from Dallas - MMY, the Real Estate Guru
svambhu
[webpage includes classic old photo of Maharishi]
The Real Estate Guru
The mysterious Maharishi Mahesh Yogi sites atop a $3.3 billion empire
that includes the Hotel Santa Fe, a piece of Dallas history at the
corner of Mockingbird Lane and Central Expressway. He sold the hotel
to help fund his quest for world peace. Then, when the value of that
land skyrocketed, the Maharishi changed his mind.
by Jimmy Fowler
NOT LONG AGO, A FRIEND OF MINE WAS between opportunities and needed a
place to stay for a few weeks while she hunted for more permanent
lodging. I'll call her Lisa. Lisa is a puppeteer and an actress and a
singer. She saw a small ad in the back of the Dallas Observer that
offered "hotel living at apartment prices" and decided to give it a
try. The ad turned out to be for the Hotel Santa Fe, that dilapidated,
slightly sinister-looking, entirely drab building that sits on the
corner of Mockingbird Lane and Central Expressway. One day Lisa called
and said, "You've gotta come see this place."
I did, and together we toured her temporary home. Walking through the
flora-filled lobby and into long, dim hallways, I half-expected to see
Jack Nicholson shambling toward me with an axe. The halls were
scrupulously clean, utterly empty. They would have been silent save
for the creepy lounge piano music piped in through unseen speakers.
The bottom floor housed a bridal gown/tuxedo store. The lights inside
were on well past midnight, and through the windows men could be seen
standing around, apparently doing nothing. In a janitorial alcove, we
spotted a clear blue, industrial-sized garbage bag filled with what
looked like empty prescription bottles without labels. Far back in the
building, a darker corridor lacked the lounge music but smelled of
urine and marijuana.
We never encountered any blood-filled elevators, but the place was
definitely eerie—especially knowing how far the hotel has fallen since
its halcyon days, 30 years ago, when cocktails, live jazz, and good
times filled the legendary nightclub Harper's Corner, up on the 10th
floor. It was the nexus of Dallas nightlife. The slouching, dejected
posture of the Hotel Santa Fe belies not only its fabulous past, but
also the bizarre and protracted legal battles that raged behind the
scenes until just this May over who, exactly, owns the building and
where, precisely, the old Trader Vic's tiki statue went.
It all goes back to a diminutive old Indian man named Maharishi Mahesh
Yogi. The Maharishi lives in a borderless country of his own creation
in the Netherlands. It is the Maharishi who owns the Hotel Santa Fe.
And it is the Maharishi who will ultimately decide what happens at the
corner of Mockingbird and Central, a 5-acre piece of real estate that
figures prominently into his plan to achieve world peace through
transcendental meditation and "yogic flying."
The Swinging '70s
HEADLINES IN BOTH THE DALLAS TIMES HERALD and Dallas Morning News
touted the opening of the 396-room Dallas Hilton Inn in 1967. It was
one of the fanciest and most expensive hotels the city had ever seen.
Bob Hope, John Wayne, Lucille Ball, and Elvis Presley—a scant nine
months before his death—all booked rooms there in the late '60s and
'70s. For hometown bon vivants, the private club Harper's Corner was
where it was at.
"You've got to understand," says Tony Zoppi, who for 20 years was the
"Dallas After Dark" columnist for the Herald . "Nowhere else in the
city could you get a view of the downtown skyline like they had at
Harper's." The place, he says, was "sophisticated and fun, relaxed and
swinging." A maitre d' greeted guests at the entrance, and a small
dance floor had a spectacular downtown view framed by burgundy,
tasseled curtains.
Shortly after the hotel opened, the national chain of upscale
restaurant-clubs known as Trader Vic's opened downstairs, throwing up
its trademark tiki statue in front of the building. With interior
décor that looked like it had been swiped from a production of South
Pacific , Trader Vic's soon eclipsed Harper's as a celebrity magnet.
In the early '80s you could catch Priscilla Davis in there,
squandering the pitiful settlement she'd won against Cullen Davis on
vodka martinis. Or maybe you'd see Tony Dorsett surrounded by female
admirers.
