“He strikes a hard bargain, but once he makes it, he lives by it.”
– Dallas real estate executive
You’ve probably never heard of him unless you’re involved in the retail shopping-center business or you happened to read the Dallas newspapers on March 4, 1978. The headlines that day exclaimed: “Kidnapping puts man, family in public eye.” The “man” was Herbert Weitzman, and the course of events that day were so horrifying that he hates to talk about them even now.
It was on March 3, 1978 at about 5:40 p.m., while Weitzman was walking from his Henry S. Miller Co. office at 2001 Bryan Tower, that he found himself staring down the barrel of a .38-caliber automatic gun held by a former tenant-a man Weitzman claimed to have met only once or twice. The man, George Anthony Rubino, had leased space from Weitzman in a Grand Prairie shopping center for his small pizza parlor. On this day, he accused Weitzman of being responsible for his financial ruin.
Rubino then ordered the real estate executive into Weitzman’s Cadillac and told him that he had three graves waiting for those involved in a civil suit Rubino had filed against Henry S. Miller Co., 18 months earlier. One of the graves was waiting for Weitzman.
Weitzman had driven for 22 miles at gunpoint when Rubino ordered him to turn off a main highway onto a farm-to-market road. Weitzman decided to make his move. Turning his car toward a ditch, Weitzman jumped from the car as it sped forward at 45 mph. Weitzman’s daily jogging ritual paid off-he ran from the gunman who fired at him twice, but missed. After a frantic foot chase, Weitzman was picked up by a passing motorist who drove him to the Grand Prairie Police Department.
Rubino testified at his criminal trial that Weitzman had represented Henry S. Miller in closing the deal for the rental of the building in 1973. But Rubino said that Weitzman hadn’t told him that another pizza parlor was planning to open near Rubino’s until after Rubino had signed the lease. Rubino’s restaurant went bankrupt after only four months. Rubino also testified that he had sued Henry S. Miller Co. and had received a $20,000 out -of-court settlement, but that the sum was barely enough to cover his legal fees.
Rubino testified that he had abducted Weitz-man to “give him nightmares” and to “kill the poison in me” fostered by more than 15 months of resentment over the sticky real estate deal. In 1978, a jury found Rubino guilty of aggravated kidnapping and sentenced him to 15 years in state prison.
MORE THAN FIVE YEARS have passed since Weitzman’s nightmare. It’s 7 p.m.; the Dallas Central Business District has completed its daily transition from bustle to lifelessness. Office buildings are almost empty, and the downtown traffic has long since spilled onto the freeways. Darkness is only moments away.
But the lights are still burning on the 30th floor of 2001 Bryan Tower. The Henry S. Miller Co. offices are nearly empty, except on the northwest side of the building, where Weitzman is talking to a writer about his life. Weitzman suffers from a common malady of those who sit at the pinnacles of the corporate structure: He won’t be home for dinner.
Yet, as president of Henry S. Miller Co.’s commercial/retail division, Weitzman seems unlike many men who hold the reins of large corporations. He doesn’t seem flattered at all by the fact that someone wants to write an article about him. In fact, the interview with the writer is crammed into the schedule much the same way that any other businessman is who wants to see this busy executive. As Weitzman is being interviewed, it’s obvious that his mind is elsewhere. Between questions, his eyes drop to the Manila folder in his lap. His answers are courteous but disarm-ingly concise.
This 44-year-old, silver-haired Gay Talese look-alike has more important things to do than talk about himself. This particular time, he appears to be thinking about a meeting in the next room with a handful of his associates that’s been scheduled after the interview.
Or he could have been thinking about an upcoming closing on a 1,000-square-foot shopping center lease. Maybe he was pondering the purchase of a $30 million tract of land to build retail space. Perhaps he was even thinking about his plans to negotiate the next broker commission for the company-or for himself.
In his 22 years with the company, Weitzman has brokered deals, leased space and developed centers and retail shops including Preston-Royal, Preston Center, Old Town, Willow Creek, Meadow-Central, Highland Park Village, Turtle Creek Village, Northlake, Gal-leria, Saks Fifth Avenue, Caruth Plaza, Forum 303 Mall, Willow Creek, Plaza of the Americas and Reunion. And that’s only a partial list.
In all, Weitzman’s division at Henry S. Miller has leased or is managing 100 shopping centers representing 10 million square feet in the Dallas area alone, making it among the largest in the country. Although Weitzman is only one among hundreds of commercial real estate brokers in Dallas, he is considered by associates and competitors to be one of the best-if not the best-in the field of leasing, managing and developing shopping centers, particularly smaller “strip centers” or plazas.
His name is far from being a household word to the general public, but he is nationally known in business circles. He has brokered retail deals in the Dallas area for such national franchises as Kentucky Fried Chicken, Burger King, Dunkin’ Donuts, Baskin-Robbins and Pizza Inn.
“He sees a lot of customers, and he makes a lot of calls on clients,” says one real estate executive who has dealt frequently with Weitz-man. “He has boundless energy and has the rare ability to concentrate intensely on his work.”
“He’s a fierce competitor and is as good as anybody in the business,” says Rob Farrell, retail partner in charge of Trammell Crow’s Dallas-Fort Worth shopping center division. “I have nothing but respect for Herb and his energy level. I really can’t say a negative thing about him.”
“He’s a great guy,” says Dallas developer Harlan Crow. “He is one of the hardest workers I’ve ever seen. I guess he’s got quite a reputation as being a very savvy guy.”In addition to his position at Henry S. Miller Co., Weitzman is also executive vice president of the company and sits on its board of directors. He currently is president of the Dallas Ballet and serves on the Chicago Title Ad-visory Board.
