Me if my tie was fixed, but ok. Just leave it this way. All right. David i dont consider myself a journalist. Nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . David many people in the investment world have bought sports teams. Im not one of them. But i do admire others that have fulfilled their ambitions to get involved in sports. One of them is steve ross. He bought the miami dolphins. A number of years ago, redeveloped a stadium area. This year, he was the host for the super bowl. This incredible diversion from all of the successful things he has done. Almost everything he touches works out well. His business interests, his real estate interests, and now his sports interests. One of the early signers of the giving pledge, he has given away hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars for education among other major purposes. I really admire him as an investor and also as an humanitarian. You are going to be the host of the super bowl this weekend. So is it hard to get to be the host . Did they just call you up or is and say, how about doing this . Or is it harder than that . Stephen it is competitive. Wantsteam and every city the super bowl. It is such a Great Economic Development tool for the city and the impact that it has, it is fantastic. I think the fans love coming to miami because we have the best weather this type of year all the time. It is the policy of the nfl to reward teams who build new stadiums to get at least one super bowl. This is the 11th time the super bowl, which is the most of any city, that the super bowl has been in miami. David ok. So how come your team is not in the super bowl . Stephen that is a good question. It is not as easy as you think. David let me ask about this. When will the dolphins be in the super bowl . Anytime soon . I read that tom brady might be a free agent. I dont know if you are allowed to talk about that as an owner. Stephen i heard he was going to be a free agent. I would say that we are not allowed to talk to him until sometime in march. We are a team that is building. I dont know why he would want to come to the dolphins. He is probably one of the fiercest competitors there is. We are at the stage where the dolphins is trying to build the team for the future. And doing it through the draft. David when it was announced super bowl is coming here, did a lot of friends of yours say, by the way, i would like some tickets . How you get tickets for this . Stephen yes i have been , inundated with requests for tickets. The nfl takes over the whole stadium. They control the ticketing. In fact i have to buy my own , box. In the city that i own, i have to buy my own box. Stephen do you get a discount . David not really. Stephen i am one of 32. David when you are an owner of an nfl team, you get together often with owners . What are those meetings like with those owners . Are there small egos in the room and nice people and not complaining or anything . Stephen the nfl realizes you it is not what you expect. The nfl realizes you have 32 egos and that you divide and conquer. I think the nfl really controls the meetings. You are not finding all of these individuals standing up and stating all of these different reasonings. They are pretty they are pretty calm actually. David when the team was owned by wayne, you bought it in 2008. You bought 49 with an obligation to buy another 51 or so. Onphen you had a buysell the other 51 . David you bought it the subsequent year and you paid roughly 1. 1 billion. Stephen 1. 1 billion. David is it worth 1. 1 billion today . Stephen no. It is worth more. A lot more. David would you ever sell . Stephen no. David never going to sell . Stephen no. David ok. Were you a Football Player when you were younger . Stephen i played high school football. David really . Were you . Tion where you stephen tackle. David were there any jewish Football Players . Where there more owners or more players who were jewish . Stephen we have a jewish quarterback. Josh rosen. David so there are some jewish players. Stephen i wish he was a better quarterback. Maybe i would be playing today. David did you ever think you would be an nfl player . Stephen not a quarterback. David lets talk about how you came to be an owner. It is not that easy to buy a team. Lets talk about your background. You grew up originally in the detroit area . Stephen yes. David your father was an inventor . Davidstephen right. David what is an inventor . Is that a real job . Stephen he was always tinkering and always trying to do something. David is that a steady income . When you are tinkering . Stephen not really. He married my mother. She had a wealthy father. David what did your mother do . Stephen she was just a housewife. David you grew up in the detroit area and went to ninth grade there, but your family moved to miami for high school. Why did they move . Stephen my grandfather bought a hotel and my fathers inventing days were over and he went to help manage the hotel. A real mom and pop thing. David what was the name of the hotel . Stephen the martinique. David you went to high school in miami . Stephen miami beach. David you did reasonably well i assume in high school. Stephen not really, but anyway. David you were a Football Player. You did not have time. You went to the university of florida . Stephen i went there for the first year that i transferred to the university of michigan. David you like the cold weather better . Why did you do that . Stephen it was always a dream to go to university of michigan , and i did not have the grades right out of high school so i was able to transfer from florida up to michigan. It had a real impact in my life , and i think that was one of the reasons why i was so active with the university of michigan. David you have given them 400 the university of michigan 400 million . Stephen maybe a little more. David more than 400 million. Has university of florida every said while you were here, why dont you give us something . Stephen i dont think they know who i am. David really . Ok. Stephen dont tell them, either. David i think they know who you are. You go to the university of michigan and you decide to be a lawyer. You go to wayne state law school. Did you want to be a lawyer . Stephen not really. David why did you go . Because you were jewish, you had to go to law school or medical school . Stephen at that time, we had a draft. David ok. Stephen i decided i stayed in the army. In school until i was 