to stay on as long as the directors felt his services were required. It turned out to be longer than he anticipated. Fisher was chairman of De- troit Renaissance from November 1970 until November 1981, when he moved aside to let Henry Ford replace him. In an effort to buy some time to develop young leadership, Fisher would again be asked to take the chairmanship; his second tenure ran from December 1983 until December 1986, when he stepped down and was awarded the lifelong post of Founding Chairman.
Detroit Renaissance would make some headway during these de- cades —an inspection of downtown, particularly the riverfront, is all the proof one needs. However, the group’s ability to cut significantly into the social despair it sought to excise is a debatable question and, Fisher claims, a continuing process. “You have to think about the year 2000,” he often told dissenting citizens, cynical city fathers, cranky public servants, querulous tycoons, skeptical mavens of the media and anyone who cared to listen about the war to save Detroit. If the ear- ly 1970s presented an urban mire almost beyond comprehension to a small-town boy born in 1908, then the obstacles that arose in the 1980s stretched reason and patience and compassion until they nearly snapped. Crack addiction, skyrocketing teenage pregnancy, nine-year- old drug runners, high-school gangs draped in gold and armed with Uzis, prisons without a cell to spare, and a new, disquieting twist, Dev- il’s Night —an annual pre-Halloween rash of arson that in a three-day period in 1984, for instance, erupted in over 800 fires — seemed to have finally shattered the fragile veneer of the civilized that enveloped not just Detroit, but the crumbling schools, cracked pavement and de- pleted services of inner cities from New York to California.
In the face of this social decay, Fisher pursued his plans to help re- build Detroit. What motivated him is a consideration that will have to wait. His motives were not publicly maligned until 1979, when he and Al Taubman sought to make their personal contributions to Detroit’s revitalization (which is best understood in the context of that time.) Ask Fisher why he dug in his heels at Detroit Renaissance and for your trouble you will be treated to a homespun sermon on an individual’s obligations to his community —Horatio Alger by way of Norman Vin-
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cent Peale, with an ample measure of Rabbi Hillel thrown in (“If I am not for myself, who will be? But if I am only for myself, what am I?”). Beyond that response, Fisher proffers a single explanation.
“You have to think about the year 2000,” he says.
***
In the winter of 1971, once Fisher saw that the corporate clout was committed to Detroit Renaissance, his next step was to hire a pro- fessional to oversee the program. Ford Motor Company headhunters mentioned the name Robert E. McCabe, and Fisher flew to New York City to recruit him.
McCabe, a tall, elegant man, later dubbed “Champagne Bob” by the Detroit media for his grand and sophisticated style, was born in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, in 1923. Agraduate of Central Michigan University and the University of Chicago, by 1970 McCabe had spent much of his career on the public side of urban development. Between 1967 and 1969, he was deputy assistant director at HUD in Washington, D.C., leaving the post as Nixon assumed office (and Romney and Fisher ar - rived), and taking a position as general manager of New York State’s Urban Development Corporation.
Fisher invited McCabe to have breakfast with him in his suite at the Waldorf. While they ate, Fisher talked about what his group hoped to ac- complish in Detroit. McCabe told Fisher that the cities that were success- ful at redevelopment had established an intimate working relationship be- tween government and business. One reservation that McCabe expressed was that perhaps Fisher’s group was a little late in starting their redevelop- ment, but he emphasized that he thought it was a good idea.
Fisher said to him: “Bob, I’m glad you think it’s such a good idea because we’d like to have you come out and run it.” McCabe said that he was happy with his job in New York, but that was not the answer that Fisher had flown to Manhattan to hear.
“Well,” McCabe recalls, “then Max quickly said, ‘Look, maybe if you just come out and talk to the guys you can give us some ideas.’ I said I’d be glad to do that. He got me out [to Detroit] and then he
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[sicked Henry Ford and Robert Surdam] on me. And, lo and behold, I became president of Detroit Renaissance.”
***
The economic hardships suffered by Detroit can be boiled down to one sad fact: in 1945, when Henry Ford II took over the company his grandfather had founded, the United States produced 80 percent of all the passenger cars in the world, By 1980, that figure had been reduced to 28 percent. The aftershocks reverberated through every segment of Detroit’s economy.
Secondly, during this financial decline, the 1967 riot transpired, af - ter which, Fisher says, Detroit, unlike every other riot-torn urban com- munity, became “a rudderless city.”
ColemanA. Young, who would be elected mayor in 1973 and would work closely with Fisher, feels that the problems in Detroit developed differently than in other cities.
“Detroit is almost an anachronism,” says Young. “During World War II, it was the arsenal of democracy. We produced every damn thing from bombers to tanks. Right after World War II, when we entered the atomic age, a real paranoia of the Russians intruded [on Detroit’s in- dustrial economy]. It was said that the [Soviet Union] had an atomic bomb and decentralization [of our industry] became the official policy of the United States government. That meant that the government ac- tually subsidized the breakup of the concentration of heavy industry around Detroit. I remember this distinctly because I was associated with the labor movement. It must’ve been a little earlier than 1950, [when] one of the Chrysler plants moved out to Ohio [because] of this decentralization. That was the beginning.
“Then there were the expressways,” Young continues. “With gov- ernment subsidies we began a system of expressways out of the city, a system that was unparalleled in the United States. The rest of the coun- try learned a lot from us. [But] in the process of building our [roads], they truncated [neighborhoods] and a big percentage of Detroit’s tax base was destroyed. The communities were just choked off. I know
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from experience. I had a dry-cleaning plant on Livernois. It was a good business. That particular block was one of the busiest outside of downtown Detroit. My partner and I, Jack Ashton, what did we know? Jack had been busy with the civil-rights movement. And I’d been busy with the labor movement. The guy who sold us [the dry-cleaning plant] knew there were plans to move the expressway within two doors. We did very well for a year until they dug that ditch. Then that whole block died. It’s a ghost block [now, and] it once was prosperous. That hap- pened to all kinds of [Detroit] neighborhoods.”
Young believes that the existence of the expressways also expedited the eventual white flight from Detroit. (Between the late 1950s and the late 1980s, Detroit’s population dropped from 1.8 million to 1 million.) Young blames both racism and greed for the flight.
“After the ‘67 riots,” says Young, “it was a bonanza for the real-es- tate guys. Here you got white people caught in a frenzy —the blacks are coming? The blacks got to be very powerful when you consider that on a block of forty people, three blacks moved in and thirty-seven whites ran. And the real estate agents [took advantage of the situa- tion.] They were block-busting. They could overcharge the frightened whites; they’re desperate and could be charged twice what [a subur- ban house] was worth. Then the agents could overcharge the blacks to move into the homes that the whites deserted. There ain’t never been a golden era like that for the real-estate guys. It was a double-con.” Race has long been singled out as a major factor in Detroit’s decay. Nineteen years after the founding of Detroit Renaissance, hostility be- tween blacks and whites is still being cited as the origin of the city’s troubles. On July 29, 1990, The New York Times Magazine published an article, “The Tragedy of Detroit,” by Ze’ev Chafets, a native of Pontiac, Michigan, who moved to Israel in 1967. In his article, Chafets states that living two decades in the Middle East has given him a good eye for tribal animosity and in Detroit he recognized it. One white voice in the article depicts Detroit as “the place where the wheels came off the wagon of Western civilization.” A black voice responds that whites from the suburbs “rape the city, and then they come and say, ‘Look what these niggers did to the city.’”
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Fisher believed that there were less histrionic explanations for De- troit’s difficulties. The economic distress of the auto industry was in - disputable; it would take, Fisher thought, thirty or forty years before the local economy would be able to plug the financial gaps. Like any - one familiar with the metro sections of numerous American newspa- pers, Fisher knew that muggings, rapes, robberies and murders were not endemic to Detroit. If the “wheels of civilization” had come off in Detroit, then the same could be said of New York City. Around the time that the Chafets piece appeared, a young woman jogger was bat- tered and gang-raped in Central Park by teenagers; a twenty-two-year- old tourist from Utah was stabbed to death on a subway platform when he went to aid his parents, who were being robbed and beaten; a black high school student en route to inspect a used car was murdered by a white mob in Bensonhurst; and in a span of six weeks, twelve children were hit by the stray bullets of drug dealers (five of them died).
