Photo by Michael McWeeney Francis Greenburger is an American real estate developer, literary agent, author, philanthropist, and activist. As the founder, CEO, and chairman of Time Equities Inc., he oversees a multibillion-dollar real estate firm that owns, manages, and develops a portfolio of properties in the US, Caribbean, Canada, and Europe. Greenburger is also the chairman of Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, a literary agency founded by his father, representing authors such as Dan Brown and Brad Thor. A long-standing supporter of the arts, he established Art Omi International Arts Center, a nonprofit residency and sculpture park in upstate New York for international visual artists, writers, dancers, musicians, and architects. Most recently, he founded The Greenburger Justice Center, which advocates for reforms to the criminal and civil justice and mental health systems.

Rebecca Paley is a New York Times number one best-selling author of memoirs and other books—including her first collaboration with Francis Greenburger, Risk Game. Her work has also appeared in publications including The New York Times, Mother Jones, and ARTnews. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and children.   

Towering Plans, Winter 2015

“Mankind has a fascination with big towers: They have been built as monuments for winning wars and, in modern day, by corporations. They symbolize accomplishment. People now will pay a lot to live at the top of a building. I’m not saying that it is not nice up there—it’s different. Maybe I’m biased because I live on the seventh floor.” —Helmut Jahn, 1000M Architect

I arrived at the Jewelers Building in February 2015 for a meeting with Helmut Jahn. The ornate turrets, cupola, and terra-cotta edifice of the historic building facing the Chicago River provided a stark juxtaposition to the minimalism of the starchitect’s third-floor office.

Almost as soon as we came to an agreement with the bank to option 1000 South Michigan, it became apparent that this was an opportunity to build a skyscraper on the lot. But did we want to? My company, Time Equities, was still finishing up construction on another tall tower: 50 West, a 64-story, 778-foot residential condo tower overlooking the Hudson River at the southern tip of Manhattan.

The glorious building, designed by Helmut, had its own harrowing journey. We had just poured the concrete for its massive foundation in 2008 when the global recession brought the entire project to a screeching and unexpected halt. At that time, I had to decide whether to abandon the building or ride out the financial crisis with a massive tarp and an even bigger monthly mortgage payment on the property until the world recovered. I have a strong stomach for risk, but this had mine in knots. However, we rode it out, and by the time I was in Chicago meeting with Helmut on this new project, sales for apartments in 50 West were robust, and it was scheduled for completion in 2016.

Before I started working with Helmut on 50 West, I had been warned that he could be “difficult.” I’m not sure I would expect anything less from the German-born architect who moved to Chicago in 1966 to study under the great modernist Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Although he never graduated, he found a permanent home in Chicago, designing some of the city’s most iconic buildings, from the Xerox Center—with its curved-aluminum and glass exterior that was a marvel back in 1978—to the United Airlines terminal “of tomorrow” at O’Hare airport, famous for its walkway filled with a neon light sculpture that moves to music.

Helmut’s works—such as the University of Chicago’s Mansueto Library where the books, kept in subbasements, rise through an automated retrieval system to be enjoyed in the glass-domed reading room—were audacious, and so was he. An avid sportsman who drove a Porsche Carrera, he was a competitive sailboat racer. He kept a model of his sloop Flash Gordon, one of several boats he owned, in the window of his office. “Difficult,” however, was not my experience with Helmut. Like all successful architects, Helmut had a strong ego and clear vision. But he was an extraordinarily keen listener while we worked on 50 West. He made it his practice to present his evolving ideas to me constantly while soliciting additional feedback. In Helmut, I found someone relentless in his desire to improve his work. Just like the sailboat racer he was, he was always willing to reset and trim the sails of his boat, in search of a perfect connection with the wind.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that February day at Helmut’s office when walking into the conference room I was greeted with drawings of forty-plus schemes covering the walls. On closer inspection I could see that each “final drawing” had up to ten different drawings pinned underneath its final iteration. For our meeting on the “massing of the building”—an architectural term referring to the general shape and size of the structure or how it will look as a form against the skyline—Helmut and his team had prepared multiple configurations and variations for idea. As one looked from drawing to drawing, one could see Helmut pushing himself to reinvent his ideas, innovate, and find another, better way to express them. While there were multiple schemes and approaches, each drawing clearly conveyed his vision. Helmut had a phrase he muttered often: “We can always improve.”

It took probably fifty different models in Helmut’s office, many hundred more drawings, and several months, but eventually we finally settled on one scheme for the massing. To maximize lake and park views and the total available square footage for apartments, the tower was essentially a 285-foot high base (to mimic the building immediately to its north) with three-stacked cubes that cantilevered out at an angle. Structural glass instead of metal was a way of reducing the boundary between the interior of the condos—including everything from studios to a full-floor, 10,500-square-foot penthouse—and the great vast expanse of Lake Michigan and its shoreline.

On October 29, 2015, almost four months after we came to an agreement with the bank to buy 1000 South Michigan, we presented our plan for a 1,300-foot tower at a packed public meeting held less than a block away from the site. We were asking to go a whopping 575 feet over the zoning limit for the historic Michigan Avenue Boulevard district.

The property came with about 900,000 square feet of buildable footage. But with a height limit of 425 feet, the same volume configured differently would give us a very fat, wide, and short building. And that’s no longer what people want residential towers to be. Low, wide buildings are efficient but not sexy. They result in deep, dark apartments. People want to be higher in the air where the views are better. Well, most people.

But the question remained: would the zoning board approve of such a drastic change to the neighborhood’s rules around height?

