It only took a few minutes for Eli Broad and Andrea Rich to work out the financial scheme for a $100 million-plus expansion and redesign of the sprawling Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Broad hatched the idea after the two met with Italian architect Renzo Piano about the design.

“I said, ‘Renzo will you excuse us for a few minutes?’ ” Broad recalled. When the architect returned a short time later, only to be told that a financing plan had been mapped out, Piano quipped: “Take another 10 minutes.”

Broad laughs as he tells the story, but Rich remembers something else from last year’s conversation: Broad’s impatience at getting the museum rated by debt agencies and ultimately issuing bonds totaling almost $160 million.

“He wanted this all done in 60 days. This is his favorite term. He wants everything done in 60 days,” she said. “His time frame is much more rapid than others.”

The museum moved closer to one of Broad’s goals last week, with the announcement that it had raised $156 million in donations to help pay down the debt as he originally planned.

Broad admits to being a man in a hurry.

“There is only so much time in the day and I like to accomplish a lot,” said the 71-year-old Broad, honored last week as the Business Journal’s Business Person of the Year. “I think I am a serious person. I am someone who is not always soft and cuddly, but I am someone who is respected.”

His is an American success story several times over. First, there was Kaufman and Broad Inc., which became one of the nation’s largest home builders. (Now the company is called KB Home.) Then there was Sun America Inc., the annuities giant he sold a few years ago.

He is now in the midst of yet another career, dubbing himself a “venture philanthropist” a catch-all that includes activities in the city’s civic, cultural and political life. In the process, he has amassed a level of power both real and implied that is unmatched in Los Angeles. His influence rankles a few but the devotion to his adopted city is undeniable.

So is his ability to get things done, starting 26 years ago when he helped found the Museum of Contemporary Art and more recently when he revived the moribund Walt Disney Concert Hall project. He also campaigned against Valley secession in 2002 and pushed for a key $3.3 billion school bond measure. Most recently he’s been helping steer the $1.2 billion Grand Avenue redevelopment plan.

Not everything works out an earlier plan to rebuild LACMA fell flat, as did his efforts to bring a pro football team to Los Angeles in the late 1990s but even the misses tend to stir things up in business and political circles, unusual in a city as disparate as Los Angeles.

Last year, the Business Journal ranked him the fourth wealthiest Los Angeles resident with an estimated net worth of $5.3 billion. He places No. 28 on Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, one spot behind Rupert Murdoch. And four out of the last five years he’s ranked among the top five most philanthropic Americans, donating or pledging $1.2 billion during that period, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

“He is the arch oligarch. He loves the game. He has a zest for life,” said USC Professor of History Kevin Starr, who has written a series of books on California history. “He is not perfect. But nobody is.”

Los Angeles businessman Fred Sands puts less of a fine point on it: “In a capitalistic society the people who accumulate the most wealth obviously have a gift and anyone would be foolish not to listen to what he has to say.”

Humble origins


Broad’s days typically begin at 6 a.m. and can last well into the evening. He is unapologetically formal, wearing a finely tailored suit, tie and handkerchief throughout the business day, including during meetings. Even weekend gatherings at his home call for nothing less than a sport coat.

“There is not a lot of small talk. He is disciplined. He is demanding. He is all business,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who has often dealt with Broad. “But he didn’t get to where he is today by being easy.”

The only son of Lithuanian immigrant parents, he was raised in the Bronx and Detroit, where his father had a five-and-dime store. Broad went to Michigan State University, where he graduated in three years and passed that state’s certified public accounting exam before age 21 the youngest CPA in state history.

The rest of the story has been told many times: he soon met Donald Kaufman, a builder and cousin of his wife Edythe, and the pair went on to found Kaufman and Broad in 1957, where Broad first displayed his business acumen.

While other builders were constructing houses costing $15,000, they sold homes without a basement priced at less than $12,000. They reasoned that if they could make the monthly mortgage no more than the going rental rate, the homes would sell. Broad was right and the company’s fortunes soared.

Then in the 1970s, well after Kaufman had retired, Broad focused on Sun Life, an insurance company that Kaufman and Broad had acquired. He transformed the old-line insurer that sold life insurance into a marketer of annuities a financial tool aimed at the people who once bought his homes.

Over the next two decades, Sun Life became his greatest business triumph. The firm, which was eventually consolidated into Sun America, was sold to American International Group Inc. in 1999 for $18 billion. Broad pocketed $3 billion for his stake.