26. David after wayne state law school, you went to nyu to get a masters in tax . Stephen yes. David and then you went back to detroit and worked at an Accounting Firm . Stephen i was a tax lawyer. David and then you went to new york . Investment banking . Stephen that is where i ended up working for the Investment Banking firm. I was thinking i will go back to detroit eventually. I came home to a place i had never been. Once you are in new york, it is an exciting place for young people who want to succeed. David ok. So you work at bear stearns and then you got fired. Stephen right. David did you get fired because you were smarter than everybody else and they did not like smart people . Stephen that sounds good. David how hard is it to call your mother up and say i have a law degree, a masters in tax, and i have been fired . Is that hard . Stephen i needed money. I wanted to stay in new york. I did not know what i would do. I did not think i would be able to get a job. I did not want to go through that process again. I kind of thought at that point in time, what do i know and where are the opportunities and where do i have my interest and passion . And i thought of the process and wrote out a business plan. I started my own company. David your mother lent you 10,000 . Stephen i had to live. David did you ever pay it back . Stephen yes, more or less. David she did not want equity in your company . If she had equity, she would be pretty well. Stephen i told i had a good you i had a good mother. David so nobody negotiated for equity for her. You started a Company Called related. Where did you get that name from . Stephen we started looking at real estate and there are so many aspects. We had development, related management and it is a name that made sense from that standpoint. It was a bad enough name that nobody had ever used it before. David you have the name related and originally you are syndicating deals. You go to wealthy people and you say, would you like to invest in this project or Something Like that . Stephen in those days we had a lot more business cycles. It was either boom or bust or in real estate. I saw the idea that you had to have a steady stream of income and then you could invest those profits into development because that is really where you can make large sums of money. It was like we had this Financial Service arm which was the syndication side. At that point, it was selling tax losses to wealthy investors. We had a different tax law at that point in time. Using those profits to plow it back into development. Since i did not know anything about development at all, i saw the opportunities in Affordable Housing, i did for the first six or seven years of my career, all i did was Affordable Housing. David to people who are not Real Estate Developers, what does a developer really do . Stephen i mean, it is the one who finds the land, hires the architect, works on the plans, makes sure the building gets built on budget, on time. And then manages it when it is completed and assumes all of those responsibilities. David you became one of the larger developers of low Income Housing or subsidized housing in the United States. Over a period of time. Stephen just before i started the company, Lyndon Johnson had this program that set up the government to provide the funds for Affordable Housing. And then they had the section eight programs that the government initiated after. It was a question of taking the government subsidies and applying them across the country. It, this when i read is too good to be true. I started a company developing in 1972 and by 1980, we had built something close to 8000 units. David lets suppose i want to buy an apartment. In hudson yards. What would it cost to buy an apartment there . Stephen now is a good time to buy because the Real Estate Market in new york is soft. David any deals i can get . Stephen i have a deal for you, trust me. Stop the interview right now and lets make a deal. David you were doing a lot in the area of subsidized housing, Government Housing affordable , housing, and ultimately you built a development that became the Biggest Development in new york at that time which was the timewarner Development Center along columbus circle. South of central park. How did you get the right to do that, and why was that such a big deal . Stephen i was motivated. Like most people, you want to do something impactful in life. It is not a question of money. You are not really working because of money. Everybody can make money. But you want to do something impactful and meaningful and challenging. David timewarner became a big development. It had apartment buildings lots , of office space. Timewarner had his office there its office there and you lived there as well. Stephen correct. David ultimately, you decided to build something bigger which became the biggest Real Estate Development in the history of our country called hudson yards. For people who dont live in new or live in new york, what is the big deal . Stephen over 60 of the buildings were over 60 years old in new york. They were obsolete and new york was growing and the hottest area of new york was a place called chelsea, which was down there. I saw the idea when hudson yards came about through creating a liveworkplay environment. Hudson yards, by building a liveworkplay environment in the middle of new york. We were able to attract corporations because they were looking for talent. Chelsea was really the hottest part of the city where the young people are. David you got the right from new york city to build this in 2008. Stephen yes. David and that is around the time the recession was going on. Was it scary . Stephen we had just went under contract in 2008 before the crisis started. , if you call it that. Before we signed the letter of intent and put up some money, before we went hard, we had negotiated some points of the deal that we would not have to start the project until a certain events happened. There would be an office market, an availability of money, and that the condo market would be able to absorb some units. David the total Square Footage is 16 million square feet . Something like that . Stephen it started out, it was a request for proposals that was roughly for about 13 million square feet. We went out and acquired land around it so our Development Today would be 20 million square feet. David how much was the total Purchase Price . How much did the investors have to put