Chapter 47

Everyone in the bed woke about the same time. Jules and Katie wanted to play, but I told the two, "Let's do our morning workout so that I can get to the office early. The others should be waking up early because this would be late for them in the central time zone.

The girls and I went to the basement to do our workout and found Dan and Forest finishing theirs. Forest said, "Ann was really wound up last night. I thought we would never get to sleep. Dan and I work out at our health club every weekday morning. The girls go later, so your ladies need to direct them down here."

Brindle advised me after breakfast that Vickie would drive us to the office, and that we should get her cell number so she could drive us to lunch if we went out. We went in the bigger white limousine and arrived at seven forty-five, the way it should be. Kelly's Corvette was in the slot next to the Manager's space. That let me know she wanted to beat me in this morning. There was a strange car with California vanity plates next to hers. This one had 'FXWRTH 16' on it. I somehow knew that every one of the clan had a vanity plate with the number of when they bought theirs. Having these two here is going to be an ongoing experience.

The new receptionist and her backup were already there this morning, and greeted the men I brought in by name as they had met them last week. Kelly, Joan, Danny, and Chica came out to greet the visitors. Danny and Chica hugged Dan and Forest because they had known them all their lives. Andy had often used some of his vacations to take his huge family to Indianapolis to see the home office. He was proud to be a Manager of one of the company's highest producing offices.

The girls had the visitors sit at my conference table and gave them Mooney Mugs of coffee and put a box of pastries out. I made a quick call to Jim to see how he was doing. He said that he was in San Antonio with Don, and they were directing where to put furniture. Jim said, "We have tarps to put over everything so that we can paint and have this place looking decent when the folks get back from LA. I needed to come here to meet everyone and to get to know Don and Jack. I'm supposed to meet Judy in a few minutes. She says she has a lot of news for me. I met Jennifer Tormain this morning, and I want to get her set up in an office as fast as possible. We're going to need her oversight and good running numbers on how much we're spending as soon as she gets back from LA. I'm sure you can tell that I'm excited to be making this temporary office a reality. We're going to make this work, Brad."

"You're doing more than I expected, but it is very pleasant to know the plan is in progress. You'll have them all back next Thursday. Make sure Brian is keeping your office producing and don't neglect all those people there. You're still looked on as being their leader. Let Brian's leadership be gradual so that you don't scare some of your older people."

Jim said, "I've spoken with the Assistant in Houston yesterday and again this morning. He said all is going well and the scare from yesterday is all but forgotten. He mentioned that the man from Florida should be at the office this morning. He said the two of them would go through the office and work on anything that needed taken care of."

"You already know me, don't you, Brad? I get carried away with a project and need someone to slow me down a little, and to also remind me to take care of business. I've encouraged Jack to begin finding salespeople, and to focus on those who know how to get listings."

That excited me, so I suggested, "I'll send you someone who is the queen of getting listings if you get a bunch of newbies who want to learn the business. Let's see if we can make a Mooney office work without anything to sell. That'll scare the rest of the country."

"Don, Jack, and I will get it working, Brad. We'll be another feather in your bonnet. Come to see us next Thursday."

I had put the call on speakerphone so that the partners could hear a new Assistant Regional Manager making decisions and getting excited about opening an office. Dan said, "I suppose you have all the management changes in your reports. I just realized you promoted the Austin Manager to San Antonio and now have made the Dallas Manager your new Assistant Regional Manager. You mentioned to me that you were shifting Phoenix from the South Central to a new Southern California Region. Don't you think you should talk these changes over with us in Indy?"

"I probably should, Boss, but there is so much happening lately that I'm making it up on the fly. I'm still not sure how all the offices will be arranged, but I want them to be able to be seen and assisted on a regular basis. Phoenix is within driving distance if we want so that would give the Southern California Region three offices within driving distance. I'm planning on opening the North LA office within six months or a lot less and the condo sales office within two months. The first City Center Condos won't be a reality for at least nine months to a year. The company will have a continuous flow of condominium business for probably close to ten years once they are being built. I'll talk to you about all the changes again later."

I stood and said, "There will be pastries and coffee upstairs in the conference room. Let's get started. I need to do a tour with my people, so go get settled and your laptops set up and connected to our Wi-Fi."

Kelly, Joan, Chica, and Danny followed me to the Sales Office. Matt leaped from his desk to shake my hand. He said to me, "I have your Sales Manager for the new North office. I'll bring him in here and show him all our tricks while you're building it. I also have a young guy who is management material. I want you to check him out, but he's grasping the business and is tearing through listings so far. Chica came back and was working with him about finding listings, but she might be finding out what he does after hours, as well. That would be a dangerous pair."

Chica's face turned pink, but I smiled at her to let her know it was all good.

The decorators were all out except for Alec, who was going to be in our meeting. The Title Office was already busy with two early closings and had eight lined up for the next group through. Jimmy up in Finance was smiling as I received a good handshake. He said he thought he had surpassed the rest of the country collectively with his approvals. He showed me the company report on good loans after twelve, twenty-four, and thirty-six months. He said that he knew he didn't have that many before I came, but was now firmly in first place.

Connie in Accounting was happy to see me and said the girls were all asking for information similar to what I asked for. She told me that she was now providing all the offices I watched over with software to report their activity. She said the process was ever changing, as she kept finding something else that needed to be noted. She told me, "My goal is to make your offices as easy to manage as your Florida offices were. Fred has bragged about how easy he has it, and I'm determined to make sure you're just as complacent. I know Fred isn't complacent, but I do know that you set him up and he's now enjoying the work you did by keeping up a good group of offices."

I walked into the conference room at eight-thirty. Four of the largest whiteboards we could find were hanging on the wall. Below each was a large box of black markers and a couple of small boxes of mixed colors. The huge TV screen in the center was actually connected to Ken's laptop and he was ready to list items there as well as on the whiteboards.