In Detroit, though, some social critics suggested that white resent- ment toward blacks centered around the judgment by whites that blacks had stolen their city. Critics claimed that whites like Fisher and Ford, who pooled their money and talents to aid Detroit, were caught in a web of nostalgic illusions —a longing for what Detroit once was urg- ing them on, futilely, to restore the metropolis to its previous greatness. Undeniably, at some level, Fisher’s passion to help rebuild Detroit was ignited by his remembrance of things past. But however magnan- imous and caring Fisher is said to be, he is rarely described as senti- mental, and it is implausible that when his own political skills, money and credibility were on the block, as they were at Detroit Renaissance, that his actions would be steered by sentiment.
Fisher never envisioned restoring the city to its heyday. Pacing out-of-town journalists at a question-and-answer session, Fisher said: “[Cities] may not be the same in the future as they were in the past. We think of cities as naturally being the thriving retail development and entertainment centers. They may not have to be on that scale anymore. Too many people relate Detroit to the past. We have to think in terms of what is the city of the future.”
Fisher and Detroit Renaissance had become focused on the riverfront
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as a spot to secure a foothold for the city’s revitalization. Fisher, among others, concluded that what Detroit required was a venture of such enor- mous scope that it would dramatically alter the image of downtown, producing a suitable alternative to suburbia and providing a catalyst for further projects. So in 1971 Fisher, Ford and Taubman privately com- missioned a study of the future of development along the riverfront.
It is ironic that the three men were so instrumental in the organized effort to reverse the trend of Detroiters relocating to the suburbs, since this trio had been indirectly and directly involved in developing these bedroom communities. Of course, Henry Ford I, with his mass produc- tion of automobiles, had furnished the opportunity for average Amer- icans to reside outside the cities where they worked, and his grand- son, Henry II, continued rolling cars off the assembly line. Fisher, the oil man and owner of Speedway gasoline stations, made his fortune fueling the engines. And Taubman, as one of largest shopping mall developers in the nation, constructed and managed the spaces where suburbanites shopped. Fisher had also invested in the suburbs that ringed Detroit — in the Somerset Apartments and Somerset Mall, a posh mecca for suburban shoppers. Meanwhile, Taubman and Ford teamed up to create the upscale Fairlaine shopping center in Dearborn, among the largest shopping centers in the country.
The irony was not lost on Detroiters who hoped to see the city re- vived. One black activist told Henry Ford that if he was serious about urban renewal, then he should cut back on his investment in the sub- urbs and put some of his money where he said his heart was — into redeveloping downtown. In commissioning the study of the riverfront, Fisher, Ford and Taubman hoped to determine the feasibility of cre- ating a strip of parks, stores, office buildings, shops, and high- and low-rise housing that would stretch from Belle Isle to the Ambassador Bridge, which links Detroit to Windsor, Canada.
In the late spring of 1971, Bob McCabe went to Henry Ford to talk to him about building a shopping-mall and office building combination on the site of the old Packard warehouse beside the Detroit River. Ford told McCabe that his staff at Ford Land Development Corporation in- sisted that there was no market for such a project.
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“I know,” replied McCabe. “It’s for us to force the market.”
That summer, Ford and Fisher were sitting beside Fisher’s pool af- ter taking a swim. They were drinking red wine, the bouquet of greater interest to Ford than to Fisher.
“You could do so much, Henry,” Fisher said, referring to the pro- posed development project along the river. “The name ‘Ford’ is part of Detroit. You’re the only one who can do it. And you ought to do it, Henry. You should.”
Ford listened, sipping his wine, staring past the border of evergreens out to the neatly trimmed fairways of the Franklin Hills golf course. Fisher waited. After fifteen years of friendship he was used to Ford’s tactical retreats into silence and knew that pushing Henry was never productive, that the only way Hank the Deuce ever made up his mind was on his own, and he did it while listening to his own private song, in his own sweet time. Now, it was taking him awhile. The sunlight was fading. Shadows fell across the grass.
Despite his silence, Henry Ford was certain that if Fisher felt so strongly about something, chances were that it was the right move to make. Ford trusted Fisher, and trust was not readily extended by the scion of the First Family of American industry. Shortly before his death in 1987, Ford would say of his friend: “Max is the one person I can turn to for straightforward advice. See, everybody is always trying to tell me what they think I want to hear. Not Max. He tells me what he believes is true.”
At last, with the sun drifting beyond the greens of the golf course, Henry Ford stood to go inside the house to dress. He said: “Max, I’ll do it. But not alone and it won’t be a Ford Motor Company deal. Ev- eryone has to contribute. You too.”
Fisher promised that he would do his share.
That fall, after Ford Land Development acquired fifty acres along the riverfront from the bankrupt Penn Central Railway, Henry Ford an- nounced his intention to undertake the largest single building venture in Detroit’s history. The project was the Renaissance Center, known locally as “RenCen.” Ground was broken in May 1973. Ford hired John Portman to design RenCen. Portman, renowned for his design of
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Atlanta’s Peachtree Center and the Embarcadero Center in San Fran- cisco, was striving, in RenCen, to design “an urban village,” clustering as many of Detroit’s services under one roof as possible.
Today, RenCen stands at the base of the city’s main business dis- trict, extending along the river and spanning more than thirty acres. Like some imposing spaceship, RenCen emerges from an enormous landscaped podium. It has five gleaming glass towers — a 73-story cylindrical hotel with 1,400 rooms encircled by four, 39-story oc- tagon-shaped office buildings with 2.2 million square feet of rent - able floor space. There is parking for 6,000 automobiles, a shopping mall with more than 100 specialty shops, 13 restaurants and lounges. It includes what in the mid-1970s was the world’s biggest rooftop restaurant, which revolves one full turn every hour and on clear days offers a panoramic view of Lake St. Clair, the Detroit River and the Canadian shoreline.
When the Renaissance Center finally opened its doors in April 1977, Max Fisher was interviewed in The Milwaukee Journal under the headline, “The Man Who Gave Ford the Better Idea.”
***
As a means to restoring Detroit, the success of RenCen was both nota- ble and, given the civic controversy surrounding it, interminably debat- able. Among other criticisms, RenCen has been called a “fortress for whites to work in while the rest of the city goes to hell around them,” and a “Noah’s Ark for the middle class.” The response to these char- acterizations underscored Detroit’s most noted affliction — violence. People, it was said, would not frequent RenCen unless they were bar- ricaded inside, a claim that was backed up not only by the fortress-like walls, but by the fact that the RenCen security staff outnumbered half of the nation’s police forces.
One point that was not debated, however, was that for Henry Ford and his partners, RenCen was a financial disaster. Ford assembled a fifty-one-member Renaissance Center partnership (banks, insurance companies, manufacturers), but the largest financial commitment came
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from Ford Motor Credit Company. Once it was apparent that RenCen was not attracting tenants, Ford became a ferocious rental agent, or- dering 1,700 of his employees to transfer from Dearborn to Detroit. Shortly, Ford Motor Company became RenCen’s biggest tenant, leas- ing an entire office tower —thirty-four floors of space. When the re - located employees complained about the crime rate, the inconvenient commute and Detroit’s income tax, the company promised a pay raise to defray expenses and took the employees on a tour of the impeccable security operations.
It cost $357 million to complete the Renaissance Center. The in- vestment was eroded by wave upon wave of red ink. Between 1977 and 1982, RenCen’s operating losses totaled $130 million. On January 1, 1983, the RenCen partnership defaulted on its second mortgage. By mid-month, the partners were offered $275 million for RenCen, $15 million less than the total debt. In the end, a new partnership, the Renaissance Center Venture, bought a majority interest in the project. The depressed downtown real estate market, coupled with a declining local economy and a business district that emptied at the dinner hour, were blamed for the economic failure.
“Max and Hank the Deuce recognized from the beginning that Ren- Cen wasn’t a pure investment [or even] a good investment,” says May- or Young. “It was regarded as a potential catalyst for development up and down the riverfront and for the economic stability and the redevel- opment of Detroit. I think it proved to be both of those. The investment that [Fisher] and [Taubman] eventually made in the Riverfront Apart- ments was really supportive of the Renaissance Center. It was made possible by the presence of the Renaissance Center.”
Bob McCabe seconds the mayor’s opinion. He states: “The project is an example of what [Max and Henry] asked people to do from the start —put their money and reputations on the line. They lost money. But the week after Renaissance Center opened, a number of build- ings nearby in the old warehouse district were taken over and became restaurants and bars. The police force noticed a 30 percent increase in pedestrian traffic in the area. RenCen was built on the site of the old Packard warehouse, an abandoned railroad yard and a grain silo. No
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one would have been walking around there without the Renaissance Center.”
“We were never in it for the money,” Fisher says.
