"A developer has to be a cheerleader, a visionary, and a gunslinger. If you don't have all three, it's not going to happen," says Peter Zalewski, founder and owner of Condo Vultures, a firm that buys distressed condos for a discount and resells to investors. "Tibor, without a doubt, is all three of those things."
But as his predictions of a generation that would abandon the suburbs for downtown high-rises have come to pass, and as his decades of development have refined his style, Hollo's critics have mostly fallen by the wayside.
Michael McElroy
Hollo enjoys a view of Bayfront Park from his office.
Michael McElroy
Hollo is renting condos in his latest project, the Opera Tower.
Related Content
More About
Regardless of how Miami got to this low point, Hollo says the real estate market will recover, probably in two years, but possibly not until 2011. He says that, eventually, the city's scores of empty condos will be full of people. And when that happens, he's betting that the market for downtown office space will be squeezed. And that's where his final project comes in, his lasting legacy to the city: One Bayfront Plaza.
On the very site at Biscayne and Flagler where Hollo's comfortable if unremarkable office tower sits, he wants to construct a 1,010-foot, twisting, windblown sail of a building. He has already plunged $35 million into studies, permits, and architectural plans for what would be his masterwork.
Those who know Hollo best say it's not the money or the prestige of such a massive project — the final cost is expected to reach $1.8 billion — that has excited the developer.
"If it was up to Tibor, he would be driving a 20-year-old car and living in a modest home," Yaffa says. "I don't know if money ever motivated him as much as his sincere love of this business and the challenges and problems it presents, and opportunity for him to meet those challenges."
This is also the same guy who donated bay-front land to the city and then refused to let the park be named after him. Hollo says his primary motivation, in fact, is gratitude with a healthy dose of civic one-upsmanship.
"Miami, for as far as it's come, does not have a signature building," Hollo says. "That's what One Bayfront Plaza can be. This city has given me an awful lot, and I want to give it an icon, to leave a legacy for this city."
But it's also simpler than that. Leaning back behind his desk, lost in a thick-knit brown sweater, Hollo says there's one motivation everyone overlooks: He's building Miami's tallest tower because he knows it will work.
"It's going to be the end of 2012 or the beginning of 2013 before construction begins," Hollo says. Construction will take about three years, so the building isn't likely to open before 2016. "That's seven years. Christ, if this market isn't back on track seven years from now, you and I may as well both go shine apples for a living."
