HATTIE: Roll the clock back for me. What did it look 20 years ago when you opened the door? Did you have to--did you buy the building? Did you rent? Did you, you know...
MARC: We bought the building with the last dime we had.
HATTIE: Wait a minute. You sold your house in New York and...
MARC: Borrowed family money. My partner at the time, my brother-in-law, borrowed from his mother the money to open this restaurant. We negotiated with somebody who's now a very dear, dear friend of mine, and the reason that the building came for sale was he had had three restaurants in here before, and he was tired of people going broke, stealing all of his equipment, etc., etc. I convinced him that this building needed to be sold.
HATTIE: Wait a minute. You sold your house in New York and...
MARC: Borrowed family money. My partner at the time, my brother-in-law, borrowed from his mother the money to open this restaurant. We negotiated with somebody who's now a very dear, dear friend of mine, and the reason that the building came for sale was he had had three restaurants in here before, and he was tired of people going broke, stealing all of his equipment, etc., etc. I convinced him that this building needed to be sold.
I was selling Fords down the street, and I used to eat lunch here. And I knew this was an incredible location. And I knew the reason it wasn't working was not because of its location. So--and it had been closed for a year when we started negotiating the sale. We put every nickel he had and I had together into buying this building. I think a lot of the growth here has been because it's mine. And I'm willing to constantly upgrade my own property.
HATTIE: Right. So it's a control--a managing of the bottom line by owning the location.
MARC: Right. We own two office buildings within walking distance of Katz's, and they were bought for parking for Katz's.
HATTIE: But you also lease the space to other people.
MARC: Well, what the heck. As long as it's there, the property is there, the doors have locks, there's people in there. But the primary concern we have is, the type of tenant we look for is somebody that's not going to use a lot of parking.
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