There were some in Detroit who did not accept this statement, ac- cusing Fisher of being a carpetbagger from the suburbs, out to enhance his fortune at the expense of the city. By 1983, when RenCen passed to a second group of investors, Fisher had been through a civic contro- versy unmatched in his career. It required the use of his fortune and po- litical power in Detroit, Lansing and Washington, D.C., the restraint of his anger, the strength of his personal friendships and tested his skills as a bridge builder to the limit. Still, even after it was clear that Fisher and Taubman had lost more than $30 million in pursuit of their vision, Fisher’s critics and his supporters wanted to know: Why was he there? Fisher replied that he was thinking about the year 2000.
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Chapter 18
DOWN BYTHE RIVER
ATAPRESS conference on January 3, 1974, Max Fisher and Louis Berry, respectively chairman and president of the Fisher-New Center Co., announced that they were selling the Fisher Building, the New Center Building and ten acres of adjacent land to Tristar Development, Inc. of New York. Over the years, investors approached Fisher and Berry to buy the building, but the offers were rejected. Fisher, says Berry, was originally disinclined to sell to Tristar, maintaining that it was not the proper time. Berry assured him that the timing was exactly right. Fisher relented, but it was not until years later that he told Berry it had been the right thing to do.
In 1974, though, Fisher was troubled about letting go of the build- ing. Early one evening, a few weeks prior to the press conference, after the deal was nailed down, Fisher and several of his employees went to celebrate at Al Green’s, a restaurant in the Fisher Building arcade. Fisher ordered a drink —scotch and soda —which he rarely did. As his employees chatted excitedly about the sale, Fisher sipped his scotch and stared glumly at the people entering the restaurant. One of Fisher’s employees, noticing that her boss did not appear to be cel- ebrating, asked him, “Would you feel so blue if you had just sold the Smith or Jones Building?”
“No,” Fisher admitted. “Probably not.”
His profit from the sale, after taxes, was $11.1 million, and it was some solace that Eli Master, vice president of Tristar, pledged that his company had no intention of renaming the building. But Fisher had to concede that a momentous phase of his life was over.
Five months before the sale, Fisher turned sixty-five, the age at which men are traditionally supposed to slow down. Fisher had no
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intention of honoring that tradition. He was immersed in politics, the reconstituted Jewish Agency had just gotten off the ground, and there were his investments to nurture, but he knew that he was at a cross- roads. Something was finished. Fisher could not put his finger on it, an elusive feeling of having left things undone, of debts not paid. There was no use kidding himself. If, on many occasions, he could be emo- tionally evasive with his family and closest friends, he could, paradox- ically, be brutally frank with himself.
For him, the Fisher Building was a symbol of every business accom- plishment he aspired to and, by 1974, achieved. His young Depres- sion dream of being among the elite who lunched in the Recess Room was no longer deferred. Yet something was wrong. He had everything he ever longed for and now he was selling the Fisher Building, the gold-threaded emblem of that longing and its fulfillment. Oscar Wilde remarked that there were only two tragedies in life —one is not get- ting what you want, the other is getting it —but Fisher did not think that was the issue. For him, it was a matter of direction, of making certain that in whatever time he had coming to him that he settled his accounts, closed every circle. He had raised so much money for such a multitude of causes, but meantime the city he called home, the city he felt had given him his glorious opportunity, was struggling.
In January 1974, the conventional wisdom around Detroit was that Fisher’s decision to sell to Tristar was based on his promise to make a sizable investment in the city. Henry Ford was doing his part; Fisher had vowed to follow suit. Fisher bolstered this perception at the press conference on January 3. According to The Detroit News, Fisher ex- plained that “the sale of the prime property in the New Center area should not be construed to mean he is abandoning Detroit as a place to do business. He pointed out that [as] chairman of Detroit Renaissance ... [he] could not get into the sticky position of quitting the city.” Fish- er concluded by informing reporters that he was going to utilize his profits from the sale to fund a “dramatic” downtown endeavor, but he would not disclose his intentions.
Despite these statements, much of what was driving Fisher had its inception one year before the press conference, on New Year’s Day,
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1973. That was the morning after Fisher had suffered an arrhythmia, and he sat in his Palm Beach apartment examining his life in writing. Although most of the document dealt with his familial relationships and his health, he did write two rather curious sentences about his fi - nances: “I must learn to liquidate certain holdings and get out of debt. There is no excuse to be in the position that I am in.”
What is remarkable about these comments is that Fisher’s financial position, at the time, was enviable. Conservative estimates appraised his assets at over $100 million. He was not excessively leveraged, nor involved in any overly speculative ventures. In the fall of 1990, Fisher claims that the debts he referred to in 1973 consisted of some miscel- laneous notes, but nothing that was financially pressing. Emotionally pressing was another matter. And the springboard for Fisher’s plunge into the Riverfront development is highlighted in the 1973 document by the dual dimension that “debt” held for him —its fiscal and emo- tional encumbrances.
Fisher loathed financial debt. For instance, in 1984, his son, Phillip, started to assist him in managing the family assets. One afternoon, at a meeting with Max, Phillip suggested that his father mortgage his hous- es in Franklin and Palm Beach so as to benefit from the tax-deductible interest on residential mortgages.
“He really has so little opportunity to take meaningful deductions,” Phillip Fisher says. “But when I presented my recommendation, [my father] just looked at me and said, ‘Max Fisher doesn’t do mortgages.’ That was it. Next case. It’s not as if he won’t leverage a business deal. And he knows almost every home owner in the United States has a mortgage. He doesn’t think there’s something wrong with that. But he won’t do it. It bothers him. He just refuses to borrow money against his homes.”
Between 1973 and 1984, Fisher’s net worth multiplied by a factor of three. So though the tax savings on mortgage interest would have been a negligible fraction of his fortune, Phillip’s suggestion was fiscally sound. Fisher’s objection to it was visceral, its origins in the second meaning of debt, to owe a favor or to be obligated to someone or some- thing —debt as an emotional encumbrance. This category of personal
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indebtedness was as unpalatable to Fisher as residential mortgages. He was the one who did the favors and invariably stood ready to help. Hundreds of official and unofficial testimonies to Fisher’s generosity exist — plaques and proclamations alongside impassioned handwrit- ten letters of gratitude and the memories of phone calls brimming with appreciation. It is, however, a far smaller group who can claim that Fisher allowed them to do a favor for him. He was a believer in chits, notes one signs promising to pay later. He never missed an opportunity to lend a hand, to collect a chit and augment his store of favors owed. Nor did he ever redeem one without a compelling reason.
Phillip Fisher recalls that as a youngster his father instructed him in the intricacies of the chit system. “I was graduating from a private high school,” he says, “Now, during my life, people have [often] been nice to me for some ulterior motive. And so one of the men running the school came to me and said, ‘Phillip, we need somebody to give the keynote address at your graduation and we’re trying to think of people.’ Well, these type of guys always have a list where my dad is about three-quarters of the way down. Like they’re disguising it or something. Their motive is that they want him to give the speech so that he’ll make a contribution. So this fellow asks me if I’d ask my fa- ther to speak. I said that I didn’t like to ask him favors. You see, when I was eleven or twelve my father told me that you earn chits in life and you don’t want to use them unless something is really important. He did speak at my school and did a great job. When I got older I saw that he understood how to use his chits better than anyone else. But that’s understandable. He’s been doing it longer than most people.”
And so on New Year’s morning, 1973, Fisher promised himself to wipe his debt clean. There’s no excuse for the position I’m in. He planned to repay Detroit for what it had given him. He had been think- ing about it for a while. Several months prior to that morning, Fisher accepted the Albert Einstein School of Medicine’s Commemorative Award for Philanthropy. In his acceptance speech, Fisher articulated what he felt was the personal weight of his social obligation. He said: “I have long been interested not in philanthropy, but in what I call ‘social responsibility,’ in meeting the obligations that each one of us
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owes. Each of us can do something to help rebuild our cities. This is our obligation.”
Mayor Coleman Young, who, in his effort to revive Detroit, worked his side of the political street while Fisher worked his, also sees in Fisher’s impulse to give back an exigent need on Fisher’s part to bal- ance his emotional bottom line.
Says Young: “I think most of us who are involved in encouraging political and social change are moved by our memories of things as they were, or want [to pay back] the help [we received] from another quarter. Max came to Detroit as a relatively poor person and he made it in Detroit. And he never lost sight of [the discrimination he faced] because he was Jewish. That has been a strong, binding factor between those of us in the struggle for black civil rights and those who strug- gled for the same things in [the Jewish community].”
In his 1973 document, Fisher told himself that he would have to learn to liquidate certain holdings. He might have said that he would have to learn to put certain dreams attained behind him. He learned it soon enough.
