Urban Renewal

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Bill Witte wears many hats as managing partner of Related of California, the West Coast outpost of Related Cos., the New York developer of Time Warner Center and other big East Coast projects. These days, a good deal of Witte’s time is spent managing high-profile projects, such as the Century, a luxury condo tower in Century City, and the Grand, a $2.7 billion mixed-use project in downtown Los Angeles that has stalled for lack of financing. But, Witte, 57, is also passionate about the company’s lower-profile ventures, including myriad affordable housing and mixed-income developments across California. That interest is directly tied to his lifelong passion for city planning. Witte studied the subject at the University of Pennsylvania before working in government in Washington, D.C., and later San Francisco, where he was housing director for then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein. Witte makes his home in Laguna Beach, where he and his wife raise two teenage daughters while his son attends college. The developer has little free time but still indulges his passions, including crime novels and basketball, which he’s coached in youth leagues. Recently, Witte sat down with the Business Journal in his Irvine office to discuss Related, his life and how he manages the L.A. commute.


Question: Are you frustrated by your inability to get a loan to get the Grand Avenue project going?

Answer: You stay on top of the market and you wait for the time when you can have a rational discussion with something. You don’t just go pounding the pavement in a futile search when there is no liquidity in the market.


Q: How important do you consider Grand Avenue?

A: I think it is a great model of what a mixed-use project can be and how you can create a sense of place in an area that really hasn’t had any. But I also try to keep it in perspective. It will complete a very important corner of downtown, just as L.A. Live is doing in the South Park area. And there will be spinoff effects where the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts. But it’s not a panacea. It shouldn’t be thought of as something that is transforming the entire city of Los Angeles.


Q: How do you manage such a big project from Irvine? How much time do you spend in L.A.?

A: Any given week it is maybe between 10 and 50 percent. It’s interesting. I’ve come to like L.A. And if I didn’t live down here my wife and I I’m sure we would spend more time there. The challenges of being in L.A. are everybody’s challenges, which involve mostly getting around. We have business on the Westside and downtown, and navigating that, especially when you have multiple meetings a day, is very challenging.


Q: Do you have any secret tricks?

A: I’d like to say that I have some magic bullet, but I don’t. The only thing that I will say, and believe me it is not about ego, if I have a full day where I have to get up there in rush hour, have meetings all day and come back in rush hour, I get a driver. Because I physically would not be able to do it otherwise.


Q: How did you end up living in Laguna Beach?

A: My wife and I met in San Francisco, where I lived in the 1980s and she is from that area. We moved down here very reluctantly in 1990, a year after I started Related of California. I mean, why would anyone want to leave San Francisco? It was going to be temporary.


Q: How did it end up being permanent?

A: One thing led to another, we had a second and a third child, we got more active, settled in and from a business point of view, there is simply more opportunity in Southern California.


Q: What has driven your interest in cities?

A: From the time I was in high school I was interested almost obsessed with cities. It was all about cities. My whole family is from New York City and when I was a baby they moved to southern Connecticut, which is where I grew up and went to high school. I went to college at the University of Pennsylvania for bachelor’s and master’s programs. I only wanted to go to college in a city. I was an urban studies major. I wanted to do things in the city, and I was interested in neighborhoods and the dynamics of cities.


Q: How did you end up working for Dianne Feinstein?

A: It was in the last year of the Carter administration when I was working for the Federal Housing Commission at HUD that then newly elected Mayor of San Francisco Dianne Feinstein called my boss, whom she knew the federal housing commissioner and said, “I need a housing director.” That led to 10 years in San Francisco, very good years, where I ran housing and economic development for Dianne, and for 18 months was deputy mayor for her successor, Art Agnos, before I left to jump into this.


Q: For a guy interested in government, what attracted you to work for a developer?

A: When I was deputy mayor in San Francisco in 1989, Steve Ross had formed a partnership with two young guys in California to do office development. He was the financial partner. One of them was my younger brother, Matt, and they competed and shocked everybody by winning an RFP to develop a high-rise office site in downtown San Francisco. Steve would come out for those meetings. Related’s genesis in the 1970s was developing and syndicating government-assisted housing and Steve said to my brother, “You know, I’d really like do that in California.” He said to my brother, “Do you know anyone that might be good to hook up with?” My brother said, “As it happens I do.” He introduced me to Steve and that’s how the connection was made.


Q: Why did you get out of government?

A: Interestingly, I think my principal motivation for leaving government was not just to make more money. Government in the 1980s had become not a real pleasant place, people didn’t like government, it was contentious and I got stale. I’m a doer. I like to get things done. It became increasingly difficult to do that. It was frustrating. That was probably the main motivation.


