Standing Tall
Having played a lead role in its past, present and future, Charles Maikish is as much a part of Lower Manhattan’s fabric as the twin towers were prior to 9/11. He asserts today’s buildings are designed to withstand disaster and are ready to embrace a greener existence. Deborah Erwin tells all.
Charles Maikish’s current title is Managing Director of Global Corporate Services and Real Estate at BlackRock and BlackRock/Barclay’s. In other words, he’s prominently positioned with one of the world’s property goliaths. But like most big wigs, he started out in the lower echelons before ascending to his current height. His career, marked with phenomenal tragedy and success, began in the late 1960s with the construction of New York City’s World Trade Centre (WTC). As a budding civil engineer, he helped to erect the twin towers then manage it along with the Port Authority of New York City and New Jersey State’s sprawling portfolio for over 25 years. His role evolved from engineer to real estate lawyer to CEO of the WTC and the Port Authority’s numerous developments including two waterfront projects, three industrial parks and a teleport on Staten Island. In the early 1990s he was tasked with repositioning the WTC. “The World Trade Centre was 25 years of age and had been built under old technology and needed to be repositioned to maintain its Class A office space.”
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He then veered off his career’s trajectory to leap off the dock as first director of ferry projects, restoring water-born service to New York’s harbour. “My first trip to Hong Kong was to take a look at the Star Ferry and the ferry services that were operated here in Hong Kong a lot of what we learned here we deployed in New York.” In 1989, he adds, there was only one ferry service. Today there are over 20 services operating in the harbour. After a few years as steward for Columbia University’s real estate, construction and design projects, Maikish joined Chase, and soon became Executive Vice President of JP Morgan Chase. He was recruited to manage their corporate services which included the planning, construction, design, operations and security of its real estate portfolio and amounted to 70 mil sqf and approximately 70,000 employees. The company had (and still boasts) a substantial presence in Hong Kong, “We were in Chater House, Jardine House, Mong Kok and Shatin. I was here every three to four months. In fact, my tailor is here in the Mandarin”. “Hong Kong has seen a remarkable transformation in the last 15 years in terms of the infrastructure, with the new airport, subway system and the tunnels and bridges — tremendous infrastructure — and the construction of residential and office buildings. Even more starling than that is looking at some of the larger cities in China like Shanghai. It’s just remarkable. You never visit the same China twice. It’s always different every time you come back. That’s true about Hong Kong too.”
His most memorable experience at Port Authority? “The 1993 bombing and the recovery of the Trade Centre. That was unsurpassed. The reinstitution of the ferry service in 1989 was another large one”. After JP Morgan Chase, he took two years to devote to public service since the majority of his career was dedicated to Lower Manhattan. He admits it was a personal decision to be part of the reconstruction after the destruction of the World Trade Centre’s twin towers. “The governor of the state of New York at the time, George Pataki and the mayor, Mike Bloomberg asked me to return to public service to see if I could organize the building effort, and we did.” Lower Manhattan’s reconstructive surgery involved 60 projects, US$25 bil and a multitude of voices. “I had the luxury in the 1993 of having total control of the reconstruction since it was within one agency which was within my command, the Port Authority. The 9/11 event resulted in such extensive damage, even beyond the Trade Centre, to the areas and the infrastructure,” which involved several agencies “between the state of New York and the city of New York. The hardest thing was the coordination among almost a dozen agencies and getting them to give up their sense of ownership, their sense of power and control to act in a collaborative way”.
Substantial investment in security and security systems began after the 1993 bombing. Prior to 1993, it took the whole building six hours to empty. But after the 1993 overhaul which initiated new safety and security practices, procedures, protocols and systems, facility evacuation took a mere 40 minutes. “We put in all new fire alarm communication systems, battery-pack lighting in the stairwells, fire command stations in each of the sky lobbies and we didn’t do fire drills but evacuation drills after 1993. This meant that everyone below the strike lines of the planes was evacuated within 40 minutes”. He admits a sense of pride at the thought that such a massive, facility-wide security refurbishment resulted in saving thousands more lives than would have been possible pre-1993. He notes the absence of exterior bollards in Hong Kong’s built landscape, in contrast to New York City. “There’s a different view toward security in Hong Kong compared to the West. The use of perimeter security, bollards, CCTV cameras, intrusion alarming, fluorescent paints the practice of evacuation drills not just fire drills all of this came about because of 1993. The 9/11 event only reinforced the need for that”. Today, he adds, buildings are designed to sustain real threats and structural integrity is extensively tested. “Survivability analysis is now done upfront. The use of bomb-proof glass, fire exits that have sufficient capacity, the concept of pressurizing the stairwells clearly, all buildings have sprinklers today. The use of technology, of outdoor furniture as stand-off, the berming of landscapes so that you can deflect blasts all of this has evolved since 1993”. “Evolving technology is now around Chemical, Biological, Radiological [Nuclear and Explosive] threats which we call the CBRNE threat, and it’s in its infancy”. He defines these as systems that detect chemical and radiological agents and automatically shut down the ventilation systems in buildings. “Until it becomes code or a matter of common practice or government-mandated, building owners are not going to spend the capital. If it’s discretionary capital they’re not going to spend it. They’re going to spend it on things that attract tenants like curb appeal, lobby refinishes, more power and cooling capacity, better amenities and retail because that’s what tenants are asking for”. He explains, unless there is a tenant demand for tighter and more sophisticated security systems, property owners will not install it.
