What’s Developed for Joe Perry? No Waste, No Frills Despite Successes

Around Burbank City Hall, people tell this story about developer Joseph A. Perry:

In the late ‘70s, Perry approached the city about building a high-rise hotel in downtown Burbank. Although he told city planners he had the financial means to handle such a project, they didn’t take him seriously because of his unorthodox appearance--baggy pants and untucked, stained work shirts that barely contained his ample stomach.

Frustrated by months of rejection, Perry showed up at one City Council meeting carrying a suitcase. He dumped its contents--hundreds of packets of money--onto the podium.

“Maybe this will convince you,” Perry exclaimed. “ Now will you let me build my hotel?”

But the facts have been exaggerated over time. Perry didn’t dump a suitcase of money. Actually, he waved a cashier’s check for $750,000 in front of them.

He also declared that he was determined to build a hotel in Burbank and would keep pressing the city “until Jesus comes back.”

Perry may appear eccentric--his rumpled clothing, thinning salt-and-pepper-colored hair, thick eyeglasses and kinetic manner don’t quite fit the stereotypical image of a successful suburban developer. Yet, he is regarded by peers and opponents as a shrewd businessman possessed of an uncompromising determination.

The 19-story Holiday Inn he finally built is the principal landmark of downtown Burbank. City officials say the 370-room, $6-million hotel brings in about $600,000 a year to the city in tax revenues, and he is negotiating with the city for a 300-room addition to the hotel.

Perry has also built and operates a 600-room Holiday Inn in Glendale and a 230-room Holiday Inn in Long Beach.

The 63-year-old Perry is respected by city officials and development experts as a hands-on builder who knows what he wants and continues to have a guiding hand in projects once they are completed. Indeed, he maintains an office in the Glendale Holiday Inn.

But he is also criticized by those same officials as being ornery and difficult to work with. They say he is a no-frills businessman who is not likely to use diplomacy in business dealings.

‘Bottom-Line Oriented’

“Joe is very bottom-line oriented,” said Larry J. Kosmont, former Burbank community development director who now runs his own development and consulting firm. While employed by the city, Kosmont worked with Perry on his proposals for the hotel.

“He’s not one to waste a lot of time on issues other than money and square footage,” Kosmont said. “He’s difficult to negotiate with and cantankerous when he wants to be, which is often.”

“I’m not the easiest guy to get along with,” Perry acknowledged. “I’m a tough negotiator. I didn’t get my money by sitting around and twiddling my thumbs.”

Perry has also been characterized by his employees as being unreasonable and Scrooge-like. The National Labor Relations Board 1 1/2 years ago charged him with discrimination and unfair labor practices, saying he harassed employees who engaged in union activity and threatened to fire some of them.

Twenty-eight maids and laundry workers in Glendale and Burbank walked off their jobs for 12 days in early 1985, saying Perry and their union had formed a contract that cut their wages and eliminated medical insurance and other benefits.

The hotel employees voted to join a new union, Service Employees International Union, which is now negotiating a contract with Perry. Although negotiations have been continuing and there is no immediate plan for a strike, union representatives have claimed that wages at the Glendale and Burbank Holiday Inns are well below industry standards. However, they declined to give exact figures.

To catch up, Perry would have to raise each employee’s wage at least 10% each year over the next four years, union officials said.

Union organizer Jaime Rodriguez was quoted last year in a hotel trade newspaper as saying that Perry was “in the Dark Ages” in his treatment of female employees. “There’s one woman who went on leave to have her baby, and when she came back, she lost a year’s seniority,” Rodriguez said.

When questioned about his labor conflicts, Perry said: “That’s too touchy a subject, and I’m still in negotiations, so I can’t talk about it.”

But Perry loves to talk about money. He seems to contradict himself over the significance of it.

“Just because you have money doesn’t make you better than anyone else,” he said. “You see a Volkswagen and a Rolls-Royce side by side, and the Volkswagen is just as precious and important to its owner as the Rolls-Royce is to its owner.”