But it couldn't last forever. Bigger, better hotels were built
downtown to accommodate the burgeoning convention business. Dallas
nightlife migrated into Deep Ellum and the West End. And by 1988,
Harper's Corner and Trader Vic's had closed their doors. By then, the
Hilton Inn had also pulled out of the premises. An independent
operation tried to make a go of it, replacing the "n" on the hotel's
sign, but the cost-conscious Hiltop Inn never quite enjoyed the
success of its predecessor. By the early '90s, the building began to
take on a seedy look and seedier reputation.
Then, in 1993, an international real estate player with big money and
even bigger plans stepped in and bought the place for a reported $2
million.
The Man With the Plan
MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI IS NOT, OF COURSE, famous for being a real
estate wheeler-dealer—although his organization does own property
around the world. He gained some notoriety in the mid-'50s, when he
began to spread the gospel of Transcendental Meditation in the United
States. His association with the Beatles and their 1967 visit to the
Maharishi's ashram in Rishikesh, India, brought him real celebrity
status. George Harrison's song "My Sweet Lord" is purportedly about
him. Mia Farrow and Marianne Faithfull came to learn TM from him. The
Beach Boys invited the Maharishi to co-headline a 1968 U.S. tour in
which he stoked the crowds with Indian chants and calls for world
peace.
TM probably hit its peak of popularity in the '70s, but it continues
to be controversial, even among devotees of Eastern meditative
practices. Detailed instructions for TM have never been published; it
can only be taught by a licensed practitioner over the course of four
training sessions. In simple terms, though, the meditator sits
cross-legged twice a day for 20 minutes and repeats his personalized
mantra, which his instructor bestows on him. The average cost to learn
the TM method runs around $2,500.
The Maharishi's meditative methods are part of his larger vision for
the order of the universe, an obtuse mixture of philosophy and physics
he has dubbed Vedic Science, which teaches that people are basic
elements of a collective consciousness in the same way that atoms
compose the material world. War and other human discord result when
people fail to heed the natural law of harmony that atoms obey when
they form, for example, a chair or a tree or a mountain.
In 1973, the Maharishi established the Maharishi University of
Management in Fairfield, Iowa, to teach Vedic Science. Today about
1,500 people practice TM yogic flying there every day, which resembles
cross-legged hopping. Yogic flying, if practiced widely enough, is
supposed to organize and harmonize people into the natural rhythms of
physics. Indeed, the Maharishi claims that if the square root of 1
percent of a given population follows his TM methods, coherence will
be achieved and crime rates will drop. For the United States, that
works out to about 1,707 yogic flyers.
Gauging the number of TM followers in recent years is difficult. In
the 1996 presidential election, 113,670 people voted for John Hagelin,
the candidate of the Maharishi's Natural Law Party. Throughout the
last decade, operating from his self-created "borderless country" in
the Netherlands, the octogenarian Maharishi and his people have been
actively trying to create new centers for the TM philosophy in major
American cities. That's where the Hotel Santa Fe comes in.
When the Maharishi School of Vedic Science bought the place in 1993,
the only thing that remained from its glory days as the Hilton was the
large tiki statue. Inside, ceilings leaked and walls were cracked. The
property was stuck in foreclosure. The Maharishi's spokespeople at the
time declared they would transform the building into a center for TM,
using its rooms as a student dorm. But, as one instructor at the
school (who asked not to be identified) said, "Interest among the
larger public waned." She found herself giving free introductory
lectures to anywhere from one person to 50 people a month—with no
guarantee that anyone would pay for training.
The Maharishi School of Vedic Science retained offices on the second
floor and sublet the hotel to Heaven On Earth Inns Inc., a for-profit
subsidiary under the umbrella of the Maharishi School of Vedic
Science. The Hotel Santa Fe hung out its shingle to the general
public—offering nightly, weekly, and monthly rates. Over the years,
the ballrooms have been rented out for quinceñeras, bar mitzvahs, and
small conventions, but the Hotel Santa Fe never generated huge
revenues.
So in 1997, when Olympus Real Estate (then an affiliate of Tom Hicks'
firm Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst) offered to buy the property for
reportedly about $3.5 million, the School of Vedic Science decided to
cut its losses and sell. Contracts were signed. It should have been a
simple deal. But almost six years later, Olympus and the School of
Vedic Science were still fighting in court over who owned the hotel.
