas and a family have built their portfolio, but also have given back along the way. So we're going to have a brief word from our sponsor and we'll get right into that interview with Douglas Durst.

Douglas, a different approach to putting our clients first, Avis and Young's Tri State Investment Sales Group sells multifamily office retail development and specialty sales throughout the New York metro area. As experienced thought leaders in their industry, our 35 member group is available to help you make informed investment decisions by advising you on your current holdings or identifying new opportunities in the marketplace. Our one unified team is built on an industry unique platform which promotes unparalleled collaboration and and teamwork. We share core values of hard work, integrity and expertise. We put our clients first, providing tailor made strategies to achieve superior results. Please Visit us at aytristateinvestmentsales.com and follow us on Twitter LinkedIn and Instagram amesnelsonnyc to learn more.

All right, welcome everyone. Thrilled to have with us today Douglas Durst, who is chairman of of the Durst Organization. Douglas, welcome and thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thank you. It's great to be here. Appreciate the invitation.

Wonderful. And Helena was on the show and so for those of you who've not heard her episode, she talks about sustainable development. I know we're going to get into that today, but wonderful to have you here as well. So, Douglas, I thought for the audience it'd be wonderful for them to hear a little bit about the history of the Durst Organization. Maybe you could talk about how it was founded. Third generation now to lead the generation.

Yes. So my grandfather came to this country just before the turn of the century, the 20th century, and he, he started with a push cart, eventually saved enough money to go into business, clothing business by himself, and then had a partner and people started asking him advice about real estate. He realized that they were making more money from the real estate than he was making in his clothing business. So he started investing and we date the start of the company to 2015. And for the next, his children, my father Seymour, his brothers Roy and David, and sister Alma, all became part of the company. And for the next, until the Second World War, they mostly bought and traded property.

Do you know how your grandfather first got the seed capital for that first investment? So going from push cart to making an acquisition, did you ever hear the stories of how he was able to raise the money for his first acquisition?

Their first investment in the clothing company, each put in about $500. Wow.

And once they started building out the business, was the focus always on the office side of the equation, or were they?

No. They had many residential properties, but when rent control was instituted in 1947, my father got rid of all the residential properties. When we started with office development, we would acquire some for demolition but now we're. We're a major residential landlord, having built 4,500 units, I think it is.

And what is the 3,400 units?

Sorry.

And what does the office portfolio consist of today? I know one World Trade center, among other things. But what does the footprint encompass?

13 million square feet of office space and 13 buildings.

And that's all here in New York.

All here in midtown Manhattan, except for the World Trade center, which is downtown.

And I know at one point, on the multifamily side, and we might have talked a little bit about this with Helena that you did, you have looked at other markets for multifamily? I think, for a while, maybe down in Philadelphia, but the multifamily has also been predominantly in New York.

Yes, all in New York. We did look into Philadelphia. We made some acquisitions there, but after Covid, the market turned against us. And so we're not. No longer developing at this moment in Philadelphia, although we still own the properties.

So, obviously your family and you personally are big supporters of New York. And having served as the chairman of the Real Estate board in New York, where we got to know each other, what is it about New York that has kept your family here for over three generations?

I went to college in Berkeley, and I would realize each time I would fly back from San Francisco and land in New York that there just was an energy and excitement in the air that I missed in San Francisco. There's something. Something about New York. Well, many people have, especially Frank Sinatra, have made it clear that New York is the place to be.

And I'm sure along the way, you've been presented with multiple opportunities to invest in cities, countries, different types of projects. Is it just always the idea was to stick with your focus?

Well, as I said, we did look into Philadelphia, and in the 90s, we did spend a lot of time in Portland, Oregon, on a project that ended up not happening. But we've learned through these two experiences that real estate is local, and you have to be familiar with the market and familiar with the people and the players, and in order to make. Be successful, I'm thinking.

So I've been doing this for 25 years. I remember my first experience with the Durst Organization was with the debt clock, which has since been retired. I think it was. It was retired initially in 2000 and then moved or.

