Miami’s One-Man Band Hits Key Notes

Less than a year ago, Miami was given little chance of obtaining a National League expansion franchise. Today, it is seen as one of the favorites, if not the favorite, for one of the two teams that will begin play in 1993.

The difference between Miami then and Miami now? Meet H. Wayne Huizenga.

You say Joe Robbie Stadium needs about $10 million worth of improvements to make it a suitable baseball facility? Huizenga can write a check.

And the entry fee is $95 million? Give him a pen.

Many of the other cities are represented by investors who also can write a $95 million check. But other than Orlando’s Rich DeVos, co-founder of the Michigan-based Amway Corp., most of them are parts of ownership groups -- and DeVos would like to find some local partners. Huizenga doesn’t want any help. Unless people in baseball indicate he should do otherwise (and it’s not likely they will), he wants to own the team himself.

“He feels like he has the best chance of being successful in getting a team by doing it that way,” said Don Smiley, vice president of Huizenga’s South Florida Big League Baseball.

Huizenga (pronounced HI-zen-guh) is probably right. Baseball loves to see individual owners, which leaves little doubt about who is running the operation. But given the economic state of the country in general and of baseball in particular, even people who can afford teams have good reason to shy away.

“The economics of the game are distressing in the short term,” Smiley said several weeks ago, “but we think there is going to be a shakeout. We think some things are going to happen -- we don’t know what -- that will change the future. In the meantime, there is a market here to support a team and a local television market to support a team.”

Of all the cities still in contention for a team, Miami is the one that comes closest to Washington in a number of key demographic areas. Taken by itself, the Miami-Fort Lauderdale television market is the nation’s 16th-largest. But with the logical addition of nearby West Palm Beach and its environs -- where residents would seem likely to watch a Miami team’s telecasts -- the area becomes the nation’s seventh-largest.

In addition, although Joe Robbie Stadium, now used primarily for football, never will be considered a classic baseball park, it is a state-of-the-art facility. It also is half-owned by Huizenga, who holds 15 percent of its current primary user, the NFL’s Miami Dolphins. Its road access drew raves from the NL Expansion Committee when it visited there in February. And when the Baltimore Orioles and New York Yankees played two exhibition games there at the end of March, a combined total of about 113,000 fans attended.

“I always felt the market was here,” said William Perry III, executive director of the Miami Sports and Exhibition Authority. “I’ve felt that it is inevitable that baseball will come here at some point, that it would only be a matter of time before somebody came into the market. But (Huizenga) has the financial wherewithal to make this a credible bid.”

Huizenga may not have had much name recognition among the general public until recently, but people in the business world have known and watched him for years. “His track record is one of the best out there,” said Gary Jacobsen, an analyst for Kidder Peabody and Co., and a longtime fan of Huizenga.

“He’s one of the biggest names in business-building in this country in a couple of decades,” said Charles Lewis, a managing director at Merrill Lynch in Chicago who has been Huizenga’s investment banker and friend for many years.

Huizenga has helped lead two businesses from the mom-and-pop level to the New York Stock Exchange and Fortune 500 level. You may have heard of them: Waste Management and Blockbuster Entertainment.

For a measure of Huizenga’s seriousness and his buying power, consider this: In early February, he sold about 10 percent of his Blockbuster stock to help finance his baseball effort. He came away with about $25 million.

Huizenga is a paragon of on-the-job training. He attended college for about a year and a half before heading into the trash business. He began by driving a truck, but about a decade later, he and another hauler merged their businesses into what is now Waste Management. They subsequently built it into the world’s largest trash-hauler, which now is also involved in recycling and hazardous-waste processing as well as pollution-control technologies and engineering.

He left Waste Management in 1984, but three years later he and a group of investors purchased Blockbuster -- then a Dallas-area chain of 19 video rental stores. Today, Blockbuster has more than 1,800 outlets worldwide. According to Video Store Magazine, its 1990 system-wide revenues (revenues generated by company-owned stores and franchised stores) were $1.25 billion. That, according to the magazine, was more than the combined revenues of the 99 next-largest competitors. Pittsburgh Pirates President Carl Barger is a member of the company’s board of directors.

Last August the company reached an agreement with Major League Baseball Properties’ video production arm, making Blockbuster the exclusive rental and retail outlet for Major League Baseball’s line of videotapes.