Beyond advanced security systems, green and sustainable technology is also on the rise. Maikish references a green building in Battery Park that is commanding a higher rental than its neighbouring blocks. He attributes this to a growing environmental consciousness that transpires into tenants’ preference for sustainable and energy saving products. “The stockholders and investors in the corporation are going to demand that the corporations be sensitive to sustainability and conservation issues. Government doesn’t necessarily have to mandate it. I think the investor and the consumer are going to start to mandate that, the public too.” He continues, “Government will do what the populace demands it to do, and at some point government will enact legislation and regulations that are going to mandate energy conservation and sustainable measures for adoption, whether its water reclamation, air purification or the employment of photovoltaic technology”.
He refers to a scene in an episode of the Marx Brothers where they dupe a ticket collector with the line “My brother has the tickets” to explain the relationship between government and private developers, pointing the finger at each other to deflect blame. He argues that the application of photovoltaics is not seen as an economically viable option, “There’s an expenditure that’s not recoverable in the market. The developer says [to the government] ‘Why are you asking me to do this? This is my capital, my dollars, I’m entitled to the return. If you think this is good public policy then you should be subsidizing this”. To move forward, “three things need to come together. First of all, the technology needs to become affordable. As time moves forward, the technology will become more and more affordable so that it will make sense that the application of the technology will pay for itself in terms of the energy savings. Until that happens, there are two things that government needs to do. One, it needs to fund the research and development around that technology. And two, it needs to fund the initial application of the technology in its infancy so that it becomes a matter of accepted practice to deploy that technology. Industry will then pick up the need to do it itself, it will force other industries to develop affordable technology and it will be priced accordingly so the consumer understands the need to increase pricing to account for the deployment of this technology”.
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In regards to urban planning — an oft visited and critical subject in Asia — he emphasizes the importance of trusting professionals in the government. “There is a professional science to urban planning and government employs professional planners, architects and engineers. There needs to be deference paid to that group and body of people.” Can all those affected by urban design including the public and private sectors reach consensus on a city’s direction? “I would use another term — collaborative decisiveness. I don’t mean this body works independently and exclusive to the general public but that it collaborates with, listens to, and seeks the opinion and advice of the public. But in the end the decision needs to be made by the professionals who are charged with making the decisions”. He warns: “this trust breaks down when amateurs are employed to do professional tasks where expert governmental functions become politicized. They should be able to operate with the absence of that political pressure and intrusion.” To avoid this disintegration and disillusionment, he advises governments to hire the “best and the brightest” but recognizes that the meager financial and career gains often serve as disincentives for candidates. “We need to create that sense of public reward. The great thing about working in government is that you have the ability to affect millions of lives through the exercise of good judgment and good work developing professional competency and trust and credibility of the public sector, is the only way you’re going to reach collaborative decisiveness”. As for Asia’s mass construction and infrastructure projects, he says, “You have to decide the shape of things as you want them, then you need to design your buildings and infrastructure to provide that shape so a clear vision — one that has flexibility in it and milestones,” is realized. But he adds that urban plans are never complete. Instead they are like living, breathing organisms that require regular check-ups. He recommends designing in phases and doing it in a scalable way. “In Asia, it’s always been grand-scale build 40 mil sqf of office space, five bridges, a new airport and a subway system all within the next ten years. The scale of what is happening is daunting.” He points out the need to parse colossal briefs into chapters so that the project is fathomable, controlled at each stage and permissive of termination should demographics and demand shift.
