The Return Of The Native

 

"I'm a believer in building up the area in which you were raised, in which you made your fortune," Arthur Imperatore declares. And, if all goes according to plan, so he shall. But it won't be a shopping mall in Sheboygan. Imperatore happens to have been raised near the Palisades, a prominent cliff on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, across from Manhattan. He remembers climbing there as a seven-year-old, looking out over the penn Central (then called New York Central) railroad yards to alien skyscrapers. Now, more than 50 years later, he has made his fortune and is climbing again. This time it is to picture what structures he plans to place on the 342 dreary acres of weeds, rotting wharves, abandoned buildings, and decaying railroad ties that he recently bought.

A sports arena? A high-rise? No, sir; anyone could do that. For Imperatore, the "building up" will result in nothing less than a whole new city. As his associates at A-P-A Transport Corp. in North Bergen, N.J., well know (see INC., April 1982, page 66), Arthur thinks big.

Just how big, few have dared imagine. Imperatore's municipality -- sometimes referred to as West Manhattan, until a permanent name is chosen -- is to cost some $3.5 billion. The project will ultimately contain 10 million square feet of office and commercial space, 15,000 residential units, parks (one. modeled on Venice's St. Mark's Square), museums, restaurants, shops, an aquarium, and an opera house. A ferry service will connect West Manhattan with midtown Manhattan, whisking residents in four mintures to what by then will be its sister city. The project is expected to take as long as 40 years to complete.

Imperatore is already busy preparing for the stint. One of his first acts was to have the site cleaned. Then he assembled a stable of 20 architects, land-planning experts, and other consultants, and visited more than 25 cities in the United States, as well as several foreign countries, studying waterfront developments. The two companies originally set up to carry the load -- Romulus Development Corp., which owns the land, and Remus Realty Corp., a development company -- suggest the direction of his thinking. Moreover, if he can find room on the site, he intends to construct an Imperatore version of Copenhagen's Tivoli gardens.

West Manhattan is no pipe dream; it is about to happen. "We went through the fantasy stage," says Imperatore, "dreaming about what we wanted to do there, and then we went through the discovery stage, the team-building stage, and now we're in the regulatory-compliance stage." He estimates that he will break ground in less than two years, and will complete the first phase, which will include a major hotel and a 750-foot "celebratory" tower based on a Leonardo Da Vinci design, within seven years.

Imperatore got the land in typical Imperatore manner -- decisively. One Friday evening in 1981, he found out the railroad properties were up for sale. By Monday, he had scheduled a meeting with Penn Central. At that meeting, during 20 minutes of no-nonsense negotiations, Imperatore whittled an asking price of $14 million down to $7.5 million; although that is a far cry from the baubles and beads that "East" Manhattan cost, he paid it in cash. "The reason Penn Central was willing to sell to me was because I'm something of a folk hero," Imperatore observes with rightful pride. "I'd made my fortune in a very tough business, and I'd made it clean as a whistle."

West Manhattan is not one man's desire to build a monument to himself. It is simply an acknowledgment that Imperatore cannot manage A-P-A forever. "It really started," he explains, "with the death of my brother Arnold in a helicopter crash in 1975. I began to think about succession, about the need to create a second generation of leadership."

Much of what Imperatore has already accomplished may seem ostentatious, bigger-than-life, more than is really required. His truck terminals, for example, are meticulously landscaped and kept immaculately clean: his office is a faithful recreation of a seventeenth-century drawing room; his drivers enjoy a company gym and all-expense-paid vacations. Yet none of it is excessive: It is the product of a particular type of pragmatism. Imperatore does what makes things and people work, in a way that pleases him.

The idea of West Manhattan happens to please him. "Hell, I belong here," Imperatore says. "This is my home."