Building upon the Glazer legacy
Rick Glazer was a boy, a rather uncertain boy, when one day years ago he climbed onto a bus to go to summer camp.
Glazer was alone. He was freighted with the idea of going to camp, of being away from all that he knew. Then he spotted someone he knew.
It changed his life, in a way.
"I wanted someone to sit with and I saw Dan (Goldstein) and I knew him," Glazer said. "He said yes. It made a difference to me."
It was a defining moment in what has become a lifelong friendship and a business relationship. It has gained added significance because of the sudden and tragic deaths last month of Rick's father and mother, Larry and Jane Glazer. They died Sept. 5 in the crash of their private plane off the coast of Jamaica.
Larry Glazer was the managing partner at Buckingham Properties, one of the most active and successful commercial real estate companies in Rochester and, indeed, all of upstate New York. The property development and management firm controls between 10 million and 12 million square feet of real estate, including a multitude of downtown properties — notably the Midtown, Xerox and Bausch + Lomb towers. The Center City properties alone have a combined assessed value of $91 million.
At the helm, Larry Glazer was the company's guiding light, its voice to the public, and one of its voices in the offices he shared with sons Rick and Ken, both of whom are executives at Buckingham and are fast friends. "We've been close our whole lives," Rick said.
At those meetings, too, was Goldstein, the kid on the bus who, a long time ago, invited another kid to sit down next to him. He is a CPA who came aboard Buckingham in 2001 at Larry's urging; he distinguished himself and rose to partner in 2007.
Last week, in their first interview since the crash, the two Glazer sons and Goldstein sat down for an extended discussion about the health of the company, its future, its structure and how all that fits around the sadness and confusion that the Glazer family felt — and continues to feel.
What they and others described is a company on solid footing, with a full slate of development projects well in hand, its relationship with lenders and development partners unshaken and an experienced team still intact and growing.
"The future for Buckingham is very similar to what it was," Ken Glazer said. "Things are actually in much better position than people might expect."
Buckingham's structure has been changed to fill the void Larry Glazer left. At the time of his passing, there were four partners — Larry, Ken and Rick Glazer and Goldstein.
The three remain, and in the interview they said that Ken Glazer, an architect by training and fully involved in the company's many Rochester projects, would be the new managing partner. His prior role as development director will be filled by Peter Buckley, who is coming over from Pike Development and starts work on Monday.
Ken Glazer, who looks more than a little like his father, will be the voice of the company in public, with all that entails. He was a natural choice for the role, the three said during the interview.
"He's lived these projects with Larry," Goldstein said. "Larry was instrumental in setting them up, but he would pass along the day-to-day work to Ken, in many cases."
"Larry was a deal maker," Ken Glazer said. "He was amazing at that and we are working hard to fill the void."
The partners said that the groundwork Larry Glazer did over the years, with the banks, with other lenders, with tenants, with the city and towns, served the company well after his death.
The banks — M&T in particular, they said — stayed the course. No one called in a loan or even demanded that the company defend its capacity to succeed in Larry Glazer's absence. The projects are in good shape, they knew, and the company was careful about lining up its finances with its initiatives.
And many knew that Larry Glazer was paving the way for his own voluntary retreat from some of the ordinary duties of the firm.
"We've actually been working on the structure and succession for several years," Goldstein said. "Larry was almost 69, and he wanted to prepare Buckingham for the future."
He described a "team mentality," with himself and the Glazer brothers working quietly behind the scenes but slowly being eased into more visible roles.
Over at City Hall, theirs are familiar faces, said Kate Washington, deputy commissioner for neighborhood and business development. The Buckingham team met with city staff recently and "really, everybody who was at the table were players we all know," she said.
"Ken has been very much involved in the entire process, all the meetings I have been involved in ... (and) we are moving forward, as planned."
Talk to those in the development community, and the sentiment is not uncertainty — many refer to what the team internally refers to as "bench strength" — but more of a respectful pause and eager anticipation.
"We have already had relationships (with the partners)," said Heidi Zimmer-Meyer, president of Rochester Downtown Development Corp. "My concern now is to give them the time and the space to reshape the company the way they need to. There is a lot of grief involved. ... They have managed this very well. This has not been easy, and it is not like they can stop everything. They had so much in motion."
