Sam Zell, a Chicago real estate magnate who amassed a multi-billion dollar fortune and earned a reputation as “The Grave Dancer” for his ability to revive dying properties. He was 81 years old.
Zell died of complications from a recent illness, according to Equity Group Investments, a company he founded in 1968.
Bearded and blunt-spoken, Zell revels in bucking conventional wisdom. He had a golden touch with real estate, and began managing apartment buildings as a college student. By the time he reached his 70s, he was worth an estimated $3.8 billion.
Zell sold Equity Office, the office-tower company he built over three decades, to Blackstone Group for $39 billion in 2007. It was the largest private equity transaction in history, and netted Zell personally $1 billion.
A month later, he made another deal that finally tarnished his image: the acquisition of the ailing Tribune Company for $13 billion. The media giant filed for bankruptcy the following year.
Real estate was his trademark, but as he noted in an interview shortly before making the ill-fated Tribune deal, it represented about 25% of his holdings.
“I’m a professional opportunist,” Zell told The Associated Press at the time. “I’m pretty sure that no matter what topic you choose, we are involved in some way.”
Zell was born in Highland Park, Ill. He was born on September 28, 1941, four months after his immigrant parents arrived in the United States. They fled to Poland before the Nazi invasion.
His father was a wholesale jeweler who successfully dabbled in real estate investments and the stock market. The young Zell took photographs at his 8th grade prom and sold them, and later drove to downtown Chicago to buy Playboy magazines and resell them to his classmates at Hebrew school in the suburbs for a 200% markup.
His first success in real estate came when he was a student at the University of Michigan. After managing the building where he lived in exchange for free rent, he moved on to manage other properties, eventually incorporating an apartment-management business and then selling it.
After working briefly at a Chicago law firm, he teamed up with his Ann Arbor fraternity brother, Robert Lurie, and they began acquiring distressed properties from developers who were hit by high interest rates. This practice continued with great success during the recession of the mid-1970s.
He later studied at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business with the Samuel Zell and Robert H. Co-founded the Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies.
Zell’s reputation grew, and in 1976 Contradictory Investor spoke of his penchant for finding and pursuing opportunities in an article titled “The Grave Dancer”. The nickname stuck.
After the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, Zell went on a buying spree of real estate properties. He encouraged institutional investors to pool their money for commercial real estate in the early ’90s, when it was outsized.
Zell loved risk, both in his business dealings and in his personal life. He once admitted to having driven his motorcycle at 145 mph on a trip across the South American pampas.
His love for motorcycles led him to form a group called Zall’s Angels, consisting mostly of business tycoon friends, who would accompany him on rides around the world. He was an avid skier, racquetball player, paintball enthusiast and sports fan over the years with stakes in the Chicago Bulls and Chicago White Sox.
Zell was fiercely protective of his private life. Reports say that he was married at least three times and had three children. He maintained homes in Chicago and Southern California.
“Sam Zell was a self-made, visionary entrepreneur. He started and grew hundreds of companies and created countless jobs during his career spanning more than 60 years. Although his investments spanned industries around the world, modern real estate He is widely recognized for his key role in building investment trusts, which today is a more than $4 trillion industry,” Equity Group Investments said in a written statement on Thursday.
Zell is survived by his wife, Helen; his sister Julie Baskes and her husband, Roger Baskes; his sister Leah Zell; his three children, Kelly Zell and sons-in-law Scott Peppet, Matthew Zell and Joanne Zell; and his nine grandchildren.
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – associated Press,