“I always felt,” Fisher says, “that because of the success of Aurora I owed, and owed a lot.”
By the end of 1973, the Fisher Building was sold. By the beginning of 1974, Fisher began to pay.
***
As a wintry dusk settled on the banks of the Detroit River, Fisher turned up his coat collar and looked out over the leaden water to the lights of Windsor, Canada. Because he had just flown in from Palm Beach, the icy gusts felt particularly cold. He walked to keep warm, moving far- ther along the bank, careful not to slip on the rime. It was January 1974. Fisher was standing in the middle of an abandoned railroad yard with a crumbling storage shed under a grid of unused freeway overpasses. But the longer Fisher stood with the wind whipping around him the more he was able to imagine: the ultramodern towers of an apartment complex; a marina lined with boats; a bustling shopping center.
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Before he returned to his car, a vision of Riverfront had taken shape in his mind. That was all anyone needed, Fisher thought, a vision fused to a blueprint. He had a draft of the blueprint by spring and announced that his Riverfront development would open its doors in 1976. He was off by seven years. During those years, as one frus- tration tumbled on top of another, Fisher pursued his vision with a single-minded intensity unmatched in his professional life, and en route he authored what urban experts at Michigan State University have declared “a kind of textbook case in the application of power to realize an urban development project.”
***
Two years before Fisher’s walk along the river, Al Taubman went to New York to bid on thirty-six acres of the Detroit riverfront owned by the bankrupt Penn Central Railroad.
“We wanted Detroit Renaissance to buy and control the land,” Taubman says, “to put together packages to build residentials on those lands along the river. We did a study as to values and determined it would cost $5 million to build a sea wall and extended foundations. We figured the land was worth [between] $2.5 and $3 million. I made an offer of $2.5 million. The guy representing Penn Central promptly turned it down, saying they had an offer from [Southfield, Michigan, builder Adolph] Komer that would realize them $10 million.”
But Fisher wasn’t ready to relinquish his plans without a fight. So in 1974, he entered into a partnership with Komer and Penn Central, nei- ther of whom believed in his vision. He was willing to wait and form the necessary partnerships in order to get his way.
Taubman says that ultimately Riverfront was more Fisher than him. “If not for Max, I probably wouldn’t have been in Riverfront. It’s his vision. In a sense, it’s not a good deal. Agood deal is one where every- one’s in it for greed. Then it’s simple: you make money and everyone walks away happy. The reasons [for building Riverfront] are too com- plicated. The test is: Could Riverfront be built in any other city? The answer is — no.”
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Adds Coleman Young: “I think Max had a real influence on Henry Ford and Al Taubman as a statesman. Max had a particularly powerful influence on Taubman. That relationship was almost a father-son rela - tionship. They always argue with each other. Al complains [good-na- turedly] that Max keeps him in trouble [and] causes him to lose mon- ey [with Riverfront]. But Al always comes through. When Hank the Deuce was alive, I regarded [Fisher, Taubman, and Ford] as a trio when it came to the economic development of Detroit and [other] supportive efforts for the city.”
Hoping to pump some economic blood into Detroit, Young prompt- ly forged an alliance between City Hall and developers who resided in the suburbs.
“Max,” says Young, “is the person [who], as much as anyone, [is] responsible for adhering to the philosophy that the main mission of Detroit Renaissance should be the economic development of the city. And the theory upon which that is built is that the economic stability of the whole area depends on the economic stability of Detroit. I de- scribe this as the ‘doughnut theory.’ Some would say that there is a new center and it ain’t Detroit. And that the whole area surrounding Detroit could prosper while Detroit is nothing [but a] hole in the middle. The sweet meat is in the doughnut and Detroit is the sinkhole. Well, that is impossible. That ain’t even physics. If it’s a doughnut, it’s a piece of cake, a solid piece of cake. And it can’t taste good if the center is rotten. Max knows that. He always has.”
The coalition between Young and business leaders partially ex- plains Taubman’s assertion that Riverfront could not have been built in other cities. What made the union unique was that while no one would ever accuse the electoral competition between Michigan Democrats and Republicans of being gentle, when it came to aiding Detroit the effort was fully bipartisan. Whoever had the contacts used them — in Detroit, Lansing and Washington.
An example, unrelated to Riverfront, illustrates how this coalition mobilized behind the city’s banner. On July 28, 1976, Richard Gillil- and, a Republican administrator for the Department of Labor, ruled that Detroit could not use funds from the Federal Comprehensive Employ-
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ment and Training Act (CETA) to rehire 289 police officers and emer - gency medical technicians that had been let go. Gilliland had some other bad news. He determined that as of September 1, Detroit would have to begin laying off another 1,200 workers who were paid through CETA. Mayor Young, by then a major liberal Democratic player on the national stage, was irate, describing Gilliland’s ruling as “punitive and vindictive.”
Young phoned Fisher, the quintessential Republican, who during that summer was in the midst of raising money for President Ford’s campaign against the liberal Democratic governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter. Young explained the situation. Fisher told him not to worry, that he would speak to the White House. On July 29, one day after Gilliland’s pronouncement, President Ford reversed his own official’s ruling, saying that not only could Detroit rehire the laid-off workers with money from CETA, but that the Labor Department would have to postpone any phasing out of the 1,200 CETA-paid city workers.
This bipartisan modus operandi was applied repeatedly to sur- mount the obstacles to getting Riverfront built — starting with the financing. Since the development had an estimated price tag of $78 million, Fisher recognized that in the inflationary economy of the mid-1970s the expenditures required for construction would propel rents above an acceptable limit (beginning at roughly between $350 and $450 per month).
Then, too, Fisher wanted the state and the city to have a stake in his project, to have their own commitment to making it work. And so he went to Lansing, where he lobbied for special state legislation that be- came known as “the Max Fisher bill.” Representative WilliamA. Ryan, a Democrat from Detroit, was the prime sponsor of the bill, which gave the Detroit City Council the power to grant twelve-year property tax-exemptions to new housing construction downtown. Fisher hoped the savings would be passed to him and then on to his future tenants. The bill coasted through the Legislature. On January 13, 1977, Governor Milliken, a descendant of the moderate Republican dynas- ty founded by Romney and Fisher in 1962 and a grateful beneficiary of Fisher’s fund-raising expertise, signed the legislation into law. By
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then, Fisher had lost his access to the White House, Carter having un- seated Ford. This was unfortunate for Fisher, since he was now pur- suing federal loans, grants and guarantees —$18.6 million, almost 25 percent of the estimated cost. Young, though, had been an “early rider aboard the Carter train.” During the 1976 presidential race, Fisher told the mayor: “Well, regardless of who becomes president, at least De- troit will still have a friend in the White House.”
That friendship was crucial because in the fall of 1977 Fisher’s proj- ect collided with Elmer C. Binford, the head of the Detroit office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Binford had taken over Detroit’s HUDin 1974, an office that the Detroit Free Press main- tained had “a nationwide reputation for corruption and incompetence.” From 1966 to 1974, FHA mortgage insurance programs administered by the HUD office lost close to $300 million. More than 200 persons, among them HUDemployees, real-estate dealers and contractors, were convicted of fraud. Binford, according to the Free Press, successfully “fought with venal and inept HUD employees, with [Mayor] Young, all nine city councilmen, several superiors in HUDand a small army of shady real-estate operators, mortgage brokers and contractors.” Shortly before Labor Day in 1977, Binford made an inauspicious ca- reer move. Convinced that Fisher’s proposed apartment complex would be a financial disaster, Binford sent evaluation reports to HUD head - quarters in Washington that recommended the agency not participate in the financing, stating that HUD had enough problems in Detroit without getting stuck with another “multimillion-dollar white elephant.” Disturbed by Binford’s evaluation, Fisher phoned Young as the mayor had phoned him the previous year to straighten out the CETA funding for city workers. Young was not only owed favors in the Car- ter White House, but had, according to Fortune magazine “installed a Detroit-made mini-machine within the federal bureaucracy to look out for the city’s interests.... Young [had] also made and kept plenty of old friends around Washington.”
Among Young’s friends was HUD Secretary Patricia Harris Rob- erts. One phone call to her, and on September 4, 1977, Elmer Binford discovered that he had a new job —in Chicago.