No, in 2000, we covered it up. I guess we retired it, but we covered it up because it could not run backwards, and President Clinton had. Had created a surplus. Since then, we. We moved it first. We Moved it to outside the IRS headquarters when they were in our building at 11:33 and subsequently moved it to the through block between four times 151 for Times Square and One Bryant park, which coincidentally is called Anita's Way. As Bob Fox, the architect said, Anita always gets her way.

Well, I want to get to Anita's Shoshama, her. Her not for profit gallery. But before I forget to ask, so what was the impetus for the debt clock? So was it clearly one to kind of shed some light on this? What was what gave you the idea to.

Seymour was a staunch steadfast Republican, big fan of Ronald Reagan. And when he saw in the 80s that rather than corralling the debt, they're actually increasing it, he wanted to make people aware of what was happening. And he had in the 80s had the idea for the debt clock, but the technology did not catch up with him until about 1989 when we put it up.

Has your family always been civically involved, politically involved, kind of what's been your approach with.

My grandfather was very civically civic minded and he was one of the founders of something called the Hebrew Free Loan association, which lended to anybody without interest. And it's still in existence today. And on the board of many of the charities, we have a whole wall of charities that honored my grandfather and father. And so there's always been a civic side to our family. And my father tried to stay out of politics. My grandfather had. There's a picture in our office of him with Pierre LaGuardia. So he must have had some involvement. But Seymour never wanted to have anything to do with politicians. But we discovered in as we were building our building at 114 W 47th St, the U.S. trust Building, that today in order to get buildings up, you need to have some involvement with politics.

And how would you characterize your involvement? I mean clearly being the chairman of the board for the Real Estate Board of New York, you know, what did that entail? Maybe for those of our listeners who are not here in New York, rebny has over 17,000 members. And really here not only for the industry, but really for the city to help promote and make this as business a friendly place. So what was kind of your day to day, if you will role as chairman of the Real Estate board and then what type of discussions might you have had with politicians on how to shape the policy here?

Well, during my tenor as chair there were a lot of issues, especially with it was during COVID and a lot of issues about opening the buildings and masking and Also there was a big push for rent control. So I talked to lots of politicians about that both at the state and the city and levels. So that was one of the main topics of discussion.

And what about the tax abatement, the 421A that had expired and now of course we have a new program, 45X. But the need for a tax abatement. Right. Because on one hand you could just say well why don't you just lower the taxes? But it would seem to really offset where the taxes are, that to incentivize developers that a tax abatement is needed. So how did you go about trying to educate our elected officials and then ultimately try to craft the policy that will hopefully create housing that that's so much needed here in New York.

REBNI spent a lot of time with our members putting together statistics that showed that it just was not feasible to build without a tax abatement and the size of the tax abatement would be required to build. They mostly ignored us, but we kept at it. And, and I think we see the outcome that there's almost no residential construction. They did extend the 421A. Some of those buildings will get started. Once those are done, there's going to be almost no new residential construction in the areas that are controlled.

So one of your large scale residential developments, Hallett's Point. So this was, if I'm not mistaken, a three phase project. You had originally built several hundred units, if not over a thousand. So certainly at one point whatever the incentives were seemed to work. But, but now I, I think that's. Is that still been in a, a holding period? Well, just to see if these new tax incentives are going to work.

Well, we know that they're not going to work.

Not going to work.

We, for 421 we got, we built our first project at 10 halletts and that's now successfully rented. The second phase, which is 202030 is under construction and should be finished in about a year or less now. And that was also done under 421A. So 421A was a very successful program and fortunately 485X is just not feasible to build under because of the wages, wage requirements.

So when you take a long term view, because I guess when you originally acquired that site, I mean maybe you did have plans initially to try to build it all at once or maybe it was to phase it, but clearly this was a long term development plan. I remember the first guest we ever had on the show was Bruce Ratner. And I think he was famous for quoting that any good project takes at least 10 years. So I mean, when you get into these large scale developments, how do you even begin to model or underwrite what something's going to look like? If you don't even know what you're ultimately going to be able to get entitled, what kind of incentives might exist? So is it just knowing that you have the right basis to make the bare minimum work and then you hope that you can expand from there or how do you try to tackle the unforeseen?

