In the years that followed, Belcaster learned his lessons well. ”The Tishmans were contrarians,” he says. ”They were building on the west side of downtown when the experts were saying no one should build there.” The firm`s development of Riverside Plaza was followed by the 30 North LaSalle St. Building and the Mid-Continental Plaza. By the late 1970s, Belcaster was not only helping develop and lease buildings, he was co-owning them. When Tishman Realty went through a tax-free liquidation in 1978, he was able to take a substantial piece of change away from the $900 million deal. ”That was my first retirement,” he says.
But very soon he was back in the game, this time teaming up on the development of One Financial Place. In 1979 he got a call from a friend, Jerome Speyer, son-in-law of Robert Tishman, who convinced him to open a Chicago office for a new Tishman family firm, Tishman Speyer Properties Inc. of New York City. Belcaster remained with the company until 1991, during which time he helped develop 222 N. LaSalle St., 500 W. Monroe St. and the NBC Tower within the Cityfront Center complex, east of Michigan Avenue. All in all, he has developed and leased 10 million square feet of property in downtown Chicago over the years, putting together a $1 billion real estate portfolio for his New York bosses.
While still with Tishman Realty, he spent 1989 commuting to San Francisco and New York, helping the firm consummate projects in those cities. But by 1991, he had had it. ”I basically wanted to retire. I said: `Thirty years is enough. Let younger guys do it.` ”
Accordingly, he resigned as Tishman`s managing director, gave up his role as general partner in a number of buildings that he co-owned and resolved to relax. His retirement lasted exactly one week. Almost immediately, he began devoting himself full-time to civic projects. It was a commitment he had developed years before, when he was asked to help try to keep Sears, Roebuck & Co. from moving out of its location at Homan Avenue and Arthington Street. ”I came to see how real estate was inexorably linked to the health of the city and vice versa,” he says. ”A bank can move its capital around to take advantage of conditions, but real estate people can`t move their buildings. So I felt it was important to contribute.”
One thing led to another, and soon he was rubbing shoulders with important politicians: Richard M. Daley (he and Daley attend the same church), Jane Byrne and Harold Washington, who asked him to take a seat on the board of the Chicago Housing Authority. Belcaster also became chairman of the Neighborhood Development Committee of the city`s Economic Development Commission and co-chairman of the Chicago Development Council. By the late 1980s, he was spending up to a quarter of his 80-hour work week on civic duties. So it was no surprise when, shortly after announcing his retirement in 1991, he signed on for five months as a consultant on construction projects to County Board President Phelan, whom he had come to know when Phelan`s law firm was one of his building tenants. At the same time, he agreed to help the mayor`s office reorganize the Public Building Commission.
”I`m not really into politics,” Belcaster says. ”But I do believe in being available for city issues.” It was this willingness to jump in that, for better or worse, brought Belcaster to Daley`s attention last fall when the mayor was casting around for a businessman to replace Savage at the CTA. Belcaster had been talking for some time with mayoral aides about the need to straighten out certain civic institutions, such as the schools and the transit system, whose health he believes is essential to the city`s economy. It seemed only natural to ask Belcaster if he wanted to put his money where his mouth was. Soon, Clark Burrus and Gale Franzen, the RTA chief, were surfacing Belcaster`s name as a possible replacement for Savage.
The pressure began. Daley started calling Belcaster every day for a week. Would he take the job? No one could stand up to the onslaught. Ultimately, Belcaster gave in.
His friends think it`s the best thing that ever happened to the city.
”He (Belcaster) is going to do a great job for three reasons,” Jerry Speyer says. ”One, he`s intellectually superior. Two, he`s a very good manager. He creates loyalty in people, has an engaging personality, and is very supportive. Finally, he`s honest. What better combination is there?”
Among the skills often cited as reasons why Belcaster may succeed at the CTA where others have failed are his ability to identify the critical issues in a situation, come up with novel solutions and gain enthusiastic consensus. ”Bob has a unique ability to get a quick grasp of a total picture,”
says his friend of 20 years, Robert Wislow, chairman of U.S. Equities Realty Co. ”He absorbs things like a sponge. He can smell out the salient points in a situation and prioritize them before anybody else in a room, and he knows which ones to worry about and which to let go of.
”He has no ego. He doesn`t have to win if it`s not important. His whole mission is to get the job done.”
