Quote

As a real estate investor, you're ultimately accountable to you and your checkbook. Of course, you will need to stay on top of your local coding regulations and ordinances. But once you get the hang of it, you really shouldn't have any problems with ordinances.

A building is no good if someone's got to explain to you why it's good. You can't say you don't know enough about architecture - that's ridiculous. It's got to work on many levels.

I see my buildings as pieces of cities, and in my designs I try to make them into responsible and contributing citizens.

Homeowners and business owners across the country agreed to pay premiums, communities agreed to adopt building codes to mitigate flood dangers, and the Federal Government agreed to provide insurance coverage to policyholders after a disaster.

I believe the projects were a social experiment; we were laboratory rats stacked on top of each other, and people just knew, inherently, that there was something wrong. There's not a lot of regard for the property by the residents.

There may be some changes in building codes, but I don't see any stylistic departure that you'll be able to attribute to Sept. 11.

Local councils are hostile to large developers and think that, by doing this, they are standing up for the community. But they're wrong.

We are legislators, not public works contractors. People look up to us to make serious laws that could change the lives of a great number of people or could change the way society is run or managed.

I have seven apartments in the house to keep in a state fit to be inspected everyday by Gentlemen.

A building is hard to judge. It takes many years to find out whether it works. It's not as simple as asking the people in the office whether they like it.