NOT LONG AGO, A FRIEND OF MINE WAS between opportunities and needed a place to stay for a few weeks while she hunted for more permanent lodging. I’ll call her Lisa. Lisa is a puppeteer and an actress and a singer. She saw a small ad in the back of the Dallas Observer that offered “hotel living at apartment prices” and decided to give it a try. The ad turned out to be for the Hotel Santa Fe, that dilapidated, slightly sinister-looking, entirely drab building that sits on the corner of Mockingbird Lane and Central Expressway. One day Lisa called and said, “You’ve gotta come see this place.”
I did, and together we toured her temporary home. Walking through the flora-filled lobby and into long, dim hallways, I half-expected to see Jack Nicholson shambling toward me with an axe. The halls were scrupulously clean, utterly empty. They would have been silent save for the creepy lounge piano music piped in through unseen speakers. The bottom floor housed a bridal gown/tuxedo store. The lights inside were on well past midnight, and through the windows men could be seen standing around, apparently doing nothing. In a janitorial alcove, we spotted a clear blue, industrial-sized garbage bag filled with what looked like empty prescription bottles without labels. Far back in the building, a darker corridor lacked the lounge music but smelled of urine and marijuana.
We never encountered any blood-filled elevators, but the place was definitely eerie—especially knowing how far the hotel has fallen since its halcyon days, 30 years ago, when cocktails, live jazz, and good times filled the legendary nightclub Harper’s Corner, up on the 10th floor. It was the nexus of Dallas nightlife. The slouching, dejected posture of the Hotel Santa Fe belies not only its fabulous past, but also the bizarre and protracted legal battles that raged behind the scenes until just this May over who, exactly, owns the building and where, precisely, the old Trader Vic’s tiki statue went.
It all goes back to a diminutive old Indian man named Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The Maharishi lives in a borderless country of his own creation in the Netherlands. It is the Maharishi who owns the Hotel Santa Fe. And it is the Maharishi who will ultimately decide what happens at the corner of Mockingbird and Central, a 5-acre piece of real estate that figures prominently into his plan to achieve world peace through transcendental meditation and “yogic flying.”
The Swinging ’70s
HEADLINES IN BOTH THE DALLAS TIMES HERALD and Dallas Morning News touted the opening of the 396-room Dallas Hilton Inn in 1967. It was one of the fanciest and most expensive hotels the city had ever seen. Bob Hope, John Wayne, Lucille Ball, and Elvis Presley—a scant nine months before his death—all booked rooms there in the late ’60s and ’70s. For hometown bon vivants, the private club Harper’s Corner was where it was at.
“You’ve got to understand,” says Tony Zoppi, who for 20 years was the “Dallas After Dark” columnist for the Herald. “Nowhere else in the city could you get a view of the downtown skyline like they had at Harper’s.” The place, he says, was “sophisticated and fun, relaxed and swinging.” A maitre d’ greeted guests at the entrance, and a small dance floor had a spectacular downtown view framed by burgundy, tasseled curtains.
Shortly after the hotel opened, the national chain of upscale restaurant-clubs known as Trader Vic’s opened downstairs, throwing up its trademark tiki statue in front of the building. With interior décor that looked like it had been swiped from a production of South Pacific, Trader Vic’s soon eclipsed Harper’s as a celebrity magnet. In the early ’80s you could catch Priscilla Davis in there, squandering the pitiful settlement she’d won against Cullen Davis on vodka martinis. Or maybe you’d see Tony Dorsett surrounded by female admirers.
But it couldn’t last forever. Bigger, better hotels were built downtown to accommodate the burgeoning convention business. Dallas nightlife migrated into Deep Ellum and the West End. And by 1988, Harper’s Corner and Trader Vic’s had closed their doors. By then, the Hilton Inn had also pulled out of the premises. An independent operation tried to make a go of it, replacing the “n” on the hotel’s sign, but the cost-conscious Hiltop Inn never quite enjoyed the success of its predecessor. By the early ’90s, the building began to take on a seedy look and seedier reputation.
Then, in 1993, an international real estate player with big money and even bigger plans stepped in and bought the place for a reported $2 million.
The Man With the Plan
MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI IS NOT, OF COURSE, famous for being a real estate wheeler-dealer—although his organization does own property around the world. He gained some notoriety in the mid-’50s, when he began to spread the gospel of Transcendental Meditation in the United States. His association with the Beatles and their 1967 visit to the Maharishi’s ashram in Rishikesh, India, brought him real celebrity status. George Harrison’s song “My Sweet Lord” is purportedly about him. Mia Farrow and Marianne Faithfull came to learn TM from him. The Beach Boys invited the Maharishi to co-headline a 1968 U.S. tour in which he stoked the crowds with Indian chants and calls for world peace.