“He cannot not be busy,” said Edythe, his wife of 50 years. “He would just never stay home and play golf. He likes to do things that make a difference and he likes to solve problems. But I didn’t think he would be busier in retirement than he was when he was working. We sort of joke that maybe he should go back to work.”

Art hound, supporter


Broad’s wife was the one who introduced him to his most time-consuming activity: collecting contemporary art and supporting arts institutions.

For years, Edythe had purchased art that her husband had barely noticed. But when she bought an original Toulouse-Lautrec poster in 1963 Broad recognized the piece. “He came in and said, ‘How much did that cost?'” she said. “I think he got more interested.”

Later, after seeing MCA executive Taft Schreiber’s art collection, Broad took the plunge and made his first major acquisition in 1972: “Cabanes A Saintes-Maries,” a Vincent Van Gogh drawing of two cottages that cost $95,000.

Broad later focused on contemporary American and German art and eventually became involved with the city’s first contemporary art museum.

As part of a deal worked out through the Community Redevelopment Agency, the developer of the massive California Plaza project would direct a required 1 percent public art fee toward the construction of MOCA, raising $20 million. The non-profit museum board still had to come up with another $10 million for an operating budget.

Attorney William Norris, who went on to sit on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, turned to Broad. “He thought we had a pretty good deal, so he offered to give the first million to the 10,” Norris remembered. “That was a pivotal commitment before we really raised any money.”

It also earned Broad the title of founding chairman of MOCA, although not without some stumbles. While the museum opened to accolades in 1984, the first director, Pontus Hulten, famous in art circles as the director of a Paris art museum, quit after two years.

Broad admitted he was demanding.

“Pontus ended up not being happy. He didn’t like me schlepping him around raising money,” Broad said. “I was a tough task master. When you start something you go to work hard at it and you expect others to work hard at it.”

‘Collective mistake’


Broad became a fixture on an assortment of museum boards, including the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and he was not shy about expressing his views. That strong-willed style was in evidence four years ago when LACMA embarked on an ambitious plan to remake its jumbled campus.

The winning design, one cheered by Broad, came from Belgian architect Rem Koolhaus, and it involved replacing much of the complex with a massive tent-like structure that wowed the architectural critics.

Broad publicly mused about making his greatest philanthropic contribution ever but no other donors came forward. Then county voters put an end to the effort by rejecting a ballot measure suggested by Yaroslavsky that would have helped fund the structure, despite $2.2 million in campaign donations from Broad.

In retrospect, the flaws were obvious. The stock market was already depressed when the plan was announced, and it required more than $200 million to be collected up front since the new structure couldn’t be built in phases. Some big donors also would see namesake buildings flattened, to be replaced by one large structure.

Broad himself joked that he thought he was going to get a building and ended up with a “condominium.” He calls the whole thing a “collective mistake.”

“I think he’s a great architect, but he claimed the building could be built in two phases, which turned out not to be true,” he said. “We would have had to close the place for two years.”

Rich said that while Broad may have been the Koolhaus design’s biggest public cheerleader, he was far from the only supporter. “People were simply blown away, carried away,” she said. “You had to be there to get a sense of the excitement to start all over, to be able to rethink everything.”

Rich came up with a second plan. She proposed that Broad proceed with a contemporary art building on the campus a potential future home for his collection. He would control the project, paying for it and choosing the architect.

In return, he would not involve himself beyond his role of trustee in the larger planning process that would take place in a second attempt to renovate the property (although he ultimately ended up devising the financing scheme).

Rich said the agreement played to Broad’s strengths his experience in construction, his involvement with world-class architects, his financial acumen while limiting his tendency to take over projects.

“He has very strong ideas about things,” she said. “Then the quid pro quo is he then needs to focus on that and not try to get involved in other aspects of the museum design.”

Broad agreed, though he maintains he doesn’t try to overly control activities he involves himself in. “I am not a micro manager. How could I be if I built two Fortune 500 companies?” he asked. “But if I come up with an idea I want to make sure it is implemented properly.”

This view is seconded by KB Home Chairman and Chief Executive Bruce Karatz, who started working for Broad in 1974 at Kaufman and Broad. “He is a realist in understanding that smart and ambitious people need leeway, trust and to be rewarded. For all the toughness, for the right folks he is a great mentor,” Karatz said.

Civic duties


Beyond art, Broad has been deeply involved in the civic and political life of Los Angeles, especially after his friend Richard Riordan became mayor in 1993. Riordan, who met Broad some 25 years ago while they sat on the board of Pitzer College, asked him to sit on an early committee to review the city’s finances and later tapped him to revive the Disney Hall project.