When Huizenga left Waste Management, he kept his considerable stock holdings in the company (today valued at about $150 million) and used them as a base for acquiring a variety of service-related businesses. Among them were a bottled-water and cooler-rental business; a business that leases equipment used in cleaning auto and other machine parts; and a portable-toilet-rental business. He also began purchasing Florida real estate, including office buildings, shopping centers, hotels and undeveloped land.

These are all investments that can make a man a lot of money while keeping him out of the public eye -- something Huizenga seems to like. He declined to be interviewed for this story. However, he moved into the South Florida spotlight about a year ago, when he purchased 15 percent of the Dolphins and 50 percent of Joe Robbie Stadium from the Robbie family. Then came the decision to get Blockbuster involved with the sponsorship of a new college football bowl game; the inaugural Blockbuster Bowl ended up attracting Penn State and Florida State last December and was a huge success. And now there is the campaign for baseball.

“It’s been a pretty interesting year,” Smiley said.

But the sports projects fit quite neatly into a logical progression toward “a beautiful synergy, as we call it in our business,” Lewis said.

“It’s an extension of all the things he learned at Waste,” Lewis said. “Wayne likes businesses where there’s a repeat use of an asset, like a garbage container or a videotape. The economics of the business make sense to him.”

That’s one track of Wayne’s world. Another is the real-estate track, and, according to Lewis, “The stadium, as I see it, was a solid real-estate-oriented deal.” The stadium also is an asset that can be used repeatedly. And what is the most repetitious user of a stadium? A baseball team.

“Everything we do, we look at from a business standpoint,” said Richard Roshon, president of Huizenga Holdings. “This is more fun because it’s baseball, but the bottom line is it’s a business deal.”

That is not to say there isn’t a civic side to Huizenga. He and his wife, Marti, are heavily involved in a number of charitable activities in South Florida.

“With all of his success, he remains the same person,” said Eliott Barnett, a Fort Lauderdale attorney. “He’s still Wayne -- or as my children call him, Wayno.”

And what’s Wayno like?

“Wayno is warm, friendly, has a great sense of humor and is intensely loyal to his friends,” Barnett said. “He’s a real guy, a real person.”

But from a work standpoint, it is the next deal and the next challenge that keep him going. “He has an unquenchable thirst for challenges and learning,” Lewis said. “When he starts to learn about a business, he’s very much like a young student who comes across an area of study and becomes consumed by the passion of learning about it. He immerses himself so totally that within a year or two, he’s competing with people who have been doing it for years.”

Said Barnett: “The more complex the situation, the more he gets going. It isn’t the money that drives him. He doesn’t need anymore of that. It’s the challenge of dealing with problems.”

Huizenga’s bid for a team is not problem-free. H.T. Smith, a Miami attorney advocating the interests of the black community in this project, continues to hold his ground. Smith’s activism prompted a meeting with two members of the Expansion Committee -- NL President Bill White and Fred Wilpon of the New York Mets -- when the committee visited Miami in late February.

Smith came away from that session encouraged, and he edged away from talk of a boycott or some other form of anti-Huizenga activity. However, he has grown dissatisfied with what has happened since then.

Smith said he has asked Huizenga to outline his plan for employment of blacks in his organization and his plan for the involvement of black-owned business enterprises. “He has pretty much stiff-armed me,” Smith said.

Smiley said if Huizenga is awarded a team, the team will comply with Major League Baseball’s affirmative-action guidelines. “Baseball hasn’t told us what that plan is,” Smiley said, “but you can damn well be assured we will abide by it. We are not responding to Mr. Smith the same way we wouldn’t respond to anyone with a question like that. The answer has not been given to us yet.

“We all realize baseball (in Miami) would be good for everyone -- all races. It’s just elementary that it would benefit everyone.”

Nevertheless, Smith said, “We will be voicing our opposition to Mr. Huizenga owning a major-league baseball team.” Smith is sketchy on what form that opposition will take, and he said he understands his battle may be an uphill one. But he said, “It’s cowardly and immoral to have an objection in principal to something like this and not say anything. We will fight irrespective of what the odds are.”

Sports and Exhibition Authority Executive Director Perry, who is black, said Smith’s objections are “a concern to me. Quite naturally, it’s a very, very sensitive issue. And I think it has served to raise the sensitivities of the Huizenga organization.” But Perry also said he thinks Smith’s efforts will have “no effect whatsoever” on the Expansion Committee’s decision.

“It’s purely an economic decision,” Perry said.

Or in this case, a Huizenga economic decision.