Page 460 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
My second-most favorite moment in all of this? It came in mid- November of 1984, immediately after my team had finished closing a six-week transaction relating to office buildings that were possibly in the path of the expected “Big Dig” in Boston (and therefore might be subject to condemnation, usually an academic concern but here, as con- demnation would significantly affect the economics of a shelter, a very real, and therefore complicating, concern). It was a transaction during which I had spent at least six nights catching only one or two hours of sleep at the Drake Hotel, next door to our offices, or on the couch in my office. At that moment, when all of the attorneys were exhausted and relieved that the end had come, an Integrated executive surprised us by walking into our coffee-cup-strewn conference room (we thought to compliment us on our efforts) and announcing that, as a special reward for work well done, we would now have the opportunity to structure, purchase, and finance the entire Minneapolis City Center, which con- sisted of, among other things, two major office buildings, a shopping center, and a hotel. And that transaction had to close by midnight on December 31, six weeks hence. Happy New Year! (I got a hard hat for that one also.)
But what was, pray tell, my favorite moment? Oh, that happened in November 1985, when I received a phone call from Integrated telling me that the U.S. Treasury had just proposed regulations that, if imple- mented, would have a severely deleterious effect on prospective tax shelter syndications and that, accordingly, I should “turn off the meter” and send home the fourteen-attorney team that was three weeks into its work relating to the acquisition and packaging of a vast amount of prop- erty on Muhammad Ali Boulevard in Louisville, Kentucky.11 (No hard hat that time, but I could handle it.)
11. Those proposed regulations were the precursor to the Tax Reform Act of 1985, which was to devastate real estate values and contribute to the downturn that would lead to the demise of Coronet, which is discussed in Chapter Twenty-Seven, and the Savings and Loan Crisis, which is described in Chapter Twenty-Nine—and was responsible for my career in Washington, D.C.
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