Photo by Michael McWeeney Francis Greenburger is an American real estate developer, literary agent, author, philanthropist, and activist. As the founder, CEO, and chairman of Time Equities Inc., he oversees a multibillion-dollar real estate firm that owns, manages, and develops a portfolio of properties in the US, Caribbean, Canada, and Europe. Greenburger is also the chairman of Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, a literary agency founded by his father, representing authors such as Dan Brown and Brad Thor. A long-standing supporter of the arts, he established Art Omi International Arts Center, a nonprofit residency and sculpture park in upstate New York for international visual artists, writers, dancers, musicians, and architects. Most recently, he founded The Greenburger Justice Center, which advocates for reforms to the criminal and civil justice and mental health systems.

Rebecca Paley is a New York Times number one best-selling author of memoirs and other books—including her first collaboration with Francis Greenburger, Risk Game. Her work has also appeared in publications including The New York Times, Mother Jones, and ARTnews. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and children.   

Towering Plans, Winter 2015

“Mankind has a fascination with big towers: They have been built as monuments for winning wars and, in modern day, by corporations. They symbolize accomplishment. People now will pay a lot to live at the top of a building. I’m not saying that it is not nice up there—it’s different. Maybe I’m biased because I live on the seventh floor.” —Helmut Jahn, 1000M Architect

I arrived at the Jewelers Building in February 2015 for a meeting with Helmut Jahn. The ornate turrets, cupola, and terra-cotta edifice of the historic building facing the Chicago River provided a stark juxtaposition to the minimalism of the starchitect’s third-floor office.

Almost as soon as we came to an agreement with the bank to option 1000 South Michigan, it became apparent that this was an opportunity to build a skyscraper on the lot. But did we want to? My company, Time Equities, was still finishing up construction on another tall tower: 50 West, a 64-story, 778-foot residential condo tower overlooking the Hudson River at the southern tip of Manhattan.

The glorious building, designed by Helmut, had its own harrowing journey. We had just poured the concrete for its massive foundation in 2008 when the global recession brought the entire project to a screeching and unexpected halt. At that time, I had to decide whether to abandon the building or ride out the financial crisis with a massive tarp and an even bigger monthly mortgage payment on the property until the world recovered. I have a strong stomach for risk, but this had mine in knots. However, we rode it out, and by the time I was in Chicago meeting with Helmut on this new project, sales for apartments in 50 West were robust, and it was scheduled for completion in 2016.

Before I started working with Helmut on 50 West, I had been warned that he could be “difficult.” I’m not sure I would expect anything less from the German-born architect who moved to Chicago in 1966 to study under the great modernist Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Although he never graduated, he found a permanent home in Chicago, designing some of the city’s most iconic buildings, from the Xerox Center—with its curved-aluminum and glass exterior that was a marvel back in 1978—to the United Airlines terminal “of tomorrow” at O’Hare airport, famous for its walkway filled with a neon light sculpture that moves to music.

Helmut’s works—such as the University of Chicago’s Mansueto Library where the books, kept in subbasements, rise through an automated retrieval system to be enjoyed in the glass-domed reading room—were audacious, and so was he. An avid sportsman who drove a Porsche Carrera, he was a competitive sailboat racer. He kept a model of his sloop Flash Gordon, one of several boats he owned, in the window of his office. “Difficult,” however, was not my experience with Helmut. Like all successful architects, Helmut had a strong ego and clear vision. But he was an extraordinarily keen listener while we worked on 50 West. He made it his practice to present his evolving ideas to me constantly while soliciting additional feedback. In Helmut, I found someone relentless in his desire to improve his work. Just like the sailboat racer he was, he was always willing to reset and trim the sails of his boat, in search of a perfect connection with the wind.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that February day at Helmut’s office when walking into the conference room I was greeted with drawings of forty-plus schemes covering the walls. On closer inspection I could see that each “final drawing” had up to ten different drawings pinned underneath its final iteration. For our meeting on the “massing of the building”—an architectural term referring to the general shape and size of the structure or how it will look as a form against the skyline—Helmut and his team had prepared multiple configurations and variations for idea. As one looked from drawing to drawing, one could see Helmut pushing himself to reinvent his ideas, innovate, and find another, better way to express them. While there were multiple schemes and approaches, each drawing clearly conveyed his vision. Helmut had a phrase he muttered often: “We can always improve.”

It took probably fifty different models in Helmut’s office, many hundred more drawings, and several months, but eventually we finally settled on one scheme for the massing. To maximize lake and park views and the total available square footage for apartments, the tower was essentially a 285-foot high base (to mimic the building immediately to its north) with three-stacked cubes that cantilevered out at an angle. Structural glass instead of metal was a way of reducing the boundary between the interior of the condos—including everything from studios to a full-floor, 10,500-square-foot penthouse—and the great vast expanse of Lake Michigan and its shoreline.

On October 29, 2015, almost four months after we came to an agreement with the bank to buy 1000 South Michigan, we presented our plan for a 1,300-foot tower at a packed public meeting held less than a block away from the site. We were asking to go a whopping 575 feet over the zoning limit for the historic Michigan Avenue Boulevard district.

The property came with about 900,000 square feet of buildable footage. But with a height limit of 425 feet, the same volume configured differently would give us a very fat, wide, and short building. And that’s no longer what people want residential towers to be. Low, wide buildings are efficient but not sexy. They result in deep, dark apartments. People want to be higher in the air where the views are better. Well, most people.

But the question remained: would the zoning board approve of such a drastic change to the neighborhood’s rules around height?