TM probably hit its peak of popularity in the ’70s, but it continues to be controversial, even among devotees of Eastern meditative practices. Detailed instructions for TM have never been published; it can only be taught by a licensed practitioner over the course of four training sessions. In simple terms, though, the meditator sits cross-legged twice a day for 20 minutes and repeats his personalized mantra, which his instructor bestows on him. The average cost to learn the TM method runs around $2,500.
The Maharishi’s meditative methods are part of his larger vision for the order of the universe, an obtuse mixture of philosophy and physics he has dubbed Vedic Science, which teaches that people are basic elements of a collective consciousness in the same way that atoms compose the material world. War and other human discord result when people fail to heed the natural law of harmony that atoms obey when they form, for example, a chair or a tree or a mountain.
In 1973, the Maharishi established the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, to teach Vedic Science. Today about 1,500 people practice TM yogic flying there every day, which resembles cross-legged hopping. Yogic flying, if practiced widely enough, is supposed to organize and harmonize people into the natural rhythms of physics. Indeed, the Maharishi claims that if the square root of 1 percent of a given population follows his TM methods, coherence will be achieved and crime rates will drop. For the United States, that works out to about 1,707 yogic flyers.
Gauging the number of TM followers in recent years is difficult. In the 1996 presidential election, 113,670 people voted for John Hagelin, the candidate of the Maharishi’s Natural Law Party. Throughout the last decade, operating from his self-created “borderless country” in the Netherlands, the octogenarian Maharishi and his people have been actively trying to create new centers for the TM philosophy in major American cities. That’s where the Hotel Santa Fe comes in.
When the Maharishi School of Vedic Science bought the place in 1993, the only thing that remained from its glory days as the Hilton was the large tiki statue. Inside, ceilings leaked and walls were cracked. The property was stuck in foreclosure. The Maharishi’s spokespeople at the time declared they would transform the building into a center for TM, using its rooms as a student dorm. But, as one instructor at the school (who asked not to be identified) said, “Interest among the larger public waned.” She found herself giving free introductory lectures to anywhere from one person to 50 people a month—with no guarantee that anyone would pay for training.
The Maharishi School of Vedic Science retained offices on the second floor and sublet the hotel to Heaven On Earth Inns Inc., a for-profit subsidiary under the umbrella of the Maharishi School of Vedic Science. The Hotel Santa Fe hung out its shingle to the general public—offering nightly, weekly, and monthly rates. Over the years, the ballrooms have been rented out for quinceñeras, bar mitzvahs, and small conventions, but the Hotel Santa Fe never generated huge revenues.
So in 1997, when Olympus Real Estate (then an affiliate of Tom Hicks’ firm Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst) offered to buy the property for reportedly about $3.5 million, the School of Vedic Science decided to cut its losses and sell. Contracts were signed. It should have been a simple deal. But almost six years later, Olympus and the School of Vedic Science were still fighting in court over who owned the hotel. The sour deal shows that the Maharishi won’t let his quest for world peace stop him from making a buck.
How to Get Ahead in Real Estate
EVEN THOUGH OLYMPUS HAD A SIGNED CONtract, it soon learned that the School of Vedic Science was in no hurry to leave the building. Between 1997 and 1998, the year Olympus sued to force the Maharishi to sell, the school got three deadline extensions for closing its operation. One of the contract stipulations was that the school use “commercially reasonable means” to terminate all subleases before Olympus took over the property. The school claimed that Heaven On Earth was having problems coaxing one of its subletters, Ashoka Investment and Management Services, out of the building. Hence the request for extensions. Olympus reps didn’t think much of it, because, as one of their lawyers later claimed in court, “The Maharishi had induced Olympus to believe it would close the deal.”
By 1998, however, facts on the ground had changed. By then, the Dallas commercial real estate world was atwitter about plans for the piece of property just north of the Hotel Santa Fe. Denver-based Simpson Property Group wanted to build something called Mockingbird Station that would include restaurants, bars, retail, an art-house cinema, and lofts. Construction would coincide with construction of a new DART station right beside it. A major transit stop and an upscale development can do wonders to neighboring property values. According to the Dallas Central Appraisal District, the value of the Hotel Santa Fe property shot from $2.9 million in 1999 to $8.6 million in 2001, the year Mockingbird Station started leasing.