WEITZMAN FIRST joined Henry S. Miller Co. in 1961, fresh out of college with a degree in finance and real estate from the University of Texas at Austin. At that time, the entire sales force at Henry S. Miller consisted of eight salesmen. (Today, the company employs about 1,300 people.)
He admits to starting back then with a “small man’s mentality” and claims that he was a little scared during his first year as a salesman with the company. “I’m an athlete. I played basketball at UT, and I was used to having butterflies before a game,” he says. “But in this real estate business, I experienced butterflies the whole first year. I think from the very start all salesmen deal with a little bit of insecurity.”
Weitzman was born in Dallas and graduated from Highland Park High School in 1957. He claims he inherited his ability to sell from his mother, who, with his father, owned a dry-goods store at Ross and Hall streets while he was growing up. “My mother was a strong salesperson. I remember very clearly that nobody ever left the store without buying something. My dad dabbled in real estate then. He owned some rent houses in the area, and I can remember developing an interest in real estate at about age 11 or 12.”
One of Weitzman’s first challenges at Henry S. Miller came shortly after he joined the company and was chosen to head a new farm-and-ranch division. Since then, he has seen the real estate industry in Dallas go full circle. “That was a time when [anything] past Royal Lane was considered the growth area of the city,” Weitzman says. “It was also a time when there were only about 18,000 people in Garland. In those days, land was not sold on soft terms; it was nearly all cash.”
A few years later, Weitzman ventured into other real estate areas, including income, retail and industrial properties. In 1964, he developed a name for himself when he began bringing Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises to the Dallas area. Since then, he has brought 110 such franchises to New Orleans and towns all over Texas.
Weitzman says that he goes about his real estate deals much like any broker would. He starts with research, which includes aerial photos of a tract of land, and meticulously researches bond-plan growth and utility growth. Hard work is his trademark. “I never had a day that I felt I was finished,” Weitzman says. “You make your own luck. I do a lot of driving, a lot of research, and I try to learn what a client needs and why he needs it.”
Weitzman says he is most proud of a project he nurtured earlier in his career: the Marsh-Forest center in North Dallas. “That was a million-dollar sale, and that was a big deal back then,” Weitzman says. His most exciting deal was the development of Sakowitz Village Shopping Center in Addison, he says.
“There are lots of Herbie stories,” Farrell says. “One story I’ve continually heard is that his schedule is so tight that his junior real estate executives have to visit him on the jogging track to talk with him. The story goes that each of them gets a quarter-mile to jog with him to discuss business. When one finishes, another takes a lap with him. That’s supposedly all the time he has to spend with each.”
“He’s an absolutely fierce competitor,” says Carter Shillig, Dallas resident manager of Coldwell Banker. “He’s probably the most aggressive guy around. He is everywhere.” Shillig recently went head-to-head with Weitzman for an 18-acre tract of land in Denton that Cold-well Banker wanted to develop as a shopping center. “He outbid us for four acres on the corner, and he got control of the corner. We bought 14 acres behind the corner and he had us pin-tied. It was brutal, and he just wouldn’t give up. Luckily, through a prior recorded deed, we discovered that we had one acre on the corner, so we traded out an acre to resolve that dispute. He knows how to play the strategy side of the game. I’d have to say he’s probably the most knowledgeable guy in the Southwest as far as shopping-center retail.”
But it takes more than hard work to command a six-figure salary, which in Weitzman’s case is probably closer to seven figures than five. “He’s probably the most successful shopping-center developer locally, and at the same time, one of the most successful brokers in the state of Texas,” says Dallas attorney Jim Wallenstein, a business associate and friend of Weitzman’s for the past 12 years. “He’s certainly a very hard worker. But he is unusually perceptive as to what is important in a transaction.”
A number of businessmen around town have been known to complain that Weitzman may have given them a raw deal, but enemies in the real estate business are inevitable, Wallenstein says. “He’s a very tough businessman. He’s very strong-willed. He strikes a hard bargain, but once he makes it, he lives by it. He is a tough negotiator and actually enjoys the negotiation process as much as anybody I’ve ever seen. It’s hard to out-negotiate him because he has an amazing recall of comparables. He can tell you prices and rents within a mile of the deal he’s negotiating.
“But once he shakes your hand, he sticks to his word. There have been numerous times when I’ve suggested to him that something should be put in writing, and he’ll tell me he’s already agreed not to do such and such, so don’t put it in the contract.”
What most amazes Wallenstein about Weitz-man is the fact that even with his rigorous schedule, he is still very close to his wife and two daughters. “It’s amazing that a man who moves that fast and hard can have such a strong family relationship,” Wallenstein says.
Weitzman believes that in Dallas-a city that is very pro-growth-it takes an aggressive attitude to excel. “This is a very aggressive market,” he says. “You have to be very aggressive and carve out your own piece. Being tough is a virtue, but being fair is also a virtue. I’ve always prided myself that there was never a deal I’ve made that has caused me to do something extreme or something unethical. That’s important because this is a business that relies heavily on repeats.”
Weitzman says there have been times when he has come out of negotiations as the loser. What he has learned from those experiences, he says, is to negotiate his brokerage fee or commission first and then talk about other business. “There have been times I’ve been taken advantage of terribly.”
That statement raises eyebrows when repeated to those who have worked with him. “I can’t even imagine a situation in which Herb Weitzman was taken advantage of,” says one real estate executive.
“In Dallas, there is a spirit and work ethic that separates us from other areas of the country,” Weitzman says. “If I had it to do all over again, I’d do it the same way. I can’t think of another city I’d rather live in than Dallas.
“When I look back, I guess I made all theright choices. I mean, when I graduated fromcollege, I interviewed with a few firms, and allof them were from five- to eight-men firms. Ipicked Henry S. Miller Co. and had a chanceto watch it grow. Those other firms still haveonly a few men, so I guess I made the rightchoice.”
