<Begin Segment 34>
MN: Well, at one point, the board chair wanted to get you fired. What happened?
YK: Oh, yeah.
[Interruption]
MN: Okay, so they wanted to get you fired. What happened?
YK: Oh, well, that was on the Security Pacific Bank Building. The Security Pacific wanted a site on the top of the hill. This would be our first office building on the top of Bunker Hill where we wanted our major density. But we had to amend the redevelopment plan again, we had to go through the whole process again. So they were proceeding on while we had this long process of working with traffic, mainly traffic and planning and others to change the plan. So when we finally got that approved, we said, okay, so we couldn't enter into an agreement (until now), so we finally did. By that time, they showed us their plans, and they were very far along, and the chairman of their bank and board had already approved it. They showed it to us and I thought, "Oh, gosh." I said, so I tried to be diplomatic. I said, "Well, I think you did a first class job on the tower," and they had brought in a world class landscape architect to do gardens and everything. I says, "But in concept, this doesn't fit in with our overall Bunker Hill plan 'cause you shoved it way to the north, you turned this square tower at a corner so it looks askew to the rest of the development, and then you put a big garden on the south, so it's isolated out there. It's separated, surrounded by smaller buildings and open space. But their guy who was in charge, he was vice president with Security Pacific Bank, and he's a big, big guy. And so his face got red and he got very angry, and he didn't even let the architects respond to my comments, 'cause my comments, Mitchell, who was the administrator, agreed with me. And he just got up and stomped out, saying, "We'll take our hundred million dollars someplace else." And so of course afterwards, the chairman of the board, of our board says, "Can't we compromise here?" and so forth. And we figured, well, we couldn't afford to lose them, of course. Hundred million dollar developments don't come out too often. And it was our first office building on top of the hill, so we said, "Well, okay, we'll try to get amendments later." And so the administrator talked to the bank people, and I talked to the architect and tried to smooth things over, and so they went ahead. But then I learned later that the chairman of our board was suggesting that I be fired for getting this big Security Pacific Bank people angry at the Redevelopment Agency for even questioning what they were planning to do. But hand it to Mitchell, the administrator, he defended me, so I didn't get fired. [Laughs]
MN: Well, you saved a project, actually, on flip side of it, you saved the Westin Bonaventure (Hotel) project from being pulled.
YK: Oh, well, yeah, there was another case where, on that side, we had, couple times, we almost had the development of a thousand room hotel, and we were negotiating with John Portman, who was the major architect (and developer). He was building these round circular tower hotels in Detroit, Chicago and Atlanta, and he was being very successful. So we were negotiating with them. But they also said, "We're not going to enter into (an) agreement until we get everything designed and the city approves the permit. So when they came and showed us the design, you could tell it was way far along, and had these five circular towers, it had a huge nice atrium inside, seven stories high, but the outside was just concrete with little openings. Except on the Figueroa side there was some glass where (taxis) would pick up and drop off. But, so I tried to be saying that, well, tried to be diplomatic. He showed it to us, I said, "Well, I like parts of it," I told him about it, "and it's starting to grow on me." And Dick Mitchell says, "It doesn't grow on me at all." I thought, "Oh, no." So the guy says, "This is what John Portman wants to build, and he always decides what the design is going to be. He's the designer, developer of this. So if you don't approve this, your hotel is not gonna get built." So I says, "Oh, well, wait a minute here now." I explained to Mitchell, "There are some good parts to this, and the streetscape, but maybe some minor changes could be made there." But anyway, "Why don't we ask for some time to review it?" And Mitchell said, "Okay." So they said two weeks, so the guy said, oh, he didn't have to go back and tell 'em we don't have a project. [Laughs]
So in two weeks, we talked, we had some consultants from San Francisco who we could consult with, and they said, "Well, yeah, it's pretty good, it's pretty good. Yeah, the streetscape is not too good, but, yeah, we can live with it. And hopefully we can get some changes, and they may want to change it too. So the street looks pretty good, the entrance, other than the little tiny entrance." And so they did build it. And it wasn't 'til a couple years later, after it was built, that they dressed up the street and put in more stores and entrances like we wanted.
MN: Now you're working with millions of dollars worth of development.
YK: Oh, yeah, some of 'em were hundreds of millions.
MN: How many hours a week on average were you working?
YK: Oh, well, I would say seventy hours a week. Because I had a lot of responsibility, and we were in the big leagues. We were in the big time.
MN: Did you say seventy hours?
YK: Yeah.
MN: Did your wife ever see you? Did she complain?
YK: [Laughs] Well, she had four kids to take care of. But I came home, and on the weekends, particularly on Sunday, we made it the family time, and we always took the kids someplace. So we continued on. [Laughs]
MN: Total, how many years did you work at the CRA?
YK: Well, I worked for thirty-one years. And most of it was on Bunker Hill, but I did, in 1970, work a little bit on Little Tokyo, and I started the redevelopment plan there, they were wanting to get the benefits of redevelopment, because they couldn't do it by themselves. So... but I only worked on it for a couple years, and then I went back to Bunker Hill.
<End Segment 34> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.