Page 626 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
Dempsey. Squire had many offices, nationally and internationally, and was rapidly expanding. Better yet, it was famed for its municipal-bond practice, which worked closely with its large real estate department, a good fit for me. Best of all, it had an office on Park Avenue, just north of Grand Central.
Before we got to Park Avenue, however, we had some more travel- ing to do. Charles and I and one other member of Charles’s crew first went to Squire’s very impressive home office, which, I am pleased to recount, was in an office building from which you could see the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. It was “déjà vu all over again”: after the pleasantries, I nursed the usual cup of coffee, also served on the usual china, and sat with the usual serious expression on my face for what seemed like a full half hour while Charles, for not the first time, enumerated clients and transactions that he termed current and prospective “on three conti- nents.” This time I was not impressed. Charles’s speech had been fine when he made it in Atlanta, Washington, and New York, but now it seemed hollow to me. The prospective deals and the roster of clients were the same, but it had been more than two years since the last such conversation, and as far as I could see, little or nothing of what Charles was again describing had materialized. In the short run, this was not a big problem for me: we needed a home. But it didn’t bode well for the long run. I was reasonably impressed by the Squire leadership, but, for the same reason—the need for a home—that was not as important to me this time.
Within weeks, I was a partner in Squire Sanders & Dempsey—with an office on Park Avenue.
But that experience was short-lived.
Actually, it lived a little more than a year. As it turned out, Charles’s work was almost nowhere to be seen. I did, however, become deeply involved in (1) the structuring and attempted—but failed—implemen- tation of a proposed municipal bond financing of an arena to be built in Dade County, Florida, to house both the Miami Heat of the NBA and the Florida Panthers of the NHL (hockey in Florida?); (2) the drafting
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