Contacted shortly before the suit was settled in May, Olympus general partner David Deniger would only say, “We are simply using the legal methods at our disposal to get the other party to follow through on the contract they signed.” He did tell GlobeSt.com, “This has been the strangest real estate transaction I’ve ever been involved in.” And, rather curiously, he told the Morning News that the Maharishi’s people were “not commercially minded.”
But that’s exactly what they are. Simultaneous to the Olympus lawsuit, the Maharishi was showing just how commercially minded he was in a hotly contested deal with the state of Texas. In 2000, the Maharishi Global Development Fund paid $39 million for 329 acres of pastureland in The Colony, alongside Hwy. 121 and Plano Parkway, and announced much-publicized plans to construct thereon the world’s tallest skyscraper. No blueprints for the building ever materialized, and the project was rejected. Then the Maharishi’s people said they wanted to build an office-retail park to be called Global Centre. The Colony, desperate for commercial development, granted a zoning change, thereby increasing the value of the land—whether it was ever developed or not.
Along came the Texas Department of Transportation, needing 21 acres of that land to widen Hwy. 121. The TDT said it was worth $5 million; the Maharishi wanted $27 million.
“They wanted a helluva lot more than that land was worth,” says an official in the Freeway Managements division of the TDT. “They were allegedly going to build some kind of Disneyland, but you can’t price it like that when there’s just a bunch of cows out there.”
The Maharishi eventually worked out a deal with the state for $14 million. But it might not be over yet. It was learned that a consulting firm co-owned by the former mayor of The Colony made millions of dollars helping the Maharishi group get top dollar in its right-of-way dispute with the state. Dr. Bill Manning was reportedly investigated by the FBI for marketing the land to the fund while offering possible tax breaks and other incentives for building on it. The FBI would neither confirm nor deny an investigation on Manning occurred.
As for the Hotel Santa Fe, Olympus didn’t fare any better than the state of Texas. The case went to the Fifth District Court of Appeals, which said the agreement lacked a strict component of Texas contract law—something called “mutuality of obligation.” Because Olympus could pull out of the deal at any time if the contract terms weren’t met, that meant the Maharishi could pull out, too. Olympus appealed to the Texas Supreme Court, which denied a petition for review of the case in May. The lawsuit is essentially dead; the Maharishi can now sell to whomever he wants. The original asking price of $3.5 million has now gone up to $20 million.
The Mystery of the Missing Tiki
THE MAHARISHI ISN’T JUST COMMERCIALLY minded when it comes to cases involving state agencies and millions of dollars. As one Dallas businessman learned, the Maharishi’s lawyers will play hardball over just a few thousand.
Whenever Joe Hunt drove by the Hiltop Inn, it reminded him of his childhood. “When the family had a reason to celebrate, my dad took us to Trader Vic’s,” says the financial consultant. “And whenever it was a really special celebration, we’d go to Harper’s in the penthouse.”
When the sign that read “Hotel Santa Fe” went up, Hunt figured new management had arrived. For the right price, maybe they would part with that old tiki statue out front. His initial calls and letters to ask if the statue was for sale went unanswered. But in 2000 he met with then-employee Karen Cattabiani. Hunt says she told him the hotel was interested in unloading the statue. He offered $1,600 for it, and Cattabiani said she’d get back to him. When she did, she told him the hotel wanted $2,400 for the Dallas landmark. They reached a compromise, but money would never change hands.
Cattabiani abruptly backed out of their agreement. She stopped returning Hunt’s phone calls; the hotel refused certified letters. Hunt hired a lawyer and took the Hotel Santa Fe to small claims court to force them to sell the statue. Oddly, the Hotel Santa Fe’s lawyers never showed up for their court date, and Judge Albert C. Cercone awarded Hunt the tiki. Accompanied by two constables, Hunt went to the hotel on a weekday morning, had a crane lift the 14-foot statue off its pedestal, and carted it off in his truck to a friend’s warehouse in Ennis.
And then what Hunt calls “a shell game” happened. The Maharishi School of Vedic Science—remember, the owner of the hotel—countersued for the return of the totem. Hunt’s original suit named “Hotel Santa Fe” as the defendant. The Maharishi’s lawyers said that the hotel’s name was only that, a name, and that any alleged deal he’d worked out with Cattabiani was meaningless. She was an employee of Heaven on Earth Inns, which didn’t even own the building or the statue out front. And the owners wanted the tiki returned. After spending more than $12,000 in legal fees and more than a year in court, Hunt gave up and revealed the location of the statue. A representative of the Maharishi School of Vedic Science picked it up in May.
