When Bernard Weissbourd was a student nearly 50 years ago at the Univerity of Chicago, his ambition was to make the world a better place through chemistry.
But since 1959, 18 years after graduating from the U. of C. with a degree in chemistry, his laboratory has been the city instead of a room full of test tubes and Bunsen burners.
And the byproducts of his research, instead of new detergents or plastics, have been buildings, big buildings that have enhanced the skylines and environments of several of America`s major urban centers, including Chicago.
What happened was that Weissbourd, the chemist, opted to become a big-time real estate developer.
At 65, Weissbourd and the firm he founded here 29-years ago, Metropolitan Structures, are among the nation`s most successful builders of big buildings and developers of large tracts of underutilized urban real estate.
In Chicago, a city known for major-league builders of mammoth structures and complexes, Weissbourd and his firm are in the midst of the largest revitalization project in North America-Illinois Center.
The 83-acre development, a complex of 15 high-rise office, residential and hotel buildings, is being built along the south bank of the Chicago River between Michigan Avenue and the lakefront.
Begun almost 20 years ago on land that had been an Illinois Central railroad yard, the $3 billion-plus project, being codeveloped with IC Industries, is half completed.
Though Chicago-native Weissbourd switched careers, first becoming a successful lawyer and, subsquently, a real estate developer, he has not abandoned his love of or involvement with science.
In World War II, which interrupted his law studies at the U. of C., he was assigned by the Army as a chemist to the Manhatten Project at the university to help conduct experiments that led to the development of the atomic bomb.
”We were doing some pretty exiting things,” Weissbourd said in an interview last week in his 12th floor office in the One Illinois Center Building.
”Although I was just a junior chemist on the project, I personally witnessed the creation of two or three new nuclear elements. I keep telling people that my life has been downhill ever since.”
After resuming his law studies at the U. of C. following the war, Weissbourd participated in the establishment of the peacetime Atomic Energy Commission.
Having seen the potential destructive capabilities of atomic weapons, he has spoken out and written articles about the need for the superpowers to eliminate their dependence on nuclear arms as a deterrent to war.
Unlike some of his peers in the real estate business who spend virtually all of their time accumulating and venerating the dollar, Weissbourd also believes that a developer has an obligation to concern himself with social issues.
In keeping with that, he has taught urban planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago; has published articles on wide range of social issues, including such sensitive topics as racial integregation and white flight to the suburbs; and sits on such government panels as the Metropolitan Fair & Exposition Authority and the Mayor`s Advisory Council on the Chicago Housing Authority.
He and his wife, Bernice, in 1976 founded Family Focus, a nonprofit agency that fosters parenting and family life through counseling and social activities for parents and children. The agency operates in seven Chicago area communities.
As a result of his humanitarian activities, Weissbourd is to be honored next month by Israel`s Weizmann Institute of Science as its Man of the Year.
Maybe because of his science background and humanitarian bent, Weissbourd doesn`t fit the popular conception of a rich, big-time developer
Thin, gray-haired and bespectacled, he could be easily mistaken for a college professor or a country doctor. He speaks in a whisper.
His office, though modern, is almost spartan compared even to some of his less successful peers. On his crowded book shelves, one finds more volumes on urban issues, politics, law and the writings of Greek philosophers than texts on real estate.
He runs his business, he says, in the same studious and conservative way. ”I guess what sets us apart from other developers is that we don`t take any risks that we can`t control,” Weissbourd said. ”We worry about every detail of a development.
”I`m not against flamboyant developers,” he added. ”There`s room today for the kind of entreprenurial leadership they provide. It`s just personally not my style.”
Two men, according to Weissbourd, were responsible for his metamorphosis from chemist to lawyer to real estate entrepreneur.
The first was the late Robert Maynard Hutchins, the controversial, boy-wonder president and, subsquently, chancellor of the U. of C. from 1929 to 1951.
Herbert S. Greenwald, a prominent Chicago apartment builder and architect in the 1950s, was the second.
Hutchins talked the aspiring chemist into studying law.
”He told me right in the receiving line when he was handing me my undergraduate diploma that I`d be wasting my time as a chemist,” Weissbourd said.
Greenwald was one of Weissbourd`s law clients.
”Greenwald had a knack for making all the give and take involved in building exciting,” Weissbourd said. ”Before I realized it, I was hooked.” When Greenwald died in an airplane crash in 1959, Weissbourd said Greenwald`s business partners invited him to take over his real estate firm.
”I guess they figured I was the only one who knew all the ins and outs of his business,” Weissbourd said.
Instead, Weissbourd enlisted several of Greenwald`s employees and members of his law firm and formed Metropolitan Structures.
Besides Illinois Center, Weissbourd`s major developments here include the recently completed $300 million, 40-story, twin-tower Merchantile Exchange Center at 10-30 S. Wacker Dr. and the $112 million, 40-story, One South Wacker agency office building, completed in 1982.
Together, he and his firm have built or have under construction in cities across North America some 14 million square feet of office space, an area more than 3 1/2-times the net square footage in Sears Tower, the world`s tallest building.
They`ve built or are building nearly 6,800 apartment units, almost eight times the number of units in Lake Point Tower, the world`s tallest residential structure.
In addition, they`ve built more than 2,700 hotel rooms and 300,000 square feet of retail space here and elsewhere.
Weissbourd`s firm is redeveloping a five-block section of downtown Los Angeles into an office, residential, hotel, retail and cultural complex. Part of the project, including a 42-story office building and a 100,000-square-foot Museum of Contemporary Art, is completed.
In downtown Dallas, they`re building four office towers on six acres in that city`s recently created arts district.
And in Boston, they were selected recently to join with a minority developer in building $400 million worth of office buildings and a hotel on two sites, one in that city`s Chinatown and the other in Roxbury, a predominantly black community.
At an age when most men think of retiring, Weissbourd, who lives in Evanston with his wife-their four children are grown-has his eyes set on more major developments.
On the drawing boards in his office are plans for the development of a football stadium on Chicago`s West Side for the Chicago Bears and a proposed $400 million office and retail complex on the block bounded by State, Randolph, Dearborn and Washington Streets in the North Loop renewal zone.
The latter project, approved by Chicago last year, is to be developed by Metropolitan Structures jointly with two other big-league Chicago developers, the Levy Organization and JMB Realty Corp.