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In the spring of 1978, Fisher purchased the riverfront acreage from Komer and the railroad, then formed Riverfront Associates with Al Taubman, each man coming up with $100,000 in seed money. (While Fisher and Taubman owned 93 percent of the venture, they did take in eight minor partners: Robert C. Larson and Richard P. Kughn, officers of the Taubman Company; Gilbert B. Silverman and Irwin T. Holtz- man, owners of the Holtzman and Silverman real estate company; de- veloper David R. Nelson; and Miles Jaffe, one of Fisher’s attorneys and a senior partner in the law firm of Honigman, Miller, Schwartz and Cohn.)
From the 1970s forward, Fisher and Taubman had participated in an assortment of philanthropic and business partnerships. They were equal contributors to the park they donated in their parents’ names to the city of. Jerusalem. In 1975, Taubman —with Fisher, Ford, Herbert Allen, Milton Petrie and Donald Bren backing him —opposed Mobil Oil in a bidding war for the rights to the Irvine Ranch in southern Cal- ifornia. Taubman and company won, paying $337 million for the Or- ange County property. Taubman’s acquisition —what the magazine M Inc. describes as “a nonpareil collection of office and industrial build - ings, apartment complexes, luxury home parcels and 64,000 acres of mostly undeveloped land” — became the largest private real-estate holding in a major U. S. metropolitan area.
“Compared to Riverfront,” says Taubman, “the Irvine deal was easy. All we had to do was line up the partners and the banks [to provide fi - nancing.] We dealt with private individuals, not public agencies.” Fisher agrees. He says: “I never ran into these kinds of roadblocks before. For three years, it was just one fight after another.”
By then, the architectural plans for Riverfront had been finalized. The initial phase, situated on 10 acres, was a twin-towered, 29-sto- ry apartment complex with 604 units, all with a view of the Detroit River. Other amenities included tennis courts on top of the parking garage, a glass-enclosed swimming pool, a seventy-seven-boat mari- na, a health club, a gatehouse with private access, around-the-clock security, a gourmet shop, twenty-four-hour banking and a downtown People Mover that stopped not far from the front door. Opposition to
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the project came in three distinct flavors —environmentalists, govern - ment financiers and, most surprising and disheartening to Fisher, from a vocal activist segment of Detroit’s black community.
The strongest of the environmental groups was the Michigan United Conservation Clubs, which represented 2,00,000 sportsmen. The Con- servation Clubs threatened to block the project in a court fight because construction would restrict public access to the riverfront. Fisher set- tled that dispute by granting unlimited access along a 265-foot strip of the shoreline, while keeping 1,600 feet private. Other groups picked up the environmental flag, one charging that the development would interfere with the flow of the Detroit River’s fish; another group said that the riverfront rat population would be disturbed.
Fisher solved the objections with the levelheaded forbearance for which he was revered. But, off the record, Fisher angrily asked a De- troit journalist: “Can’t those damn fish swim around the shoreline?” He would not even discuss the dislocated rats.
The backdrop to Riverfront was an economy that, starting in 1976, deteriorated day by day. The money market tightened, while Fisher and his partners required more capital. And each new national head- line about Detroit’s economic woes decreased the odds of outside money coming into the city. The New York Times ran several articles on Detroit’s distress. Columnist William Safire inveighed against the trend of Detroit leaders to sacrifice neighborhoods to corporations in order to save thousands of jobs. In a move that was uncharacteris- tic for a man who operated best backstage, Fisher rebutted Detroit’s critics on the op-ed page of The Times. His reply was motivated not solely by team spirit, but also by the realization that stories in the national media would attract the attention of officials in Washington and bankers in NewYork, the very people he was going to ask to help finance Riverfront.
Financially, Fisher saw that the project was doomed without govern- ment support. That meant politics and at the federal level a series of al- phabet headaches: HUD, UDAG (Urban Action Development Grant), UMTA (Urban Mass Transit Administration), GNMA (Government National Mortgage Association) and the FHA (Federal Housing Ad-
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ministration). Fisher bulled ahead, calling every one of his contacts on behalf of the city. For instance, in 1981, when it looked like Riverfront might fall apart because the Reagan administration was holding back on a $5.5-million UMTA grant, Fisher visited Secretary of Transpor- tation Andrew L. Lewis Jr., whom Fisher knew from the Reagan cam- paign, and the grant was forthcoming.
Miles Jaffe, Fisher’s lawyer and a partner in Riverfront, dealt with an unending string of legal and financial matters that arose during the development process. Jaffe says the process was like trying to fit a gi - ant jigsaw puzzle together, except the pieces were animated and would not stay still.
“Forget for the time being getting the pieces to fit,” Jaffe says. “Just on the financial side, between [the threat of] not getting the $5.5-mil - lion UMTAthat we had anticipated and some serious problems we had in financing the construction bonds, the puzzle had changed enough that where before you at least had an objective picture on the puzzle box, you now had a Jackson Pollock. In 1981, a reasonable man would have bet that Riverfront would not get off the ground.
“In late September of 1981,” continues Jaffe, “we picked up mo- mentum. We got our initial FHA [mortgage guarantees]; we paid our fee to GNMA, not on the theory that we were at all close to putting the Riverfront package together — but because the terms of the financ - ing were so good. In other words, it was a bad poker hand, but you couldn’t let 7.5 percent interest rate on forty-year money go down the tubes if there was a shot.”
When Jaffe spoke to Fisher about the dubious wisdom of paying out money that would be lost if the project didn’t fly, Fisher’s curt response was “Miles, if this can be done without breaking me, I want it built.” It was then that Jaffe understood how passionately Fisher felt about completing Riverfront. And the problems continued.
“Almost immediately after we put that package together,” Jaffe says, “a problem came up on the bond side, which really seemed to be unsolvable. The underwriters told us we needed a certain kind of commitment from a rated bank. There aren’t that many rated banks and most didn’t want to provide this service as far as we could see. Finally,
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in the course of looking for someone to provide this rating, we came to Chemical Bank in New York. And Chemical said: ‘We won’t provide the rating, but instead of selling the bonds publicly, why not sell them privately to us, and we won’t require this rating?’”
Chemical’s offer, says Jaffe, was not standard practice. Explaining why Fisher was able to force it through, Jaffe observes: “Political clout helps, but the largest part is that people say, ‘This guy Fisher is for real.’ The thing that allows Fisher to work with someone like Drew Lewis is that his past performance requires that he be taken seriously. So that when you go to Chemical Bank and you’re representing Max Fisher and Al Taubman, you ‘ain’t screwin’around.’They are men who accomplish things. This isn’t some flaky, off-the-wall operation. ‘Build a 600-unit apartment building in Dee-troit?’They don’t say that if you’re represent - ing Max and Al. They try and help you solve the complications.”
The financing required the assistance of two banks, two federal agencies and one city, but after seven years, Fisher got the $77.49 mil- lion he needed to build Riverfront. Developers’ equity accounted for $18 million, along with a pledge to cover cost overruns. HUD and the DOT kicked in $19.69 million — $17.2 million of which was to be repaid over forty years, A construction loan of $39.8 million was ad- ministered by Manufacturers National Bank of Detroit as trustee and funded by a Detroit Downtown Authority bond issue that was bought by Chemical Bank. On completion of construction, the note and mort- gage would be purchased by GNMA—a guarantee that funds would be available to redeem the bonds. The note and mortgage would then be repaid over a forty-year term at a 7.5 percent interest rate, except for a small portion, which would be repaid over twelve years with monies from a city tax abatement.
This tax abatement was estimated to save Riverfront Associates — and cost Detroit — $700,000 per year, a fragment of Riverfront’s budget. Yet when a fight broke out over the abatement, Fisher was tormented by it, because as the brawl was played out in the local me- dia, Fisher’s motives for undertaking Riverfront were assailed, raising again the ugly anxieties of black-versus-white in Detroit, an anxiety that since the 1967 riot Fisher had worked so vigorously to assuage.
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***
In 1977, when Governor Milliken signed the “Max Fisher bill” into law, giving Detroit’s City Council the power to grant twelve-year property tax-exemptions to new, downtown housing construction, it seemed as though Fisher and his partners would only have to wait for the city council to rubberstamp the abatement. But after the council met on April 1, 1979, it was obvious that the approval would be slowed by dissension and belligerence.
At the meeting, Jack Pryor, coordinator of Detroit’s Community and Economic Development Department, informed the council that due to escalating construction costs, the apartments in Fisher’s proposed high-rises would rent from $500 to $600 a month, with some going for as much as $1,000.
