Page 535 - WhyAsInY

CroWninG aCHieveMent: Harvey, tHe General Counsel
Q: You did leave, though. Why?
A: It was a combination of factors, as I’ve outlined: I was concerned
about Norman. I was concerned about Fred. I was worried that they might do, or might have done, something improper and that in some way I would be drawn into the problem and tarred by it. And I had come to the conclusion that real problems lay ahead.
Q: And was there a last straw of any type?
A: In December of 1990, a new senior executive came aboard.
Q: Why did that concern you?
A: I realized that the new executive, whom Norman sent to ask me to
take a salary cut along with everyone else (which I alone refused to do), was none other than the Fort Lee Bagman!
Q: Is there a postscript?
Postscript
I left Coronet that day, without hesitation or remorse. It was not the fact of the request that got to me as much as it was the identity of the person who delivered it. And the fact that Norman himself didn’t deliver the request. The request to take a cut (which was actually not large in con- text) might well have been something that I, a “team player,” would gladly accept in an enterprise in which I believed. But my faith had been eroded.
It was not the real estate market per se that got me, and I didn’t know then about the full extent of the troubles in the co-op properties. Cycles of boom and bust are the norm in real estate (as we saw again in 2008 and had certainly seen before); working to defend property in dan- ger is hardly as exhilarating as developing new property—changing the face of the globe, so to speak—but it is an enterprise that requires not
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