Ken began with, "I wish I could stand up to tell you all some things, but be patient and I'll tell them to you while sitting. Brad will jot down each of the suggestions and features we want while I make some notes on my PC. I've done a lot of research and think we need to make this first high rise condominium about forty to fifty stories. We still won't be the tallest because there's a seventy-seven story building going up right now. As long as we're going to invest in a tall building, I want to make it notable. We might cut the size of the high rises on the other three corners, but this first one needs to be 'knock your socks off' big."

Ken flashed a city map of Los Angeles up, pointed at the area we were going to be working with, and said, "What I'm going to say next is important, because it can save space and also provide a valuable resource at the same time."

"Underground parking will be beneath the first high rise and all the surrounding parking and grassy areas. This area of Los Angeles is far enough above sea level to have parking in three sub-basements below surface level. This should be sufficient to give two spaces to every unit owner. Visitor parking will be on a concrete surface area on two sides of the building. One side of the building will be a large grassy area with a swimming pool, and we will still have plenty of visitors' parking for our owners."

"Keep in mind that the smaller buildings will be lining the streets with angle parking in front of them. I want you to consider how we are going to utilize these buildings. All of what we will call the 'low' buildings of four to eight floors will have an area in their lowest sub-basement area that will be a cistern. We will collect rainwater during our infrequent rains, and store it to use for watering our green areas. We might be able to never use city water for landscaping if my calculations are correct."

"The best way to use the area beneath our buildings is for parking, but there is another idea that should be discussed. Let's use a building with six stories as an example. Let's say the first floor is commercial, and I'll get to that in a minute. The second through sixth is residential. If we were to design the residential units to the outside of the building, making them even more exclusive and private, we could have parking for the unit owners on that floor so that they would be parking outside their back door. We have a couple of designs of how this would work. We'll go over them in a little while."

"Brad told me that we needed recreation facilities, so we've designed roof top swimming pools for the top of our high rise, as well as on top of our lower buildings. It would be classic to have one of those infinity pools on the high rise. It would look like you could swim right off the top of the building. We can have some grassy areas and trees in planters that will give residents with kids a place to play and a perimeter running or walking track around the top of the building. We will also have a ground level area that's grassy, but it might be more convenient for unit owners to be able to just go up to the roof to play. Some roofs could have tennis courts in addition to a pool. There could be all forms of services for the unit owners."

"That sort of takes care of part of what I have. There are going to be a lot of domestics working in the buildings, because those unit owners are going to be in the higher earning brackets for both the lower buildings as well as the high rise. Brad and I talked about this, and we decided that we needed to use a floor of the lower buildings for some apartments. These apartments would be priced so the domestics could justify living there. In addition to domestics, Alec suggested that we provide low cost and possibly subsidized apartments for a group of first responders such as police, fire, and paramedics. That should be about eight hundred to a thousand units if we have ten buildings that we have apartments at the half basement level. That should take care of it and give a lot of people a nice place to live. These apartments will be like the basement tenements in big cities, with the exception that they will all have almost full size windows and enjoy the same internal access, not access off the street."

"I want to address the street level frontage. The unit owners in all the buildings will want services. Restaurants, pizza shops, sandwich shops, dry cleaners possibly with shoe repair, seamstresses, insurance offices, at least one twenty-four hour mini-mart, and maybe banking. I want to make the front of the low buildings between the corners to be normal shops. That's why I suggested the angle parking in front. The corner high rises would still be exclusive and the plan is to have the upper floors of these low buildings still be extremely desirable. The higher you go the higher the price. I think we can bust up the commercialization by having art galleries and maybe talent agencies for the movie industry. We will also have our sales office that will be different from our others as this office would handle the rentals as well as the business leases, and building and complex management. Brad says that it would be a way to have our business integrated with the community."

I stood, and said, "Let's take a bathroom break, bring some fresh coffee up, and let me give you a few other suggestions."

Alec came to me, and said, "It's like you and Ken are linked in your minds. You both have the same ideas. I have a couple of ideas that might be good, but you can cull through them later. What I suggest will co-exist with all the others you have. One of my ideas will require market research to see if it can be justified, and that is to use some of the underground space to put in a shopping mall which would also provide secure, weatherproof pedestrian connections between most of the buildings."

When we were back in the conference room I wanted to make some suggestions that might not have come to mind. "Gentlemen and ladies, picture the sixteen square blocks we're going to deal with. Ken has a drawing of sixteen squares in a square. I want to think the four corners are going to be high rises. I want to use almost all of the outer squares for upper level condominiums and at least two or three of the four inside squares. The other one or two blocks will be for recreational purposes. I want to have a mass transit or Red Line station on one of the outer perimeter blocks. The station would be half in and half out of our secure area so that non-residents could access the trains from the public area. Residents would be able to walk no more than a couple of blocks to the station, and it would be convenient for them to use mass transit. I would suggest we pay for the below ground rail which wouldn't be that expensive if we're going to excavate for our water storage and parking anyway. The use of prefab concrete platforms with rails attached would be within our budget and we would propose the County take over all maintenance from that point on. We would fill in all around the rail tunnel, and have the station with stairs and escalators to the trains. We can have our security work with the transit security to maintain our unit owners' safety."

"Alec has some suggestions that we should listen to and consider. Tell us about your ideas, Alec."

"These buildings should have what I want to call a light well in the center. We can do several things with them other than just an area for some sun to shine in. I was thinking of planter boxes, such as two sides on one floor and two alternate sides on the next. They could be linked with climbing vines and have the top covered with a good strong mesh wire and have tropical birds flying around inside to really cap them off. That would be something fun, and it would give the units a little more green. Call the building 'Tropic Gardens'."