We try not to tackle the unforeseen. At Hallett's, we bought into a project that had been approved by the Bloomberg administration with certain benefits. When de Blasio came in, they said that they weren't written down, so they didn't count. And we, we built, as I said, the first project, 10 halletts. And then we had a big dispute with the de Blasio administration about the benefits for the second project and they reneged on two or three deals. And so I told them that we were going to wait until there was a new administration, which we did. And then we started Halletts 2030. Got it.

So it was not by design, clearly that it's, it's taken this long. It's just, you know, sometimes you have to wait until.

No, it would have, it was going to take about 10 years, but they were supposed to be built sequentially. And right now we should be finishing 30, 40, but because we got delayed, that land will sit for a while.

Okay, so now I'd like to come back to the office portfolio. So 13 million square feet, I don't know where, where that is in the rankings, certainly has to be up there for New York. And I would say that the landlords who have maybe a larger portfolio, I would say most of them are probably publicly traded. So how do you. Obviously this portfolio has been amassed over time. What's been the strategy to continue to acquire and grow the portfolio? Why don't I start with that? What has kind of been the growth plan for the office portfolio over the years?

Well, during my father and uncle's reign, it was, they would build a building every couple of years. There was no real overall strategy, just would find a site and would build one at the end. They built two buildings at the same time, 825 and 1155. But it was, it was more happenstance that they were able to acquire sites and build on them.

And would you say that developing ground up that was the best strategy for them to grow the office portfolio. I mean, you look at kind of what's happened even over the last five, ten years in office investment. And you have publicly traded shops, you have all this private equity, foreign capital all pouring in, driving up pricing. So is the thought process that development was the better way to build out the portfolio at the best basis?

My father always considered himself a land assembler. He put together huge tracts of land. Manhattan Plaza, which is between 42nd and 43rd, 9th to 10th, there are about 200 buildings that he acquired to put that site together. And in the beginning, in the 50s, when they started taking over the business, they would assemble property and then sell the site to a developer. They soon realized that actually developing the project was building the project was the best way. It gave them much more return than selling it. And I remember my father telling me that when they started, they usually would sell to one of the other families. And so the head of the family they would usually sell to called up. My grandfather said, do you know what your boys are up to? And my father Joe said he told them, and he said, that's what they want to do. That's okay with me. So that's how we got into building. The first building was at 200 East 42nd street, now 655 Third Ave. And that building we just renovated and released, it's now 95%, was built in 1958.

And you've always financed these mostly with banks. And as far as bringing on partners, have you always decided to just keep it within the Durst Organization, or have you ever thought about bringing in LP's institutional capital?

We've talked to partners frequently. Not frequently, but from time to time. The issue has always been that we don't sell. They want to be able to sell and recoup their money. Recoup their money. So we've never been able to structure a deal. We do have two partners, and they have. So if somebody rents 50% of a building and helps finance it, we'll consider them as a partner.

Yes.

And the other is the Port Authority of New York, who put 3 billion into the project. And so if somebody does that for us, then we'll gladly be their partner.

Good.

And let me just say, the Port Authority has been a great partner to us.

So why don't we talk about one World Trade center now? Because at one point, I believe that you all had said that you're very happy in Midtown, that you weren't looking in the financial district. And then, of course, there was this opportunity to take over one World Trade Center. So what was the impetus there? What changed the mindset to go and become a part of that?

Well, it's one. World Trade center is a great building and the opportunity to be part of it was just too much to turn aside. And so we competed with several other real estate companies and we're lucky enough to. To win the rfp.

Yeah, no, it's a spectacular building and it's wonderful to see how downtown has come back to life. What is the. And again, kind of going back to your organization and what it takes, I mean, even for a building like that, to oversee it, to handle the leasing. I mean, what kind of team do you have and how do you go about running all these buildings?

We have a very large team. We have about 1500 employees. We do not contract out cleaning or the security. Everybody works for us. We consider everybody part of the family. And everybody is invested in getting the best project, best product and best services. My Uncle Roy made it very clear to me when I started that we were in a service business, we're not in a development business. And we have to provide services to our tenants. So that's part of our mantra, that we provide good services or better services than you can find elsewhere.

And if I'm not mistaken, I think your organization was ranked as one of the best places to work by cranes, is that correct?