“I sued the Hotel Santa Fe because that was the public face of the company,” Hunt says, disbelief still in his voice. “But there’s something like six different companies in that building. They keep offices together, they share employees, and they’re claiming not one person from hotel management mentioned to the Vedic School that there was a lawsuit over the missing tiki?”
Hunt pauses for a second and then says, “You know something? The whole time we were in court, I never saw a single person who identified themself as a representative of the Vedic School.”
So What About Peace on Earth?
THE MAHARISHI SCHOOL OF VEDIC SCIENCE considers the tiki case closed and the question of who owns the Hotel Santa Fe answered, so no additional comment is offered. Finding anyone at all in the TM movement who will comment on the hotel’s future is not an easy task. The only person I could find who would talk on the record was David Humphreys, the general manager of the Hotel Santa Fe and a self-proclaimed “representative of the Maharishi School of Vedic Science.” He’s been working at the hotel since the Maharishi bought it. Speaking in a measured, blissful voice shared by most of the TM people I spoke with, he’s happy to dispel rumors: management does not allow any illegal activities in the building, including drug use or prostitution. He does admit that single women are not placed in the back wing of the hotel, where, he says, “our longtime residents are,” but he says that’s simply because it’s so far from the lobby. It’s a general safety consideration. “Nothing has happened, and we want to keep it that way,” he says.
Humphreys confirms that the Hotel Santa Fe property is now on the market for $20 million, which some people say is far more than it’s worth. The money, Humphreys says, is needed to finance a plan that the Maharishi announced last year. The plan entails building about 300 “peace palaces” across the country and thousands more around the world.
“I will establish groups of experts in this Vedic knowledge in every country,” the Maharishi said in a July 2002 statement. “They will practice transcendental meditation, its advanced techniques, and yogic flying, and create peace—not by words or speeches—but by enlivening the deepest level of nature’s functioning, which is total natural law, the will of God, and radiating the light of coherence throughout the world.”
The peace palaces must be built under strict guidelines. The buildings must face east, be composed of nontoxic materials, and allow as much natural light and ventilation inside as possible. Three palaces already exist, in Bethesda, Maryland; Lexington, Kentucky; and Fairfield, Iowa, home of the Maharishi International University. (Not far from Fairfield is Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa, which was incorporated in 2001. In Vedic City, the several hundred residents use their own form of money, called raam; one raam is equal to 10 euros.)
As to why the TM movement desires another building in Dallas when the Hotel Santa Fe didn’t exactly prosper as a meditation center, Humphreys refers me to yet another person—this one significantly closer to the man at the top.
Benjamin Feldman first returns my call in the middle of night. When we finally speak in person, he identifies himself as “finance minister for the Global Country of World Peace, A Country Without Borders.” He calls from the village of Vlodrop, in Holland, where the Maharishi lives. He also speaks in a polite, serene tone, although with an indeterminate accent that makes him sound a little like Bela Lugosi.
No, Feldman says, the Maharishi is not available for phoners. “He studies night and day the ancient Vedic laws,” he says. “It’s a process that’s been evolving for the past 50 years and has culminated in the place we are now.” But the Maharishi does give weekly Internet presentations and global press conferences to his disciples. Feldman confirms that the Maharishi is very much involved in the international dealings of the TM movement. For example, he helped create the design for the peace palaces.
“The peace palaces are desperately needed right now,” he says. “The world situation demands a coherent, peaceful influence. The peace palaces are places from which we may affect the collective consciousness.”
To affect the collective consciousness, the TM people are working diligently to sell the property they own that doesn’t fit the Maharishi’s specifications. The three largest properties they hope to sell in the United States are the Hotel Santa Fe, the remaining 300 acres beside Hwy. 121 (for which they’re asking $100 million), and the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, on the market for $35 million. Altogether, some estimates put the Maharishi’s holdings at about $3.3 billion.
That leaves the future of the Hotel Santa Fe uncertain. If and when it sells, it would seem destined for the wrecking ball. Despite its history, the building isn’t old enough to be considered for historic preservation. But David Humphreys, who a colleague says knows “the physical building better than anyone,” thinks there’s a good chance the building will stand. The structure is sound, he claims, and complicated zoning laws could make any new construction a thorny issue.
So maybe a new owner will step in and return the Hotel Santa Fe to its swinging status. A party place may not sound as impressive as a peace palace, but it will likely be a lot more profitable. And profit is something the Maharishi appreciates.
Jimmy Fowler contributes regularly to D and Fort Worth Weekly.
