RealShare DISPATCH: Beitler Recounts Tough Times

In 1997, Beitler lost 30 pounds following a bout with kidney stones, learned during a recuperating trip to Key West that long-time friend and business mentor Lee Miglin was murdered, then saw former friends turn against him during a fight for control of his company. Then, his mother died.

"It was the worst year of my life," Beitler told Real Estate Media editor-in-chief Michael Desiato. "I, in one year, lost everything. I think for most people, it would've bent them in half. It almost did me."

The loss of Miglin was especially difficult. Despite a 22-year age difference, the two teamed up while working as brokers at Rubloff Co. on their first development, office buildings near O'Hare International Airport, before building Downtown high rises.

"I not only lost a partner and a friend, I lost my father," said Beitler, whose own father left his family when the younger Beitler was 12 years old growing up in Pittsburgh.

In addition to that tumultuous year, Beitler's candid reflections proved the adage that more is learned during tough times than runs of good fortune. Six years earlier, Beitler and Miglin obtained a building permit to build the world's tallest building at Dearborn and Madison streets, where Hines is constructing a smaller tower. Financing was lined up with the Equity Bank of Japan, Beitler recalls. However, the first war against Iraq broke out.

The flow of oil to Japan was cut, the Japanese finance minister yanked financing for the Chicago tower, and Mellon Bank ultimately foreclosed on a $50-million loan when Beitler and Miglin could not find a buyer to bail them out, despite having sunk $25 million into the land.

Ten years later, Beitler thought he had lined up anchor tenants in Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw as well as Deloitte & Touche for an office tower to replace Equity Office Properties Trust's 2 Riverside Plaza. So did Equity Office Properties Trust boss Sam Zell, who flew to New York City for a meeting on the project.

An awards ceremony in Chicago kept Beitler in Chicago on Sept. 11, 2001. The terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center effectively killed the proposal, recalled Beitler, recipient of the Bronze Star while serving in the Army during the Vietnam War.

Development of Dearborn Center, now Bank One Corporate Center, also dealt Beitler a parlay of woe that could not be foreseen. Three months after his Beitler Co. and co-developer Prime Group Realty Trust landed Bank One as an anchor tenant, three of the bank's top executives were fired, Bank One stock fell by more than half just before the stock market cratered, and consulting giant Andersen went bankrupt, dumping a 560,000-sf space block at 33 W. Monroe St. on the market. While the building was owned by Prime Group Realty Trust, it was not the reason for the ouster of top executives at the REIT. Then the US went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"None of those things were in our pro forma," Beitler quipped, adding he would have set the odds of that parlay of misfortune at 50,000-1. "We came through an unbelievable experience … . You have to have the courage to hang in there."