I believe so. We got very close to being here. Yes.

Yes, I've definitely seen you on that list. I've certainly heard from your employees as well. I mean, how do you, especially with 1500 people there, how do you instill culture? How do you do things differently maybe than other firms out there?

Well, as I said, we try and make everybody feel that they're part of the family and that they're invested in making the buildings as good as possible. We have retreats, we have parties for our employees, special events for our employees and for our tenants. We want our tenants to feel that they're part of the family also. So it's. And because we have, we're dedicated to providing a safe environment, a clean environment, a healthy environment, people feel that there's a benefit to working for us and working with us and being a tenant.

And talk about the family aspect of the business, because how many Dursts do you have right now that are working at the organization?

There's Jody. In my generation, there's Jody and me and Jody's brother Christopher, and my nephew David Neal, my sister's son in law. And then in the next generation, there's Helena, Alexander and Jody's two sons, Lucas and Nick.

So you have some grandchildren as well who are there?

I believe they come in, but they're not my son Victor, actually, my grandson Victor, who is my daughter Anita's son, who is 19 and going to the new school, was a intern last summer.

So how does that work with the family members as opposed to. Is there a discussion as far as we'd love to have you come work with us, with us. Are they attracted to it? Do you encourage them to go out and do their, you know, their own thing? How do you deal with the family dynamic?

We. We have a policy that anybody who. From the family who wants to come work can. But they have to spend two years as an intern at a lower pay scale and work in all the different areas of the office. And everybody who has come has stayed.

Also in knowing Helena and some of the other family members. Again, the commitment to charitable work. So maybe we could talk a little bit about Anita and Shoshama, the not for profit gallery. So what is it about the family and again, how you encourage this type of involvement?

We just, from my grandparents and father and uncles, we've always tried to give back to the community. And my grandmother was very involved in enterprises, and my grandfather, as I mentioned, and the same with my father's generation. My generation, we have various charitable things that we're committed to. We have. And we have the Durst Family foundation that my sister runs, which makes charitable donations. So it's part of the family culture to. To be involved in giving back to the community.

And I love Anita's gallery because if I'm not mistaken. So she provides gallery space to emerging artists at no cost. So she gives them the ability to. To showcase their work.

People donate space to her. She does charge. Because if you don't pay for something, it has no value.

Yes.

And she. She has, I think, about 250 spaces. Wow.

Oh, I had no idea it was that many.

Huge. She recently started working with the state to have similar ventures upstate in Buffalo, Niagara, Syracuse. So she's spreading out. She's probably, I think, the. She's worked with, I think, something like 3,000 artists over the years.

Wow. Wow. Well, what an incredible thing to do for local artists, but also activating space that I know. Fortunately, things have really improved here with the state of retail. But as you remember, right after Covid, there was a lot of vacancies, and it really, I think, hurt. Hurt the city so wonderful that she's also activating these spaces and bringing culture.

She now is working with MTA for some of the spaces which have suffered because of COVID.

So I'd love to talk about your commitment to the environment. So you, you founded the, the model organic farm foundation that operates McEnroe Organic Farms, which is one of the largest in New York State. So where did the, the passion for the environment come from?

It came from, once again, our grandparents and parents, my grandfather taught us to always leave a place better than we found it. And it's just something that we grew up with again that certainly my wife, who's from Denmark, was very concerned about the environment. We were been recycling since the mid-80s. That's when we founded McEnroe. And we, we just feel that it's necessary to make the, you know, create a better place for everybody.

And these organic farms, what do they consist of? I mean, is this, it's a not for profit business or what kind of goods are you producing?

Well, we, we have beef cattle we used to have, and we have turkeys. We grow all sorts of vegetables. Best product is our tomatoes, which we grow in a greenhouse. And we had a roadside stand, but it's not, not working out anymore, so that's closed. We, we like to tell the story of our neighbor farmer who won a five million dollar lottery. And when they asked him what's he going to do with the money, he said, I'll keep farming till it's gone.

That's fantastic. It's more of a passion. You're not in it for profit. I think I have had some honey from the rooftop at One Bryant Park. Is that possible as well? You have a bee colony on the top of the One Bryant, not just.