Perry drives a 2-year-old Ford Thunderbird.

Although a millionaire many times over, Perry wears clothes that seem to have been purchased in the bargain basement. He wore overalls to his mother’s funeral a year ago “because that’s the way she liked to see me,” he said. “I’ve only had two suits since I was 12. I wear $25 shirts and $18 pants, and they suit me fine.”

Achieving Goals

Perry said his only goals when he was growing up “were to be a good son and to be a millionaire by the time I was 40. And I achieved both of them.”

In his spare time, Perry said he thinks about making money. “What else is there?” he asked.

Not that there is much spare time. Perry said he has worked seven days a week, 70 hours a week, for 42 years. He is married and has children, but refused to discuss his personal life.

Eight years ago, Perry said his assets were “around $10 million.” Today, he declines to say how much they are but maintains that he has at least $10 million in assets. Between Burbank and Glendale, where he lives, Perry says he has built about 2,700 apartments and duplexes.

His drive, he said, is the result of a value system formed while growing up in Glendale with his poor immigrant Italian parents. He sold newspapers in Burbank and Glendale and decided he wanted to go into the hotel business at age 12, when his family stayed at a Wyoming hotel and had to spend $6 for a room.

“I thought that was an outrageous price, and I told my mother that was what I was going to be when I grew up,” Perry said.

But, according to Perry, he learned his most important lesson about values in 1945 when he was in the Navy. He was wounded in Guam during an attack almost two weeks after D-Day.

‘There Are No Big Shots’

“I remember lying there in the surf, unable to do anything, crying for my mother to come help me,” Perry recalled. “That’s when I found out there are no big shots. It’s corny, but that’s what did it.”

After receiving a medical discharge in 1945, Perry returned home and drove a cab at night in Watts and South Los Angeles. He studied carpentry during the day and became a licensed building contractor in 1950.

“I built my first building in 1947 all by myself,” Perry said. “It was a duplex on Riverdale in Glendale. It’s probably the worst building in Glendale, but I did it myself.

“I used to go around and photograph buildings, take the pictures home and magnify them so I could see how the joints were made.”

When he began building hotels in the 1970s, Perry had a relatively smooth relationship with Glendale officials, and built his Holiday Inn there in 1972. But Burbank officials gave him more trouble. He complained at the time that the city ignored his hotel proposal “because I don’t wear suede shoes and I’m not a fancy talker from Beverly Hills.”

During one City Council meeting, Perry shouted obscenities at the council. He also took out a newspaper advertisement charging the city staff--in two-inch-high letters--with producing “A FAT ZERO” after working a month on his plan.

The relationship has quieted considerably. Perry now rarely shows up at council meetings and maintains a low profile as he pursues his plans to expand the Holiday Inn.

But he hasn’t totally mellowed. Perry joked last week about dealing with city bureaucrats.

‘Where Is This Field?’

“Whenever you call them, they’re either in conference or out in the field,” he said. “Where is this field? I went looking for it the other day, and you know where it is? It’s in downtown Burbank at the Towncenter site.”

The Towncenter, a proposed shopping mall on city redevelopment property, collapsed last year when the developer was unable to fulfill his obligation to bring four major department stores to the project.

“All the bureaucrats are in that field, husking corn,” Perry said.

Burbank Councilman Al F. Dossin praised Perry for his willingness to gamble on Burbank. “He was the first developer to take a chance on Burbank when everyone else was afraid to, and I really respect him for that,” Dossin said. “It’s worked out for the city and for Joe.”

Perry said he plans to make his Burbank hotel the largest Holiday Inn in the world, with 1,002 rooms. “I hope I live long enough to do it,” he said.

In the meantime, he doesn’t plan to change his style or his wardrobe. “It’s good, in a way,” he said, smiling. “When people or business folks see me in the lobby, they just figure I’m an engineer or something, and they don’t bother me. Then I can do my work.”