Born to Build by Gene Glick

Author:Gene Glick [Gene B. Glick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hawthorne Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The first multifamily units we built after the Williamsburg projects were owned by Gene and Marilyn Glick and other officers of the company. They were:

(100 PERCENT OWNERSHIP GLICK COMPANY 221 D3 PROGRAM)

Carriage House West I completed 6/12/68

Carriage House East I completed 1/31/69

Carriage House West II completed 6/19/69

Carriage House East II completed 10/10/69

Carriage House West III completed 5/19/70

Carriage House West IV completed 3/31/71

These projects created tax losses which offset the income earned by the development of the cooperatives. We were phasing out of the co-ops and were therefore generating income we needed to shelter. But we soon realized we needed larger capitalization than we could provide within the company. We were reaching for the stars, with high goals and many units in mind. Luckily the government would help with the sort of units we wished to build—at least it did for a while. Lyndon Johnson wanted to lead the country into what was called "The Great Society." He was waging war on poverty, and part of the effort would be to find affordable, decent housing for the poor and elderly. There would be rent subsidies for these people as well as food stamps and enhanced welfare aid.

It sounded attractive: It would enable us to serve the underprivileged as we liked to do—and also to expand our business. The problem was that Indianapolis wasn't buying the "Great Society." Indianapolis has always been a conservative town, and we were so far-right during Johnson's era that you could almost feel the city tilt right off the planet. There wasn't any way the town was going to take government money, but we needed it to do just that if we were going to do the type of building we envisioned.

Central to our problem was the position of The Indianapolis Star and The Indianapolis News, which had always been conservative publications. The Star editorialized that Indianapolis should not be receiving any federal government "handouts"—period. The Stars publisher, Eugene Pulliam, was exercising his proper right as a publisher to take a political stand with the paper.

Still, I was going to do my very best. When John Barton was running for mayor, Jim Beatty asked me to support Barton. I could go either way in any election—my dad had been a Republican and my mother a Democrat. "What position does he take on this federal aid?" I wanted to know. "Let me meet him, and if he's planning to take the lock off the money the city should be getting, then maybe I'll do it."

I met the would-be mayor and he told me that if he was elected he was indeed going to introduce legislation that would let the city accept federal aid.

So I supported Barton and he was elected. But time passed, and after a year or so, still no federal aid. I called Beatty and I said, "What's going on? This man promised we'd have a change."

"Well, Gene," said Beatty, "you may have a chance to ask Mayor Barton yourself. Lyndon Johnson is coming into town for a rally and the mayor will be there on the lawn of the governor's mansion.

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