One Bryant park, but before we started. And at Helena, the building, we produce a lot of honey. We'll get you some more.

I'd love to talk about your lead Platinum, the Bank America Tower at One Bryant Park. And I don't know if I want to call it controversy, but I know there was certainly some question when the city came in with their new carbon requirements. And I was astonished to hear that somehow this did not meet the initial requirements. We can get into why. You know why that is, because it clearly is a very efficient building. But what is it about again, building LEED Platinum? Is that something that you're committed to? Is this again the right thing to do? How have you gone about doing this?

The first building that Jody and I built, which was known then as 4 Times Square and now 151 W 42nd St, we were building it with Dan Tishman, Fox and Fowl as the architects. And the three of us, three firms decided we wanted to build a environmentally correct building, a green building as it's. I don't like that phrase, but anyway. But we didn't know what it meant. So we had a series of retreats to try and figure out just what would go into a green building. And it's. And what we came up with resulted in Four Times Square, which really was the blueprint for LEED is based on a lot of the work that we did with the Rocky Mountain Institute to come up with what would be a green building. And we started in the early 90s with Con Edison to make our buildings, make our buildings as energy efficient as possible. So we started learning about what went into that and it took a lot of experiments. We included all sorts of things that turned out not to work quite as well, but solar panels on the outside of Four Times Square and then Con Edison wouldn't let us turn them on.

Well, that's surprising. I'm sure there's a story, a story behind that. But, but some of the things that did work, and I know when I've been to one Bryant park, and maybe, I don't know if this was new technology, but the idea that smart lighting, as far as when you know, on certain sides of the floor, when you had natural light, you don't need additional lighting and maybe the temperature controls as well. I mean, what were the other major things that you accomplished there to make it more sustainable?

Well, the air is 95% filtered, so it's a lot cleaner. And we provide more outside air than most buildings do. So there's. You breathe a lot better, you feel a lot better. And there's controversy over having a lot of glass. But sunlight, people need sunlight.

So you have a catch basin for. I'm not sure if it's rainwater or recycling water.

Recycle all the water that falls on the building. And we also now are composting all the food in our offices and all the cafeterias. So. And then there's, there's more to it than, than what you see on the outside. All the building material waste from construction gets recycled. When we started at Four Times Square, there was no recycling of building construction material waste. And the contractors fought us when we insisted that it had to be recycled. Then they realized that it could actually make money recycling the material. So that changed that.

Well, I was going to ask as far as originally when you did this, it was to create the most efficient building, but how much were you looking at the economics at the time, were you asking yourself as far as, okay, well it's going to cost this much more to build, but then the trade off is the energy bills are less. Did you ever complete that analysis before you embarked in this or kind of. What are the major takeaways as far as the added cost for savings?

We would always do a, see what the payback was. We would try to achieve a five year payback. The additional costs are really insignificant compared when you're talking about spending 5 or $600 a foot at the time, $1,000. Today the additional cost is maybe 2% at most and you get paid back.

So then the obvious question I guess becomes why doesn't everybody do it right? I mean now they might have to with the new carbon emission requirements, but are you surprised that not all developers have embraced this?

Well, when we built Four Times Square, it was completed in 1998, we expected that we create a new model for how to build buildings. And we're shocked that nobody thought it was appropriate or everybody questioned why would we, why did we do it? So yes, it was very surprising.

Do you think it's ultimately what's going to take the change? I mean, I guess part of it might be just having fines if you don't comply. But I guess the other side is that certainly I would imagine there's tenants that have come to you because of your sustainable measures. So if you have enough tenants who are demanding green building that, that I would imagine would, would really get the, the other office developers attention.

Now, now everybody is aware of the benefits of green construction. Tenants want to, excuse me, want to be in, in a environmentally positive building, residentially, you have to have a lead rating. People will not go to buildings that are not healthy. And more and more the commercial tenants are realizing the benefits of it. One of the questions you always get from brokers now I'm sure you're aware, is what is the lead rating of the building? So it's, it's on the top of everybody's mind today.

