John Hurson جون هيرسون

In July 2001, Larry Silverstein paid $3.22 billion for a 99-year lease on the Twin Towers. 49 days later they were gone. It is usually told as the worst timing in the history of real estate. He has told it himself, and it is not that story. The video below is him telling it. Days before the final bid was due, he was walking near Madison and 57th when a drunk driver ran a red light and hit him. “I ended up with a broken pelvis, smashed in a number of places. The most excruciating pain of my life.” The bid was due on 30 January. He was in a hospital bed. “I remember saying to the doctors: can you reduce the morphine? I’ve got to think. I’ve got to think this through and submit the bid, because I can’t stop. Too much was at stake.” “And believe it or not, they reduced the dosage. We framed the bid and ultimately won it.” He signed in late July and took the keys. From that day he had the same routine. Breakfast at eight in the morning at Windows on the World, on top of the North Tower. Then down to meet his tenants. Every morning for seven weeks. On 11 September his wife had made him a dermatologist appointment. He told her he had too much to do downtown and was going to cancel it. “She said: you’re not going to cancel this appointment. You’re going to the dermatologist.” “Having been married now to the same woman for 46 years, you get the sense of determination in their voices. And I said okay, okay, yes dear, I’ll go.” Minutes later the phone rang. He turned on the television and watched the first plane hit. His firm was on the 88th floor of the North Tower, about to move up to the 91st. Two of his children worked with him. They were on their way in at nine. So were about a hundred other people. “Had the plane struck 15 minutes later, our firm would have been decimated.” “As it is, we lost four of our people, two of whom I had hired just a few weeks prior. And their six children among them.” Then came the part the headlines remember. He still owed rent on the land. He was obliged to rebuild. And everything turned on one question: were two planes one event, or two? By his own numbers, one event was $3.55 billion. Two was $6.7 billion. It took six years. He settled in 2007 for $4.55 billion, less than he had asked for. He bought the building he had spent his life looking up at, lost it in forty-nine days, and is alive because of an appointment he tried to cancel. Which part of that is luck?