Vexed at those projections, council president Erma Henderson set the tone for the meeting by snapping: “I understand rich folks gotta have apartments, too.” Ignoring her implications, Pryor told the coun- cil that Fisher was preparing to request a twelve-year tax abatement from the city, explaining that Fisher “has to make the rents affordable.” “Fascinating,” said Councilman Kenneth V. Cockrel, his voice lined with sarcasm. Then, referring to Fisher, he said: “I never met the broth- er. Let him come before [the] council. We’ll have a look, see what kind of man he is.”
Ken Cockrel would become the spokesman for the portion of De- troit’s black community who opposed Riverfront. He attacked Fisher regularly, along with Taubman and other businessmen whom Cockrel considered white suburban elitists profiteering on the backs of De - troit’s poor blacks.
With the passing of time, Cockrel would mellow. When he died suddenly at the age of fifty on April 25, 1989, civic leaders had been predicting that he would supplant Coleman Young as mayor. He was awash in the upper-middle-class mainstream —a lawyer who was seen on billboards advertising Foster Grant sunglasses, a popular figure waving to friends and admirers as he tooled down Woodward Avenue
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in his black Porsche 944. But in 1979, Cockrel was on the opposite end of the social and political spectrum from Fisher, the two men having reached their respective positions by vastly divergent routes.
In the early 1960s, Ken Cockrel was living with his first wife and son in the Jeffries public-housing project, working nights as a “jump- er” on Detroit News delivery trucks —dropping newspapers at deliv- ery points — and attending classes at Wayne State University during the day. Wearing an Afro hairdo, denim jeans and boots, and toting an olive-drab Army knapsack, Cockrel rose to prominence as a leader among the student radicals on the WSUcampus, winning an impromp- tu debate with black Muslim leader Malcolm X, the start of Cockrel’s lifelong reputation as a pugnacious oratorical opponent.
In 1968, following graduation from law school, Cockrel signed on with what Time magazine dubbed “the hippest and swingingest radical law firm in the country.” The firm represented the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, welfare mothers, rent strikers, White Panthers and Black Panthers —underdogs of every leftist stripe and hue. Cockrel was soon in the headlines, successfully defending sev- eral black clients who had shot white police officers in self-defense. As an attorney, Cockrel was noted for continually putting the white Establishment on trial. In one case he labeled a white Recorder’s Court judge a “lawless, racist, rogue, bandit, thief, pirate, honky dog fool.” In 1977, Cockrel won a seat on the city council by calling for a “progressive, socialist agenda.” Once seated at the council table, Cockrel exercised the same abrasive oratory and scathing wit that had been his trademark in the courtroom.
On October 7, 1979, six months after the council first heard of Fish - er’s plan to request a tax abatement, Cockrel appeared on the front page of The Detroit News decrying the tax breaks as “tools to enhance profit-making potential for millionaires.”
Cockrel said: “I’m not going to charge Mayor Young with being a neo-colonialist puppet. Young did not invent Max Fisher.... The [archi- tect] of these economic strategies [is] ... the Detroit Renaissance, the elites. Coleman works for them.”
Asked if the people and industry of Detroit wouldn’t be worse off if
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such tax breaks were rejected, Cockrel framed his response in racially antagonistic tones.
“I guess you could make the argument,” said Cockrel. “At the time the niggers first resisted slavery, I suspect you could have argued that it didn’t make much sense to resist.... [People] couldn’t see the day slav- ery would be abolished in the United States of America. I’m saying the line has to be drawn somewhere.”
Cockrel was drawing the line along Fisher’s Riverfront. On Sat- urday, the day before his statements appeared in The Detroit News , Cockrel announced that he was sponsoring a petition drive along with the Detroit Alliance for a Rational Economy (DARE) —the political organization that helped him get elected to the council —to block the Riverfront tax break.
Beneath the slogan “Tax Max and his pal, Al!” Cockrel’s petition read: “We, the undersigned citizens of Detroit, urge the Detroit City Council to Vote No! on the proposed 100%, twelve-year tax break for the Riverfront development. Max Fisher, Al Taubman and the other wealthy developers of Riverfront do not need a 100% tax break for twelve years.... [These public monies] will benefit the developers and the wealthy executives and professionals who will rent these luxury apartments. But if they get the tax break, Detroit will get very little from Riverfront. Only fifteen permanent jobs will be created? As homeowners or renters, we pay our property taxes. It is unfair to ask us to subsidize the well-off.”
In public, as in his petition, Cockrel did not spare the us-versus- them rhetoric. In Detroit — as it would in many cities — this tac- tic swiftly divided people into two quarrelsome camps — one black, one white. Over the next two years, Cockrel claimed to have secured 15,000 signatures on his petition, and hundreds of black T-shirts, em- blazoned with the phrase, “Tax Max and his pal, Al!” began appearing around the city.
By 1981, Fisher was impatient with the bureaucratic delays in Wash- ington, but the rhetoric of Cockrel and his supporters hurt him. After all, he had poured a fortune into Riverfront —he was on the hook for $10 million and he knew that amount wouldn’t cover it. He probably
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would lose his entire profit from the sale of the Fisher Building and then some. Had Riverfront been a straight business deal it never would have limped this far. He would have cut his losses and run. And Cock- rel and his supporters were acting as if he were out to fleece the city. Damn it! He was trying to get out of debt. No one could see it; at times, not even Fisher. He owed —God, how he felt he owed Detroit for all of his good fortune, the respect in the business world, the friendship of presidents and prime ministers —and now they would not let him pay his bill.
Worse was the racial hostility. Fisher had gone out on a limb sup- porting civil rights within certain segments of the Republican Party, and later, when black militants were accused of anti-Semitism, he had championed them when speaking to the organized Jewish community. As far back as 1969, when liberal whites who had supported the efforts of Dr. Martin Luther King began to shy away from the rising black power movement, Fisher told The Detroit News Sunday Magazine: “The rise in Negro militancy and anti Semitism does not give Jews any excuse to withdraw from the battle for equal rights and Negro justice. We are in this struggle to stay because it is the struggle of every Ameri- can.... [We] must be ready to respond, to allow the Negro to achieve his self-set goals; and the militancy, the turmoil is good, because it shows that the Negro is himself concerned and involved. The growth of the black power concept is healthy.... I think that through my Jewishness I have a feeling of what [the Negro] wants.”
But, from 1979 until 1981, the sniping about the tax abatement wore on and Fisher resented it. One afternoon, having heard enough, Fisher phoned Mayor Young. “Look,” he said to Young, “if the council thinks this is such a damn good deal for me, if they think I’m going to make so much money, then I’m going to go the hell down there and tell them they’re welcome to buy it for what I’ve invested and the city can make all the profit.”
“Max,” replied Young. “There’s no need to come down. They just want to throw darts at you. Don’t you worry about the council. You leave them to me.”
Miles Jaffe, who by the spring of 1981 was enmeshed in the jigsaw
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puzzle of Riverfront financing, believes that the combination of Fisher on the private side, and Young on the public side, was a good match. “Young may be much more flamboyant than Max,” says Jaffe. “But they are patient men who believe if you don’t get it this year, you’ll get it the next. And neither one of them is distracted by the crowd. They keep their eyes on the ball.” As pragmatists, Fisher and Young felt that it was an indulgence to argue about race, to point a finger and declare a villain. The issue, says Young, was plain and simple: Detroit needed investment. Fisher agrees.
“You make your deal,” says Fisher. “You get the job done.”
Says Young: “There was no room for pie-in-the-sky [debates], be- cause that ain’t where the pie is.”
One of the most adroit mayors who ever steered a political machine, Young rushed into the Riverfront fray, fought Cockrel in the press and cooled the rhetoric in the city. When he was through there was no doubt that the council would approve the tax abatement. As one coun- cil staffer opined a month before the vote: “We all know the council is going to roll over. The question is: How much are they going to wiggle along the way?”
Young directed his people to work the wards, spreading the word that Detroit — and the mayor — had to have Riverfront. Surmount- ing the opposition was not that difficult a chore. Young was not even convinced that Cockrel’s rhetoric was genuine. Asked about it in the summer of 1990, Young said: “[Ken’s rhetoric] was a political ploy to prove how radical he was. I don’t think it had anything to do with a personal animosity toward Max Fisher. And I don’t think [Cockrel] was completely convinced that [Riverfront] was bad [for Detroit].” Bob McCabe, president of Detroit Renaissance, seconds Young’s opinion. “It was politics,” explains McCabe. “You have got to remem- ber that Cockrel was an old socialist — some would say he was a Marxist. He was a city councilman and Max and Al were good targets. And yet he had no animosity toward them. I’d meet Kenny on the streets and we’d kid about it. Besides, because of the things Max has done for Detroit, he is one of the most admired white people in the city’s black community.”