“The Disney family was in my office and they just went through $40 million and they had nothing to show for it and everybody thought the project was dead,” recalled Riordan, now the state’s education secretary. “And I had a simple way to resurrect it: I said ‘Eli Broad.’ When he takes on something he finishes it.”

After giving $5 million to jump-start the campaign, Broad succeeded in prying out more than $120 million in donations. Not nearly as passionate about symphonic music as the visual arts, Broad said he viewed it as a civic duty. “Dick Riordan and I thought it would be terrible for the city if it just gave out,” he said.

More than anything, reviving Disney Hall cemented Broad’s reputation as Los Angeles’ leading private citizen, but here, too, there was friction. Architect Frank Gehry nearly walked off the project in 1997 when Broad tried to have another firm complete the complex construction drawings.

Since then, Broad has noted that his doubts about Gehry were unjustified and insists the pair talk and eat together regularly. (Gehry was traveling last week and unavailable for comment.) “Frank is a brilliant guy. Geniuses can get quirky,” said Broad, calling the finished concert hall a “masterpiece” that will set a standard for L.A. architecture.

Broad has also placed his stamp on the proposed $1.2 billion project to redevelop Grand Avenue, which could leave an even bigger imprint than Disney Hall. It involves building housing, retail and a 16-acre park all the way to City Hall. A development agreement with Related Cos. is expected in the next several months.

Second passion


His effort at overhauling the Los Angeles Unified School District stems from a passion, perhaps second only to collecting art and building great architecture.

Broad’s commitment to improving public, K-12 education can be traced back to his roots. No prep school boy, Broad was educated at Detroit’s Central High, where he believes he got an education second to none. (He sent his own children to public school when he and his wife moved to Los Angeles.)

“We only graduate 50 percent of the kids from major urban districts,” he said. “I think it’s the biggest problem facing the country.”

As Broad paid closer attention to education in the 1990s, he came to believe that bloated, ineffective bureaucracies and teachers’ unions were resistant to change. Higher standards, more effective testing, merit pay and eliminating or limiting tenure are part of his solution. “On education I am a Republican,” he said.

That view led him to team up with Riordan in the late 1990s on the Coalition for Kids, which was formed to promote a school board slate in 1999 more in tune with their thinking. That first year, the group was successful in helping elect candidates not aligned with United Teachers Los Angeles. He also sat on the selection committee that brought in Superintendent Roy Romer, the former Colorado governor. But by 2003, the union had regrouped and candidates they backed were once again in control.

Riordan said the coalition was ultimately outmaneuvered by the union. “It did some significant reform that is being carried out by Roy Romer and the current board, but the teachers’ union is much more experienced in running campaigns,” he said.

Even so, Broad said the coalition got results, as evidenced by rising test scores in the district.

School board member David Tokofsky, who broke with the coalition after first getting its support, said Broad learned a lesson about messy school-district politics.

“His intentions are actually very noble. His kids went to the same junior high school as me. I think it broke his heart to see public schools decline that much,” Tokofsky said. “We need people like Eli Broad involved in public education but in a way that sees there is not a quick fix.”

Broad, who is now an unabashed supporter of having large urban districts run under mayoral or gubernatorial control, as is the case in New York and Chicago, has endowed his education foundation with $500 million since 1999.

The foundation is funding reforms in an area that Broad believes has been neglected: providing modern management skills to school board members, superintendents and principals. But even that agenda draws the suspicion of union leaders.

“They don’t seem to understand the genuine difference between a factory that makes autos and a school. Just because you have great business acumen does not mean you can run a school,” said UTLA President John Perez.

Broad dismisses such talk, saying the UTLA is a “regressive” union, while supporters such as Randy Ward, the state administrator of the troubled Oakland school district, maintain that Broad is onto something.

“Using better business practices does not eliminate the spirit of collaboration. Our central offices are stuck in the beginning of the 19th century,” said Ward.

Broad insists that criticism doesn’t bother him, although Riordan, who takes regular weekend hikes with his friend in the mountains and canyons around Los Angeles, says he doubts that’s true.

Broad puts it this way: “I love getting things done. I love making a difference. I love giving back and I don’t mind being recognized.”

Yaroslavsky says that’s what he likes about Broad. He speaks his mind and means what he says. “I find him to be a lot easier to deal with than a lot of people,” he said. “There is no ambiguity about Eli.”