Q: It appears you had few contacts on the West Coast yet have been very

successful.

A: One thing that is different about the West Coast, which has been very good for me, first at the government level and then on the development side, you can come to the West Coast from out of the blue, from anywhere, and get in the middle of things. It’s much harder to do on the East Coast, particularly in cities like Philly or Boston. Not a lot of people who aren’t from there rise up in the ranks. It is much more parochial.


Q: What’s it like working with entrepreneur Eli Broad on the Grand Avenue

project?

A: I think it has given me an appreciation for his particular genius. People sometimes pick on Eli, for example, because he’s so prominent or he makes grand pronouncements or something. But I got to tell you, without Eli Broad, a lot of things in this town would not happen. And you can say, well, one person shouldn’t be that involved. My responses to that is, great, all you other billionaires out there, the water is warm, jump right in. We’d love to have you. The guy at his age, what he does, and the amount of things he’s involved in and helps happen is unbelievable.


Q: What’s a typical day like for you?

A: Usually, I get up between 6 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. Usually, if I don’t have to go somewhere really early, I work out in my garage I am pretty diligent about that . I operate under the break-even theory of working out. If you do that then you can eat and drink and have fun. I will get in here anywhere between 8 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. depending on what’s going on and I could be here late in the evening. When my kids were growing up, if there was a sports event, I would move heaven and Earth to get there.


Q: Will you move to L.A. ever?

A: I fully intend to buy a condo unit in Grand Avenue when it is built. As

(my children) get older, and certainly when the youngest leaves the house, I don’t envision leaving Laguna Beach, but I envision having a place in L.A. and spending a lot more time there.


Q: You are a big basketball fan. Have you always played?

A: I played in high school, and I like all sports, but particularly basketball. I played in local recreational leagues into my late 40s, before I started getting stiff. I realized maybe I am getting old. I got checked out I had arthritis in my right hip and I had my right hip replaced at UCLA four years ago. So I became more involved in coaching youth basketball than playing.


Q: Do you have any hobbies?

A: Travel is a hobby I’d like to have. But with the three kids, family is first priority and always will be. Sports were always a hobby and the nature of that has shifted a little bit from basketball and some tennis to working out and hiking. As my orthopedist at UCLA, Dr. Finerman who is the team orthopedist at UCLA said to me when I asked him if I could play basketball still (after the hip replacement), “You could, but I probably wouldn’t.”


Q: Do you play?

A: Occasionally.


Q: How else do you spend your free time?

A: Reading I’m a pretty omnivorous reader of everything from crime fiction to nonfiction. There are three crime fiction novelists that if they have a book come out I get it and read it that week. One is Dennis Lehane, who writers about Boston. Another is George Pelicanos, who writes about Washington, D.C. Third is James Lee Burke, who writes about Cajun country and New Orleans. There are two others, too, Richard Price, another urban-oriented novelist, and Philip Roth.


Q: As a fan of crime fiction, I’m surprised you didn’t mention any of L.A.’s greats, like Raymond Chandler.

A: L.A. has been an acquired taste for me. I will get there. You’ve got to remember my roots. I am still governed as much by that kind of mind-set. What’s my favorite movie could it be anything but “The Godfather”? There is a line from “The Godfather” that I can or do use almost every day in work.


Q: Do you have a favorite line?

A: I’d say two, either when Al Pacino is explaining to his wife about what his father does, he described one incident and said, “Luca Brazi and my father went to someone and said, ‘Either your brains or your signature will be on that contract,’ ” That’s one. I want to use that line three times a day. The other, on a lighter note, is when Clemenza, as they are out in the marshes somewhere shooting some guy and leaving the body, he instructs his younger associate, “Leave the gun, take the cannoli.”



Bill Witte


Title: President, Related of California

Company: Related Cos.

Education: B.A. in urban studies and master’s in city planning from University of Pennsylvania

Career Turning Points: Getting “plucked from obscurity” to work as executive

assistant to Federal Housing Commissioner Larry Simons in Washington, D.C., in 1980. Ten years later, starting Related of California for Related Cos. CEO Steve Ross

Most Influential People: Late father Martin, a “tough, old bird from the Bronx whose word was his bond.” Also, Ross, who “gave me the chance to learn the

development business and continues to show me that creativity, tenacity and vision can overcome most obstacles”

Personal: Lives in Laguna Beach with wife Keiko Sakamoto and daughters Olivia, 17, and Sophia, 13. Son Nick, 19, attends University of Michigan

Hobbies: Family; watching and playing sports, especially basketball and hiking; reading; socializing with friends over food and wine

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