The plane went down on a Friday afternoon. The next Monday morning, Ken Glazer was at the Midtown site "right there, front and center," said Bob Morgan, the Glazers' partner on that and surrounding projects.
In Morgan's last conversation with Larry Glazer, the two talked about Bausch + Lomb tower and prospective tenants. After the crash, a large, prospective office tenant asked for a meeting with the Glazer sons and Goldstein. They knew Larry Glazer best. They met, then called later in the day and signed a lease last week.
But as Zimmer-Meyer noted, this hasn't been easy.
"I have good days, and bad," Rick Glazer said.
The family has questions about the plane and its performance, or lack of same. The brothers spoke of not wanting to dwell on those uncertainties as they pursue answers. Work has helped, keeping busy. And they spoke about telling their own children about their grandparents' deaths. Both sons have young children.
"We told them right away," Rick Glazer said. They are bearing up, the sons said. "They miss their grandma and grandpa."
Those are the private moments. There also are the public ones. They recalled with appreciation the memorial service and many kind words said and written.
"It was a rough start because of the situation, where we had sort of a delay in properly grieving. We weren't sure how to," Ken Glazer said, talking of a period being in limbo, noting the memorial service was almost 10 days after the crash. "Do you get up? Do you go to work? Do you not?
"But once that sort of passed, I felt we could begin the process of getting on with our life."
That includes planning and negotiations for developing the rest of Midtown (the development team has a letter of intent from a company for an 11-screen movie theater) and the next phase of Alexander Park, bringing residential and office space to the old Genesee Hospital site in 2015. The vision is unchanging, they said — it's the discussions that will be missed.
In recent years, the company has developed into a full-fledged third-party property management firm. On the development side, the immediate focus is getting those projects further along. Buckingham is profitable, not in need of new acquisitions and, as Ken Glazer explained: "We're not actively looking as aggressively as he (Larry Glazer) was."
The partners described their approach to new ventures as "selectively opportunistic," which was very much Larry Glazer's idea about the real estate business. He was particularly good, friends and business partners have said, at assessing the future of a particular property, how it could be fixed or redone to attract tenants, how, in his mind, a run-down or suspect building could be transformed.
That skill, too, Larry sought to pass on to his sons and to Goldstein. Ken Glazer remembers when, as a small boy, he would put on a hard hat and go with his father to a project site. Possibilities seemed to come out of the crumbling brick and broken windows and into Larry's vision. Being on a site tour, or in a conference room, where Larry Glazer could connect quickly and become fast friends with other project leaders is where Goldstein said he feels Glazer's absence most acutely.
"It was hard for me," he said of his recent, and first solo trip that took him to a property in Michigan. "I had to try and fill that void."
In the development partnerships Larry Glazer formed, there is a respect — even affection — those partners like Morgan had for him and now his successors. Goldstein and the brothers point to that when making the case that Buckingham Properties is secure.
"My dealings were just with Larry," Morgan said, going on to recount promises he made to Mayor Lovely Warren to carry out his friend and partner's vision and to express a confidence in the younger son who now must fill those shoes. "I think he will step into that role in time. I think we are all going to step into that role. ... It is kind of a learning curve for everybody."
Mid-conversation, Morgan's cellphone rings. It's after 5, and the caller ID shows it's Ken Glazer. There's work to be done.
TTOBIN@DemocratandChronicle.com
BDSHARP@DemocratandChronicle.com
Major projects
The Tower at Midtown
A $59 million project now under construction. Windows were delivered last week. Said development partner Bob Morgan: "We are going full throttle right now." The Tower, promising 179 modern apartments and three floors of retail/commercial space, is expected to open in late 2015.
Alexander Park
The $14 million next phase of redevelopment of the eight-acre former Genesee Hospital site will renovate the "center wing" for apartments, office and retail. Construction is expected begin in 2015.
Edge of the Wedge
A $5 million redevelopment of three connected buildings nearing completion at 739 S. Clinton Ave. The Cub Room restaurant and other tenants already have begun moving in. There is lower-floor retail and office use, 30 loft and one-bedroom apartments on the upper levels and a rooftop deck.
Bausch + Lomb
Another joint Glazer-Morgan project, the 20-story tower is about half-empty but the team is in the process of signing new tenants. Closed on purchase of the tower earlier this year.