into this to make it work . Stephen we were in it for 15 million to 18 million. It will probably be 25 billion to 30 billion. David 25 billion to 30 billion. Are you going to make a profit . Stephen i would hope. David no project in the United States history, commercial project, has ever been that expensive. Even Rockefeller Center was modest compared to this. Is that right . Stephen if you look at the Square Footage, which is the way you measure the size of something, it is the Largest Private Development in the United States. David why did you consider calling it the ross center . You did not want to put your name on it . Stephen no. David you have a sculpture that is very famous. Some people think it is great. Some people think it is not so great. Stephen who does not like it . David well, a couple of architecture critics that i read. Explain what it is. Why is it so controversial . You pick an architect and you saw something that he designed. What is this sculpture . Stephen it is 150 foot high series of steps that you can walk around. We wanted to create the new heart of new york. I looked at it, you had to have some type of iconic structure. If you look at new york, you take Rockefeller Center, which i looked at as being the heart of the city. Every tourist, especially during christmas, everybody goes to Rockefeller Center. I wanted some type of structure that would be a 365 Day Christmas tree. I looked for it, and i found this designer. I selected it. I did not know what the cost was. Everybody thought i was nuts. David what did it cost . Stephen i thought it would cost 75 million and it cost 160 million. David you convinced a lot of famous companies, blackrock, kkr, among others, to move there. Do you have to say, move from where you are to hudson yards . Stephen i was involved in selling all of that. The appeal was corporations today survive by getting talent. They saw they were in an obsolete space. They knew this is where their talents wanted to live. When we sold them, they could see what we were creating and we were very fortunate to get the probably the Top Companies in each field in new york. It was not one industry. We did it across all industries. Without building it and opening it, i love saying it, you get the highest rents in new york. Today. It is the area that is most in demand. Stephen you dont mean to say the highest rents. You mean the rents that are most appropriate. Stephen for what we built, yes. David lets suppose i want to buy an apartment in hudson yards. What would it cost to buy an apartment there . Stephen now is a good time to buy because the Real Estate Market in new york is soft. David any deals i could get . Stephen i have a deal for you, trust me. Stop the interview right now. Lets make a deal. David if somebodys watching is and says, i want to be like steve ross, i want to be a successful Real Estate Developer what is the skill set . Stephen stephen to be successful in anything, you have to have a passion for what you are doing. David lets talk about your philanthropy. You have signed a giving pledge. Why did you do that . Why did you agree to give away half of your net worth . What do your children say about that . Stephen i dont think they have anything to say. I given away most of my net worth. Most of my net away worth. I have taken care of my children. I believe in giving back. Some people look at it, i believe i was very fortunate and i believe in giving back and doing something that is significant. I think i grew up with that idea. It is not a feeling of feeling entitled. David what are your passionate causes and philanthropy . Stephen you want to do things that are impactful. You just dont want to give it away. I have certain interests that im very involved in. First of all, you start with education and making the cities and places where you live better. To me the biggest area of concern that i have is the environment, climate. I think that impacts everybody. Any disease or anything, when you talk about survival, there is nothing more impactful than that. David if somebody is watching this for somebody is in the audience now and says i want to be like steve ross, i want to be a successful Real Estate Developer, what is the skill set . Is it smart, hardworking, look, luck, money from your mother, what makes it possible . Stephen all of the above. To be successful in anything, you have to have a passion for what you are doing. If you have that passion, i looked at Affordable Housing from a standpoint, you are doing well and you are doing good at the same time and using that as a basis. Today, is still probably the Affordable Housing is still probably the greatest need that we have in america. To be successful, as you know building your company, you have an idea and you expand upon it and you connect the dots as you grow. You never stop working. David when you build your company related, like my company, at some point you say somebody else can run it day to day. You might reach a certain age where somebody else can run it. I am not the coceo any longer, i am the coexecutive chairman of my firm. Are you the ceo . Stephen i am the chairman. You only Grow Companies by surrounding yourself with great people with likeminded ideas and thoughts and doing things. I think i attribute most of my success, if not all of my success, to the people that i am surrounding myself with. They are my partners. I look at them in working together and executing is probably the most exciting thing in life. David did your parents live to see your success . Stephen partially. David did they say, you should have worked harder . You should have stayed as a lawyer . They ever say that . Stephen my mother could never describe what i did so i was would always say i was a lawyer. David you have this incredible career, you have become a very wealthy person, a happy family, any regrets about what you have done with your life . Stephen i regret we are not playing in the super bowl this weekend in miami. No i really love what i do and i , still have great passion for it. David a very successful career. Thank you for taking the time. I know you are very busy this weekend because everybody wants your time and wants a ticket. By the way, if i need a ticket, how would i get one . Stephen you want a condo, i got a ticket. [laughter] power ai to disrupt our civilization . The increased productivity will create dilemmas. People wouldnt recognize to me if my time was fixed but ok