So I'd like to, to talk about. This is a very highly publicized lease at the time and New York definitely needed it. But this, this was, I don't know if this was right after Covid, but, but you all signed TikTok right in Times Square. So maybe just talk a little bit about how that came to be. I mean if this was kind of a mid, late 2020, I mean there was still a tremendous amount of uncertainty and you were able to sign up probably one of the hottest tenants in the Market. So I'm sure there was, you know, plenty of landlords who would have probably done anything to get them to sign up. So what was, what was your, your secret, if you will? What, what was the way that you were able to land this tenant?

ByteDance, who is the parent of TikTok, was a tenant or a sub tenant of, in our buildings. And because of the way we manage our buildings, they wanted to be in, in one of our buildings. So that's how it happened and that's, that's why we provide the service we do.

So and if you need to take a minute, we can, we can bring you. We're good. Okay. So I was with one of your leasing professionals, Sio, the other day, and he was telling about how incredible it is that, you know, with how hands on you are. So he said that you still review every single lease. So how is that even possible? How do you have. So you have 13 million square feet. I can't imagine when you show up to the office, you know how high the stack is. But how do you, I mean, at this point you still want to see every single lease. Is that because it gives you the pulse? You want to know who your tenants are, what kind of, what's the, the mindset behind that?

Sayo's a great broker, so he may exaggerate, but I do see all the deals that go through and it is because I want to see what's going on in the market. So that's really the reason I don't, I review them as they're going through. Not. I don't review leases, small leases, big.

Leases though, that makes more sense. But he said you certainly have a handle on, on everything that's going on. So as chairman, what is, you know, what does your day to day entail? What is your typical week, if there even is such a thing. I mean, how are you devoting your time?

There's no, no such thing. We have many meetings about what's going on in the office and projects, so that takes up a lot of time during the week. Unfortunately, one of the biggest things I have to do is go through email. I haven't found a way.

I'm there with you on that. We, We've got to figure out a solution. It's. It's not going away.

That will tell you it's not getting any better either.

Yeah.

And so I spend most many mornings trying to delete as many as I can. And there's no real solution because I often are. Not often, but sometimes people will say, why didn't you respond to me and something I had not read carefully enough and deleted. So it's a big. That's one of the big issues I have. But we have meetings and I talk to. I'm not as actively involved as I am as I was. So I talked to the employees, to Scio and Tombow and the construction department.

So a lot of the listeners of this show, whether they're in college, they're getting their master's degree, maybe they're just starting out. But I think oftentimes people feel like the best way to reach someone is by email. That's the most formal way to approach them. Or maybe it's a text or, you know, but some type of electronic outreach. What do you say to that? I mean, as far as, you know, the reason why you're here today. And maybe I could have just sent you an email, but I asked you in person at an event. So kind of what advice would you give to the younger generation out there as far as the best ways to conduct business preferences, the in person, virtual. What would you say to that?

Well, in person, as you suggest, is, is the best way it can be that there are many, many meetings at the events that I'm speaking at and people frequently come up and give me their card and talk to me so. And then they'll email me. So making a personal impression is. Is really the best way.

And I wanted to definitely pay you a compliment because I, I remember even early on in my career and it was usually at the Rebny black tie event, but you've always just seemed like such an incredibly approachable person. So I don't know if that's just how you're wired or you make a conscientious choice in doing that, but certainly you know your level of seniority and you know where you are in your career. You know, you don't have to go to these events, you don't have to, you know, take these conversations. What is it that allows you or drives you to do that?

I feel that I was given an opportunity that others did not and try and pay it back to people who may not have the same opportunities that I had to start off where I did. Lots of people who came to work for us, I met casually and they've been very successful. Some not, but.

And what advice do you typically give to that person starting out in the business, whether they're a broker, they want to go on and become a developer. What do you tell them?

I get a lot of people who say that tell Me, they want to be a developer and I tell them that the best way is to learn the basics. Either work in as a broker, then you get to know what tenants want, or you work with in construction to get to know how buildings are built. You have to know the very basics about building before you can start thinking about developing.

And do you have any thoughts on if a smaller firm where they can kind of roll up their sleeves and get involved, or is it better to work at a bigger firm that has more resources?

I think a bigger firm is better. You don't get find out enough from a smaller firm, in my opinion.

And what about a small firm is.