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This is precisely the point that Coleman Young makes when dis- cussing the fight over Riverfront. If Cockrel’s objections were a polit - ical ploy, says Young, then he made a tactical mistake by attempting to focus black resentment on Fisher. Simply put, Cockrel chose the wrong target.
“Max,” says Young, “is not swayed by differences between city and suburb, between black and white. I think his ability to view matters objectively and to express his concern for the poor [and] for the future of the city is responsible for his being regarded in the black community and in Detroit as a friend.”
Fisher was taken aback by Cockrel’s attempt to depict him as a racist come to steal the tax monies of black Detroit. The man who shied away from conflict discovered that he was now the focus of one. However, his greatest concern just then was that his project was in jeopardy. In the spring of 1981, a new administration in Washington threatened to cancel the funding unless the development got under way. Riverfront Associates needed the approval in a hurry. Disregarding the grass-roots support and racial enmity that Cockrel engendered, Fisher decided to go before the council to state his case.
What the press was billing as a showdown between Fisher and Cockrel took place on June 4.
The nine members of the council convened in the Committee-of- the-Whole room on the 13th floor of the City County Building. It is a small, low-ceilinged, brown-carpeted room with rings of tables for the members, guests, the press, and a gallery. Through the windows to the west on this sunny spring day the Detroit River was a burnished ribbon of silver with the pristine skyline of Windsor beyond. The room was packed, the press and council staffers crowding the outer tables. Accompanying Fisher to the session were other representatives of Riv- erfront Associates —Larson and Kughn from the Taubman Company, the lawyer Miles Jaffe and developer Dave Nelson —but the attention soon focused on Fisher and Cockrel. They greeted each other warm- ly and shook hands — “almost like two old pals,” The Detroit News reported. But both men were dressed in their respective uniforms: Cockrel in a “No Tax Break for Riverfront: Tax Max and his Pal, Al!”
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T-shirt; and Fisher in a blue silk suit highlighted by a burgundy silk handkerchief in the breast pocket.
Facing the council, Fisher started by stressing that Riverfront’s future hinged on rapid approval of the tax-abatement plan by the city council. “We’re under a real time constraint because of changes in Washing- ton,” Fisher said. “If we don’t meet the deadline dates, with the change of administration and the cutting-out of so many projects we’re dead.” He paused. Then he said: “It’s almost seven years since we started, and we still have some problems. The cooperation and understanding of the city council is needed to bring this to reality. The city deserves ev- erything we can do for a real renaissance. If we could make the whole riverfront a teeming city with people living on the riverfront, we could have a city in the year 2000 that everyone would be proud of. I’ve had my heart set on this particular project. I’m optimistic about Riverfront and I feel it will stimulate other development in the area. You have to look at what Detroit can be in twenty or thirty years. I’ve worked with many of you before and I trust you will understand my feelings for Detroit and my commitment to it.”
Cockrel stood to respond. Although his greeting to Fisher had been friendly, he began by saying: “We’ve all heard of you, all read about you, what you’ve done for Detroit.” Next he used humor, cracking that he hoped he would be here in the year 2000. Then Cockrel stated: “I have taken a position of opposition to aspects of financing the plan. There would be a general-fund depletion while we are experiencing dire economic times and are on the verge of collapse. Yet, we are still seeing the executive branch come to us with the tax abatement plan. I’m concerned that the city’s general fund will not be sufficient to ex - tend a certain quality of life to its citizens, that its ability to do so will be negatively affected by the tax abatement. I feel the city is at a point fiscally where it can’t afford it. Does it have to be an all-or-noth - ing-at-all proposition? I’m prepared to open the door to see if there is room for compromise. I want to know why Riverfront Associates has to operate on the assumption that they have to have a twelve-year 100 percent tax abatement. There are those who say they don’t want to see that happen in Detroit.”
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Fisher replied: “I understand your concerns. But it depends on whether you look at the short term or the long term. What I’m looking at is ten or twelve years in the short-term history of the city. It is im- portant to attract industry so you’re building a tax base for the future. You have to decide which is best — that or leave the city fallow and not develop it.”
Fisher asked Miles Jaffe to explain the importance of the abate- ment. In effect, Jaffe said that because the FHAwas insuring the mort- gage, they had to be assured that the developers could attract enough tenants so that the rental income would be sufficient to pay off the mortgage. The abatement would have the developers an edge with the FHA; without it, they wouldn’t get the federal funds they had to have to build Riverfront.
There was some more discussion around the room, desultory ques- tions and answers about Riverfront, but the face-off between Fisher and Cockrel, which the press had predicted would be “a knock-down brawl,” was done. The headline in the next day’s Detroit News herald- ed the media’s disappointment: “Cockrel, Fisher ‘row’ fizzles.”
Ken Cockrel voted against the tax break, the only council member to do so. But perhaps as Young said, Cockrel was not truly convinced that Riverfront was bad for Detroit. On July 18, Fisher was going through the mail in his office when he opened a package from Cockrel. The cover letter said: “Dear Max: I enjoyed our repartee during the council session of June 4 so much, I’ve decided to give you the T-shirt off my back. No formal Detroit wardrobe is complete without this basic black thread. As you move toward groundbreaking on the river, I wish you good fortune with the development.”
Enclosed was a T-shirt stenciled with the refrain, “Tax Max and his pal, Al!”
A week later, Fisher replied: “Dear Ken: Sorry that I took the shirt off your back, but I think I’ll keep it as a memento, especially if we can have groundbreaking soon. I enjoy our discussions and am looking forward to seeing you soon.”
The formal opposition to Riverfront was over.
June 15, 1982, was the official groundbreaking for the project. Fish -
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er, Taubman and Young donned hard hats for photographers and turned over the first shovels of Riverfront dirt. Cockrel did not attend, but almost everyone who had a hand in the development did. A brightly striped tent half the size of a football field could not hold all the bank - ers, lawyers, and city, state and federal officials. They heard a speech by Young, who called Taubman “the reluctant dragon,” and said Riv- erfront was what his administration was about. They heard a speech by Taubman, who made it clear that he and Fisher were “going to make [Riverfront] work.” They heard a speech by Fisher, who stuffed a pre- pared text into his jacket as he approached the podium and then spoke earnestly about his “dream,” a dream that he did not elaborate on. Following the ceremony, as Fisher was being driven to the Renais- sance Center, where he and Taubman were hosting a prime rib lun- cheon in the River Room for the tentful of people, he confessed to a guest that he had been afraid of boring his audience. The men in the car were quiet amid the tinted glass, leather and air-conditioning. Fisher was lost in his thoughts. His guest in the backseat remembered an elaboration he had heard of Fisher’s “dream” from someone close enough to have shared Fisher’s private thoughts when he sat late at night staring into the marble fireplace in his garden room. “Riverfront and RenCen,” he said, “were to be Max and Henry’s bookends. It went all the way back to the riots and their vision of a new Detroit. You could look at Detroit from Windsor and see Henry’s RenCen and Coleman’s Joe Louis Arena and Max and Al’s two apart- ment towers and understand the dynamics of Detroit at a glance. Max made a public promise after the riots, after he sold the Fisher Build- ing, to put money back into Detroit. He wasn’t going to be forced off that pledge.”
Fisher broke the silence in the car, picking up the phone cradled next to him in the front seat and calling his office to ask if there were any messages. He hung up and turned to his guest in the back. “You think it went all right?” he asked. “I didn’t talk too long?”
The car glided to a stop outside the Renaissance Center; Fisher stepped out and disappeared inside the RenCen, into a roomful of congratulations.
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He had not talked too long. He had waited for the better part of decade to see his vision rise along the river. By the spring of 1984, the first tower opened to renters; that fall, the second tower opened, and after two years their occupancy remained above 95 percent. In the summer of 1990, ground was broken for a third tower. The project, however, steadily loses money. Between 1978 and 1991, Fisher and Taubman lost more than $30 million. But Riverfront was built. Fisher was discharging his responsibilities, closing circles, paying off his per- sonal obligation to Detroit.
And he still had a decade to go before the year 2000.
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Chapter 19
BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS
DURING THE CARTER administration, Fisher retained his unoffi - cial position as the “dean of American Jewry.” However, since he was a Republican, he lost his access to the Oval Office and was unable to function as an intermediary between Washington and Jerusalem. Al- though gratified by his efforts at Detroit Renaissance and with River - front Associates, Fisher discovered that for him life outside the inner circles of national government was painful.
