Wednesday
The argument is raging in F&T's Nanjing office. The meeting was called to nail down the questions of how much space to give the hotel, how upscale to make it, and which architectural plan to go with. But broader tensions have boiled up. Meyer and Catherine can't seem to agree on anything, and the discussion becomes heated, until almost everyone is shouting angrily, and Hsu and a few others seem on the verge of tears.
This is when Lee seems to suddenly come to life with a smile, drawing a stunned silence. "I've heard what you all have to say," he says patiently, as if he has been presiding over an orderly discussion. "Now, let me show you something."
He stands up, grabs a marker, and heads over to a large whiteboard on the wall behind him. He starts to draw boxes with labels: hotel, condos, retail, construction companies, this bank, that investor. He connects the boxes with arrows and labels the arrows with large dollar figures. And he explains, box by box and arrow by arrow, how a combination of investments, loans, government breaks, and delayed contractor payments will keep the project afloat for several months, just long enough for the company to start preselling and preleasing condos, offices, and retail space to keep enough money coming in to continue with the construction. Each phase of the construction will then bring in new investments, loans, and revenue. Lee's diagrams cover the last section of the board as he explains how the project will be completed and making money in two years.
Everyone has been watching silently, jaws agape. The meeting suddenly erupts in nearly hilarious enthusiasm. They're back in business. As for the vexing questions about which path to follow on the project design, Lee points out they don't have to choose—they can simply fuse the two different schemes, sticking with the basics of the original plan but incorporating into it modifications based on the second plan. It strikes everyone as a perfect, and now even obvious, solution. The meeting has evolved into a celebration.
No one seems to resent the fact that Lee could have saved everyone chest pains by simply explaining his scheme earlier. "Michael is comfortable with conflict; he even encourages it sometimes," Meyer tells me. "He sees it leading to resolution and better understanding. The angrier people become, the more he learns from it."
Over steaks flecked with actual gold leaf, we are told the building was constructed in four years, and the fact that the global financial crisis played out in the middle of the project didn't slow it by a day.
Later, I ask Lee about his interest in letting his team fight things out. He smiles and tells me that I'm really in luck—Deputy Mayor Lu Bing has agreed to my request to be interviewed over dinner, a request I don't recall making. A bit later, Lee, Meyer, Hsu, two other F&T executives, and I show up at a luxurious chateau plunked down on a vast, magnificent estate of rolling hills. I'm seated next to Lu at yet another sumptuous banquet-hall feast and directed to publicly interview him, which I do. After the interview, when most of the others seem preoccupied with a round of nonstop toasting, I notice that Lee has pulled Lu to a corner of the hall and is having an animated discussion with him. Apparently, there are official reasons for dinner meetings, and then there are the real reasons.
Thursday
As we're checking out of the hotel, and I'm preparing to head to the airport, Meyer gets a call—there's a government-run real estate development group that wants to discuss prebuying the office tower. We rush to meet executives from this group at its latest project, an 89-floor tower that's the seventh-tallest building in the world. It's not open to the public yet, and we're among the first to get a tour. Over steaks flecked with actual gold leaf, served in an exquisite restaurant within the 445-room hotel that takes up the top half of the tower, we are told that the building was constructed in four years, and the fact that the global financial crisis and the bursting of the real estate bubble played out right in the middle of the project didn't slow it by a day. An executive from one of the U.S. investment banks involved in Lee's project shows up. But I never hear any real business discussed. In fact, Lee soon has the executives talking about family, and photographs come out.
When we leave, Lee seems pleased with how things have gone. "You see?" he says to me. "Here, you need friends."
Postscript
Shortly after Lee's visit to Nanjing, in a widely televised ceremony attended by Chinese government officials and various luminaries of the Chinese business world, ground is broken on Lee's project. It is not moving as quickly as Lee originally hoped, but it is on track to open in 2015.
The Flushing Commons project has been approved by the New York City Council. Lee needs additional financing to move ahead with it and is negotiating a deal with sources in China.