The sour deal shows that the Maharishi won't let his quest for world
peace stop him from making a buck.
How to Get Ahead in Real Estate
EVEN THOUGH OLYMPUS HAD A SIGNED CONtract, it soon learned that the
School of Vedic Science was in no hurry to leave the building. Between
1997 and 1998, the year Olympus sued to force the Maharishi to sell,
the school got three deadline extensions for closing its operation.
One of the contract stipulations was that the school use "commercially
reasonable means" to terminate all subleases before Olympus took over
the property. The school claimed that Heaven On Earth was having
problems coaxing one of its subletters, Ashoka Investment and
Management Services, out of the building. Hence the request for
extensions. Olympus reps didn't think much of it, because, as one of
their lawyers later claimed in court, "The Maharishi had induced
Olympus to believe it would close the deal."
By 1998, however, facts on the ground had changed. By then, the Dallas
commercial real estate world was atwitter about plans for the piece of
property just north of the Hotel Santa Fe. Denver-based Simpson
Property Group wanted to build something called Mockingbird Station
that would include restaurants, bars, retail, an art-house cinema, and
lofts. Construction would coincide with construction of a new DART
station right beside it. A major transit stop and an upscale
development can do wonders to neighboring property values. According
to the Dallas Central Appraisal District, the value of the Hotel Santa
Fe property shot from $2.9 million in 1999 to $8.6 million in 2001,
the year Mockingbird Station started leasing.
Contacted shortly before the suit was settled in May, Olympus general
partner David Deniger would only say, "We are simply using the legal
methods at our disposal to get the other party to follow through on
the contract they signed." He did tell GlobeSt.com, "This has been the
strangest real estate transaction I've ever been involved in." And,
rather curiously, he told the Morning News that the Maharishi's people
were "not commercially minded."
But that's exactly what they are. Simultaneous to the Olympus lawsuit,
the Maharishi was showing just how commercially minded he was in a
hotly contested deal with the state of Texas. In 2000, the Maharishi
Global Development Fund paid $39 million for 329 acres of pastureland
in The Colony, alongside Hwy. 121 and Plano Parkway, and announced
much-publicized plans to construct thereon the world's tallest
skyscraper. No blueprints for the building ever materialized, and the
project was rejected. Then the Maharishi's people said they wanted to
build an office-retail park to be called Global Centre. The Colony,
desperate for commercial development, granted a zoning change, thereby
increasing the value of the land—whether it was ever developed or not.
Along came the Texas Department of Transportation, needing 21 acres of
that land to widen Hwy. 121. The TDT said it was worth $5 million; the
Maharishi wanted $27 million.
"They wanted a helluva lot more than that land was worth," says an
official in the Freeway Managements division of the TDT. "They were
allegedly going to build some kind of Disneyland, but you can't price
it like that when there's just a bunch of cows out there."
The Maharishi eventually worked out a deal with the state for $14
million. But it might not be over yet. It was learned that a
consulting firm co-owned by the former mayor of The Colony made
millions of dollars helping the Maharishi group get top dollar in its
right-of-way dispute with the state. Dr. Bill Manning was reportedly
investigated by the FBI for marketing the land to the fund while
offering possible tax breaks and other incentives for building on it.
The FBI would neither confirm nor deny an investigation on Manning
occurred.
As for the Hotel Santa Fe, Olympus didn't fare any better than the
state of Texas. The case went to the Fifth District Court of Appeals,
which said the agreement lacked a strict component of Texas contract
law—something called "mutuality of obligation." Because Olympus could
pull out of the deal at any time if the contract terms weren't met,
that meant the Maharishi could pull out, too. Olympus appealed to the
Texas Supreme Court, which denied a petition for review of the case in
May. The lawsuit is essentially dead; the Maharishi can now sell to
whomever he wants. The original asking price of $3.5 million has now
gone up to $20 million.
The Mystery of the Missing Tiki
THE MAHARISHI ISN'T JUST COMMERCIALLY minded when it comes to cases
involving state agencies and millions of dollars. As one Dallas
businessman learned, the Maharishi's lawyers will play hardball over
just a few thousand.
