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When Columbia University decided to find a joint venture partner to overhaul its office tower at 570 Lexington Ave., officials compiled a list of three possible developers and set out to interview them.
They never made it past the first name Bernard H. Mendik.
The deal, after all, is a quintessential Mendik & Co. transaction. In the past 30 years, the prominent investor, civic leader and philanthropist has made a fortune--some $375 million at its peak in 1989--by buying, overhauling and leasing well-located but rundown property.
But the Columbia joint venture is something more: the developer's equivalent of an "I Survived the 1990s Recession" T-shirt. It announces that he has put most of his problems behind him and is back to doing deals.
"It has been a long time," Mr. Mendik acknowledges.
HE'S FIRST TO BOUNCE BACK
Few in the real estate industry are surprised that Mr. Mendik is one of the first of the city's office building moguls to bounce back. He entered the recession with a portfolio of some 18 buildings, including 330 Madison Ave. and Two Park Ave., with high occupancies, good locations and relatively low debt. Even in the downturn's darkest days, his reputation for quality management enabled him to maintain occupancy rates of over 95%
Today, as the Columbia deal attests, Mr. Mendik is not only a reemerging developer, he's a prototype. Although the office market has improved somewhat, rents are not expected to rise high enough in the short term to justify breaking ground for new office buildings. Instead, Mr. Mendik's style of property investment is likely to dominate the city's real estate industry for the rest of the 1990s.
"For the foreseeable future, with the financing mood and memory of the decline still fresh, the redevelopment of real estate is what we're going to see," says Stephen B. Siegel, president of Edward S. Gordon Co. "And Bernie is the best at it."
To be sure, Mr. Mendik still has his problems. He's about...