A good way to start, but eventually you want to be exposed to a larger firm.

And where do you see the opportunities today to invest? I mean, clearly for you all to take the time and effort, it's got to be a large scale opportunity. But if you were just starting from scratch today, maybe that first deal, those first investments, how do you think you would go about building out a company and looking for things to invest? What would be the best approach?

Retrofitting either commercial buildings or existing residential? Retrofitting, I think is going to be the best way for people to succeed today. Building fresh or building new is very difficult today.

And what would you say over the course of your career, what is it that's helped you? I mean, maybe we talk about the One World Trade center as an example. I mean, you had several. It was an rfp. There was a lot of competition, I'm sure some of it from again, the big publicly traded firms. You know, what is it about the Durst Organization that gave you all the advantage? What is the approach? I'm sure it's not just, you know, paying the highest dollar. What is it that it's allowed you to continue to expand?

One is our reputation for following through on what we say. And we often come up with much more inventive ways to structure a deal that benefits whoever we're trying to work with. I always say I try to find out what, what the other side wants and try to give them what they want. Keeping, trying to stay to get what I want too. But first they have to know what the other side wants to accomplish.

Yeah, that's really incredible advice because I even think of my role as an investment sale broker. I have a job, I represent the owner. I'm trying to get the highest price, clearly. But are there other terms or there ways that you can structure that works for everybody. So is there an example or something you could tell us A little more about where you listened to what the seller or maybe what the Port Authority was looking for and the way that you approach something that gave you that. That advantage to, to win the business and anything you can think of.

I was buying a house and the. This was somewhat. Sometime after the 2008 financial crisis. And the seller, well, he was willing to meet his price. In addition, I was willing to give, pay, let him give me a mortgage at a high interest rate. I knew he was looking for cash flow, so I asked him, I suggested that we have a mortgage at a high rate, higher than was available at the time. So he was very happy with that.

And I'm sure long term that worked out for you. You probably got a great buy and over time it probably was worth a lot more.

Yes, it worked out very well.

So really asking the right questions to figure out what is the motivation. So if you're looking to buy something from a seller to understand what's important to them and then try to address that. Yeah, now that makes a ton of sense. You know, Douglas, you're involved in so many different incredible things, so I don't want to fail to mention, but you're also a board member for the New School, you're trustee emeritus for the Trust for Public Land, and then also on the board of directors for the Roundabout Theater. So any of those experiences that you want to talk about or why you've been involved in those organizations.

The Trust for Public Land is just a fantastic organization that provides land not just to protect it, but to let people use it. So they're all over the country. They were ones also involved in the playgrounds here in New York City, building out many of the playgrounds and creating green spaces where it's just been an asshole a lot. So I'm very proud of the time I spent with them. Roundabout has been a love of mine since 1989. Todd Hames, who recently passed, was a very close friend and I helped Roundabout find, I think, four of their theaters, including the. Which is now the Todd Haimes Theater and what had been our theater, the Henry Miller Theater, now Stephen Sondheim Theater. So it's just very close to that.

Well, with only a couple minutes left and Douglas, thank you. This has been unbelievable. And it's amazing not just what you've, how you've helped the Durst Organization grow, but also what you've done civically and your charitable involvement. I guess my final question would be, you know, how do you, whether it's structure your time, figure out how to prioritize what you want to take on. I mean, you have a lot of incredible things that you're doing. So how do you figure it all out where you don't completely overload yourself, but you can make a meaningful impact? So I guess the question is, how do you go about prioritizing?

Well, I have a wonderful wife who makes me prioritize my time.

Yes. And then I guess finding the balance with family as well. Is there anything, I mean, are you the kind of person who, you know, you're thinking about work seven days a week or are you able to unplug as well?

I have five grandchildren and I just love spending time with them.

Wonderful. Well, your priorities are definitely in the right place. Douglas, this was amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time and joining us today.

Thank you.

Wonderful. And thank you everyone who's joined as well. And look, this was such an incredible conversation. So I know that you're going to want to share this with a friend and spread the word. And as always, you can go to james nelson.com that's where you can find the show notes, how you can figure out how to connect with the DURSA organization. And so until next week, thank you again for joining.

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