The extent to which he missed his diplomatic work was underscored on March 26, 1979, a cool spring Monday afternoon, when Max and Marjorie Fisher were among the 1,500 guests at the White House who watched as President Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Begin of Is- rael signed the Arabic, Hebrew and English versions of the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab country —the Camp David accords. That evening, the guests attended a dinner to celebrate the sign- ing. One hundred thirty tables were arrayed beneath an enormous yel- low-striped tent on the South Lawn; Columbia River salmon in aspic, roast beef, spring vegetables, a hazelnut and chocolate mousse, and three wines were served. Marjorie and Max were seated on the outer rim of the dining area, as were all Republicans. Marjorie could not see Carter, Begin and Sadat from behind the worsted wool-and-silk wall of guests. But Max was tall enough to spot them over the crowd —senators, representatives from the House, former and current State Department officials, and prominent members of the American Jew - ish and Arab communities — converging on the center of the tent to congratulate the leaders. Political scientist Steven Spiegel has written that it was the work of the Nixon and Ford administrations that “cre-
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ated the conditions for and initiated a new Arab-Israeli peace process, beginning with a limited settlement.” Fisher agreed with this assertion and was proud of the small part he played in helping to facilitate the disengagements after the Yom Kippur War. But throughout the Camp David process, and now, in this grand hour of triumph, he was forced to sit on the sidelines. The 1980 election was approaching and Fisher —perhaps never more than on that chilly spring evening on the White House lawn —was burning to involve himself again.
While the Fishers watched the crowd, Prime Minister Begin, standing with Carter and Sadat, turned and saw Max above the throng of well wishers. Begin waved for Max to join him. Slowly, the Fishers wended their way toward the prime minister. Begin greeted the Fishers, then in- troduced Max to Carter, saying, “Mr. President, I want you to meet the most important member of your country’s Jewish community.”
As Fisher and Carter shook hands, the president replied: “Yes, I’ve heard of him.”
Begin then introduced the Fishers to Sadat, who was standing with his wife, Jehan. Max shook hands and congratulated the Egyptian lead- er. Marjorie recalls feeling struck by Sadat’s presence, his grace. She wanted to offer more than a perfunctory greeting to a man whom she had come to admire for his courage in pursuit of peace. She uttered the first thing that popped into her head: “All humanity is one entity.” President Sadat smiled. Jehan Sadat asked: “Would you please re- peat what you said, dear?”
Marjorie repeated it and Jehan Sadat thanked her.
The exchange has a tragic footnote. Four years after that evening, the Fishers were in New York City to attend a sixtieth birthday party for Henry Kissinger at the Pierre Hotel. By then, President Sadat was dead —assassinated by Islamic fundamentalists in Nasr City on Octo- ber 6, 1981. As the Fishers began walking from their hotel to Kissing- er’s party, it started to rain. Egypt’s ambassador to the United States, Ashraf A. Ghorbal, offered them a ride. Marjorie hurried into the back- seat of the car. With a sudden shock of recognition, Marjorie realized that the woman sitting next to her was Jehan Sadat. With a sad smile crossing her face, Jehan Sadat said: “All humanity is one entity.”
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***
Almost exactly one year after the Camp David accords were signed, Fisher was in the midst of a presidential campaign. On March 6, it was announced in Washington, D.C., that Fisher and other prominent Republicans were establishing a national draft committee for former President Gerald Ford. Behind Fisher’s decision was that Ford was his closest ally in the ensemble of 1980 presidential hopefuls, and that the present front-runner and winner of the New Hampshire primary, for- mer Governor Ronald Reagan, was aligned with the right wing of the GOP, a conclave in which Fisher was not comfortable.
Ford himself hinted that he would again try for the presidency. Like Fisher, he was not at home with the party’s right wing. During an inter- view at his office in Rancho Mirage, California, Ford, referring to Rea - gan’s conservatism, said that “there is the growing sentiment [in Re- publican circles around the country] that Governor Reagan cannot win the election.” Reagan campaign manager, William J, Casey, suspected that Ford was publicly disparaging Reagan’s chances because he was still angry with Reagan for challenging him for the 1976 nomination. Ford had been an incumbent; Reagan should have waited his turn. His loss to Carter was close and Ford felt that the Reagan challenge had proved to be a pivotal difference.
In the late winter of 1980, though, Ford was reluctant to declare his candidacy since, as political observer Elizabeth Drew wrote, he “was leading what many would consider the good life — Palm Springs, Vail, well-paid speeches, an ample income, respectful treat- ment as a former president ... all [of which] might be spoiled if he actually ran.” But the announcement of the draft committee and Fish- er’s involvement in it caused a stir. Insiders doubted that the Ford committee would have been formed unless the former president had privately consented to run.
Whatever happened on the political front, Fisher, as chairman of the Detroit Renaissance, had his civic duty to consider. He (with the help of his friend, prominent Republican and Detroit industrialist, Robert
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Evans) had been lobbying for two years to bring the 1980 Republi- can National Convention to financially strapped Detroit, while almost no one running the GOP wished to come. Party leaders were eager to avoid Detroit without offending Fisher. They claimed the city was un- safe. This perception was sharpened in January 1980, when Detroit’s police officers threatened a walkout if a pay hike the city clearly could not afford was not granted. In response, Fisher convened several Sun- day-morning meetings in his garden room, and union leaders reached a compromise with Detroit Mayor Coleman Young that would keep them working.
Fisher argued that not only would the business be good for Detroit, but the city’s negative image had been distorted by the press, and the media’s presence during the convention would prove it. Republican leaders were not convinced. In the end, Detroit was selected as the site of the convention because of Fisher’s friendships. Former President Ford recalls hearing the story that Detroit and Dallas finished in a dead heat as host for the 1980 RNC. The balloting was secret, but it was rumored afterward that GOP National Chairman William E. Brock, a close friend of Fisher, cast the deciding vote that brought all those Republicans in their red-and-yellow golf caps to Detroit. After the con- vention ended without incident and everyone agreed that Detroit had been a wonderful host, Brock joked to Fisher that he had spent more than a few “sleepless nights” over his vote, a vote cast chiefly on Fish - er’s word that Republicans would be welcomed in the predominantly African-American, blue-collar city.
Ford’s potential candidacy did not materialize. On April 3, he wrote Fisher to thank him for his $1,000 contribution to the Draft Ford Com- mittee and stated that his “decision not to be a candidate was a terribly difficult one but, all things considered, I believe it was in the best interest of the Republican Party and the nation. I hope you and others under- stand. I will be at the GOPconvention and will play whatever construc- tive role will help the cause of defeating President Carter.” At the bottom of the letter, Ford penned in a postscript: “You always come through. J.” Ford told Fisher that if Reagan were nominated he would campaign for him, but the Reagan organization was skeptical, believing that
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Ford’s resentment about 1976 would keep him off the campaign trail. And they were disturbed about it. Casey biographer, Joseph Persico, cites a memo that Casey sent Reagan in the spring of 1980: “Of all the Republicans,” wrote Casey, “Jerry Ford is the one who can hurt us or help us most.” Casey was troubled by Reagan’s image as a dedicated right-winger — a Barry Goldwater with an arsenal of down-to-earth folksiness and TV-charm. Ford was the quintessential moderate, and Casey wanted him aboard.
Reagan was cognizant of his image. He thought that it was unfair — a holdover from his stance against campus activists when he was governor of California. “I don’t think I had any other choice but to take a strong stand [against the radicals],” says Reagan. “I think those peo- ple were being guided by the Communists. The Communists’ whole purpose was to keep the trouble going. One of their weapons against me was that whole thing of my being a right-wing maniac. This was the word they spread. It was pretty shameless.”
The label stuck, and Casey knew that a more moderate Reagan would be more attractive to voters. Casey contacted Fisher through Theodore Cummings, who was a friend of both Reagan and Fisher. Reagan did not know Fisher well, but, by 1980, he says Fisher’s stat- ure was such that Republican presidents and Republican presidential candidates “inherited him.”
“Max,” says Reagan, “has always been willing to lend his support. It’s very much a part of him, and it’s valuable to those of us who may find ourselves temporarily servants of the people.” Reagan was eager to access Fisher’s contacts and skills, which the former president says, “would have been impossible for me to master.”
In late April, Fisher went to Ted Cummings’s home in Beverly Hills, California. Casey asked him to come upstairs, where Fisher spoke with the candidate and his campaign manager.
“You’re going to need Jerry Ford to win this thing,” Fisher told them, Displaying a flair for understatement, Reagan replied: “I don’t think he’s too friendly.”
Fisher said: “Call him up and talk to him.”
Reagan smiled, saying: “If you think I should, I’ll do it.”
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