Whenever Joe Hunt drove by the Hiltop Inn, it reminded him of his
childhood. "When the family had a reason to celebrate, my dad took us
to Trader Vic's," says the financial consultant. "And whenever it was
a really special celebration, we'd go to Harper's in the penthouse."
When the sign that read "Hotel Santa Fe" went up, Hunt figured new
management had arrived. For the right price, maybe they would part
with that old tiki statue out front. His initial calls and letters to
ask if the statue was for sale went unanswered. But in 2000 he met
with then-employee Karen Cattabiani. Hunt says she told him the hotel
was interested in unloading the statue. He offered $1,600 for it, and
Cattabiani said she'd get back to him. When she did, she told him the
hotel wanted $2,400 for the Dallas landmark. They reached a
compromise, but money would never change hands.
Cattabiani abruptly backed out of their agreement. She stopped
returning Hunt's phone calls; the hotel refused certified letters.
Hunt hired a lawyer and took the Hotel Santa Fe to small claims court
to force them to sell the statue. Oddly, the Hotel Santa Fe's lawyers
never showed up for their court date, and Judge Albert C. Cercone
awarded Hunt the tiki. Accompanied by two constables, Hunt went to the
hotel on a weekday morning, had a crane lift the 14-foot statue off
its pedestal, and carted it off in his truck to a friend's warehouse
in Ennis.
And then what Hunt calls "a shell game" happened. The Maharishi School
of Vedic Science—remember, the owner of the hotel—countersued for the
return of the totem. Hunt's original suit named "Hotel Santa Fe" as
the defendant. The Maharishi's lawyers said that the hotel's name was
only that, a name, and that any alleged deal he'd worked out with
Cattabiani was meaningless. She was an employee of Heaven on Earth
Inns, which didn't even own the building or the statue out front. And
the owners wanted the tiki returned. After spending more than $12,000
in legal fees and more than a year in court, Hunt gave up and revealed
the location of the statue. A representative of the Maharishi School
of Vedic Science picked it up in May.
"I sued the Hotel Santa Fe because that was the public face of the
company," Hunt says, disbelief still in his voice. "But there's
something like six different companies in that building. They keep
offices together, they share employees, and they're claiming not one
person from hotel management mentioned to the Vedic School that there
was a lawsuit over the missing tiki?"
Hunt pauses for a second and then says, "You know something? The whole
time we were in court, I never saw a single person who identified
themself as a representative of the Vedic School."
So What About Peace on Earth?
THE MAHARISHI SCHOOL OF VEDIC SCIENCE considers the tiki case closed
and the question of who owns the Hotel Santa Fe answered, so no
additional comment is offered. Finding anyone at all in the TM
movement who will comment on the hotel's future is not an easy task.
The only person I could find who would talk on the record was David
Humphreys, the general manager of the Hotel Santa Fe and a
self-proclaimed "representative of the Maharishi School of Vedic
Science." He's been working at the hotel since the Maharishi bought
it. Speaking in a measured, blissful voice shared by most of the TM
people I spoke with, he's happy to dispel rumors: management does not
allow any illegal activities in the building, including drug use or
prostitution. He does admit that single women are not placed in the
back wing of the hotel, where, he says, "our longtime residents are,"
but he says that's simply because it's so far from the lobby. It's a
general safety consideration. "Nothing has happened, and we want to
keep it that way," he says.
Humphreys confirms that the Hotel Santa Fe property is now on the
market for $20 million, which some people say is far more than it's
worth. The money, Humphreys says, is needed to finance a plan that the
Maharishi announced last year. The plan entails building about 300
"peace palaces" across the country and thousands more around the
world.
"I will establish groups of experts in this Vedic knowledge in every
country," the Maharishi said in a July 2002 statement. "They will
practice transcendental meditation, its advanced techniques, and yogic
flying, and create peace—not by words or speeches—but by enlivening
the deepest level of nature's functioning, which is total natural law,
the will of God, and radiating the light of coherence throughout the
world."
