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HATTIE: Wait a
minute. You sold your house in New York and...
MARC: Borrowed
family money. My partner at the time, my brother-in-law, borrowed from his
mother the money to open this restaurant. We negotiated with somebody who's now
a very dear, dear friend of mine, and the reason that the building came for
sale was he had had three restaurants in here before, and he was tired of
people going broke, stealing all of his equipment, etc., etc. I convinced him
that this building needed to be sold.
I was selling Fords
down the street, and I used to eat lunch here. And I knew this was an
incredible location. And I knew the reason it wasn't working was not because of
its location. So--and it had been closed for a year when we started negotiating
the sale. We put every nickel he had and I had together into buying this
building. I think a lot of the growth here has been because it's mine. And I'm
willing to constantly upgrade my own property.
HATTIE: Right. So
it's a control--a managing of the bottom line by owning the
location.
MARC: Right. We
own two office buildings within walking distance of Katz's, and they were
bought for parking for Katz's.
HATTIE: But you
also lease the space to other people.
MARC: Well, what
the heck. As long as it's there, the property is there, the doors have locks,
there's people in there. But the primary concern we have is, the type of tenant
we look for is somebody that's not going to use a lot of parking.
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