Real Estate: He Webs But Seldom Naps

As head of Webb & Knapp, Inc., whose interests have spanned from Los Angeles' Century City to Manhattan hotels, rotund William Zeckendorf is known as a spectacular real estateman. His losses have also been spectacular. In 1962, Webb & Knapp dropped $19.6 million. Last week, filing an annual statement that had been delayed so that accountants could untangle Zeckendorf's web of multiple mortgages, the company reported a disastrous 1963 loss of $32.3 million.

While Zeckendorf reeled and dealed to cover his debt, the revenues he had expected to rescue him failed to materialize. Freedomland, a pale Bronx imitation of Disneyland, lost $5.4 million. Place Ville Marie, a skyscraper show place in Montreal, lost another $4.5 million, and Webb & Knapp (Canada) no longer controls it. New York's Roosevelt Field, a large shopping center and industrial park, lost $1.2 million. Zeckendorf also took a $4.5 million bath in his Manhattan hotels.

"Big Bill" has been working inordinately long hours auctioning off his properties. But he admits that "results fell substantially short of expectations." Among other things, he has sold off a valuable block-square plot in New York's financial district, part of his Southwest Washington redevelopment project, and a San Francisco site where Webb & Knapp intended to construct apartments. Last week he dealt off his right to buy Manhattan's Drake Hotel, and a British buyer was reportedly dickering for Zeckendorfs Chatham. Considering that his revenues from the Astor, Manhattan and Taft are being passed out to creditors, the only New York hotel that Zeckendorf appears to have free and clear is the Gotham.

Coming due this year are debts of $55 million—indeed, $31.9 million are already overdue. To cover them, according to last week's report, was a bare $1,000,000 in cash and $6,000,000 in accounts receivable. Up to now Zeckendorfs creditors carried him along in hopes of recovering their loans. How long will they continue to do so? On the American Exchange, Webb & Knapp was down to 37½¢ a share, a third of what it sold for last year.