The peace palaces must be built under strict guidelines. The buildings
must face east, be composed of nontoxic materials, and allow as much
natural light and ventilation inside as possible. Three palaces
already exist, in Bethesda, Maryland; Lexington, Kentucky; and
Fairfield, Iowa, home of the Maharishi International University. (Not
far from Fairfield is Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa, which was
incorporated in 2001. In Vedic City, the several hundred residents use
their own form of money, called raam; one raam is equal to 10 euros.)
As to why the TM movement desires another building in Dallas when the
Hotel Santa Fe didn't exactly prosper as a meditation center,
Humphreys refers me to yet another person—this one significantly
closer to the man at the top.
Benjamin Feldman first returns my call in the middle of night. When we
finally speak in person, he identifies himself as "finance minister
for the Global Country of World Peace, A Country Without Borders." He
calls from the village of Vlodrop, in Holland, where the Maharishi
lives. He also speaks in a polite, serene tone, although with an
indeterminate accent that makes him sound a little like Bela Lugosi.
No, Feldman says, the Maharishi is not available for phoners. "He
studies night and day the ancient Vedic laws," he says. "It's a
process that's been evolving for the past 50 years and has culminated
in the place we are now." But the Maharishi does give weekly Internet
presentations and global press conferences to his disciples. Feldman
confirms that the Maharishi is very much involved in the international
dealings of the TM movement. For example, he helped create the design
for the peace palaces.
"The peace palaces are desperately needed right now," he says. "The
world situation demands a coherent, peaceful influence. The peace
palaces are places from which we may affect the collective
consciousness."
To affect the collective consciousness, the TM people are working
diligently to sell the property they own that doesn't fit the
Maharishi's specifications. The three largest properties they hope to
sell in the United States are the Hotel Santa Fe, the remaining 300
acres beside Hwy. 121 (for which they're asking $100 million), and the
Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, on the market for $35 million.
Altogether, some estimates put the Maharishi's holdings at about $3.3
billion.
That leaves the future of the Hotel Santa Fe uncertain. If and when it
sells, it would seem destined for the wrecking ball. Despite its
history, the building isn't old enough to be considered for historic
preservation. But David Humphreys, who a colleague says knows "the
physical building better than anyone," thinks there's a good chance
the building will stand. The structure is sound, he claims, and
complicated zoning laws could make any new construction a thorny
issue.
So maybe a new owner will step in and return the Hotel Santa Fe to its
swinging status. A party place may not sound as impressive as a peace
palace, but it will likely be a lot more profitable. And profit is
something the Maharishi appreciates.
Jimmy Fowler contributes regularly to D and Fort Worth Weekly .
Dan
>MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI IS NOT, OF COURSE, famous for being a real
>estate wheeler-dealer—although his organization does own property
>around the world.
Another interesting bit about MMY's Jyotish chart.
As I mentioned earlier, Mars is very dominant in his chart. It's
exalted in the first house and very strongly defines his character.
The two indicators of real estate in a Jyotish chart are Mars and the
fourth house. As I just said, Mars is exalted and in the first house,
a good indicator for real estate. And Mars fully aspects the fourth
house, further strengthening the trend. Now we need to look at fourth
lord. The fourth lord is exalted and in the first house, another
excellent indicator for real estate. (You may have noted that the
fourth lord in MMY's chart is Mars.) On top of all that, the benefic
planet Jupiter is situated in the fourth house.
Dan
Kurt
> http://www.dmagazine.com//article.asp?articleid=583
> [webpage includes classic old photo of Maharishi]
>
>
> The Real Estate Guru
The thing that pisses me off about this article is that it never
mentions that I was the lawyer that won the case. :-) It is not a
very accurate article, but news reports of court cases are never
accurate, so it is not surprising.
Kurt
Lawson English
"Kurt" <k...@airmail.net> wrote in message
news:e9137fcc.03090...@posting.google.com...
Howabout some corrections from your perspective, if that is allowable?
Kurt
That would at least be in bad taste. I can't imagine any client
wanting me to get into detail about their business. My representation
on the case is a matter of public record, so I didn't figure that
would be a problem. The Court of Appeals opinion -- the only opinion
that addresses the merits -- is also public record.
http://www.5thcoa.courts.state.tx.us/cgi-bin/as_web.exe?c05_02.ask+D+10139691
It is a very narrow opinion, so it doesn't tell the whole story,
either.
Kurt