Wislow says Belcaster`s method is to convince others to give up their desire for an edge and join him in finding a solution. ”He doesn`t try to sell you so much as convince you of mutual benefit,” says Wislow. This attribute was in evidence several years ago when he led a business coalition that helped repeal a controversial 6 percent tax on commercial office leases. By accepting the city`s argument that it needed revenues to make up for huge funding cutbacks imposed by the Reagan administration, Belcaster was able to disarm city officials and forge a compromise: The city agreed to give up the lease tax in exchange for a package of alternative taxes.
Belcaster`s emphasis on consensus was evident recently when he insisted that neighborhood organizations be consulted before the experiment with fare restructuring was instituted. ”The plan was to tell them: `Here is our problem, and here is the solution we think is best. Can you come up with a better idea?` Maybe consensus is impossible, but at least we will have asked.”
Jokes Belcaster, ”It`s better than using a gun,” a reference to the time a building tenant he was trying to evict opened a negotiating session by putting a revolver on the table.
Imagination is another plus. ”He`s a very creative guy,” says Bernard Weissbourd, chief of Metropolitan Structures and a longtime real estate rival of Belcaster`s. ”He frequently has new ideas that work. Of course, if you have new ideas, some won`t pan out, but his average is better than most people`s. I don`t know how to explain it. I think it`s because he`s not afraid to try.”
Weissbourd, who developed Illinois Center, got a taste of Belcaster`s ingenuity several years ago when both were trying to woo NBC away from its headquarters in the Merchandise Mart. Belcaster tied giant weather balloons to the site of Cityfront Center so that NBC executives, who were bivouacked at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Illinois Center, could see where the top of the proposed 40-story NBC Tower would be. The tactic worked, and NBC slipped through Weissbourd`s hands.
Among the ideas Belcaster has toyed with since taking over are inaugurating a driver-of-the-month program to boost incentive; and color-coding CTA rail routes to reduce name confusion-the Engelwood-Jackson Park-Howard Line might become the Yellow Line, for example. (What a CTA boss is up against, however, became apparent when Belcaster was told he would need to consider the ”color-impaired”-people who suffer from color blindness.)
”He takes a fresh look at anything he undertakes,” Weissbourd says.
”He is not afraid of change. I don`t know if he has a good shot at transforming the CTA. But if anybody can do it, he can.”
Still, there is the danger that the CTA has outgrown anyone`s ability to run it. Belcaster`s management skills were honed as a managing director of Tishman Realty, running an office of 125 people. That`s a far cry from directing an operation with more than 13,000 employes, many of them fiercely unionized, and billions of dollars in fixed and movable assets.
According to Robert Paaswell, one of Belcaster`s predecessors as CTA chief, the job is ”like walking into an electrical field.” Belcaster, he says, will need more than creativity and goodwill.
”There are many things that are wrong,” says Paaswell, who headed the agency before Savage took over in 1990. Now director of a transportation research center in New York City, Paaswell notes that transit systems everywhere are starved for funds. ”People are delighted to buy you new rail cars and buses, but they balk at giving you what it takes to run those buses and trains day to day.
”On the other side, you have demands from the customers for better service. Cleaner stations, more security. It costs money, but that`s what it takes to improve ridership. You can`t fool the public anymore. They`re too sophisticated. They are used to high tech in their lives and to a high level of services wherever they go. If transit wants to capture that market, it must compete. But as long as you are playing musical chairs with operating funds, the system will lose. We can`t afford to cut services. If we are going to have a transit system, we have to pay for it.”
Although he scoffs at the idea of running a transit system like a business (”The shape business is in, I`d rather see more businesses run like a transit system”), Paaswell extends good wishes to Belcaster. ”I know him by reputation. He is reputed to be an excellent manager. I hope he will identify with the customer and improve the level of service rather than pinch pennies.”
Paaswell has his own theory on why the CTA is still floundering. He thinks the political power structure in Chicago won`t let CTA directors have enough time to do the job. Like baseball managers, they are the first to be dumped when things start to get rough.
So far, there seems to be no pressure for Belcaster to leave. He appears to have an open-ended contract, which is all right with him.
”I told Mayor Daley that I`ll work until the CTA is fixed,” Belcaster says. ”When will that be? Well, I`ll know it when it`s fixed.”
Wislow says Belcaster will never resign before he`s brought the agency out of the woods. ”I don`t think Bob would quit anything unfinished,” he says. ”His thing is to find the most complicated problem he can that other people have worked on and to solve it quietly, behind the scenes.”
Yet, Belcaster is up against the biggest challenge of his life. Perhaps to remind him, there is a cactus plant in his office mounted, for reasons unknown, on a movable cart. Is there a more fitting metaphor for the CTA than a cactus on wheels? Does Belcaster have a thick enough pair of gloves? It remains to be seen.
