Unsinkable Hirschfeld Planning a Comeback : Personality: After disastrous period in Miami, including getting only 1,600 votes for mayor, the entrepreneur is back in Manhattan.

Hanging out with Abe Hirschfeld is like inhaling second-hand smoke from an opium pipe. Hour by hour, it gets harder and harder to distinguish reality from fantasy.

The 73-year-old multimillionaire moved back to Manhattan last fall after five years in Miami Beach, where he garnered only 1,600 votes for mayor and recently was forced to liquidate his beachfront Castle Hotel at a $20 million loss. A certain licking of wounds would seem to be in order.

But, no! Theatrical producer Hirschfeld discloses he is in serious, heavy negotiations to bring a revival of the ‘60s musical “Hair” to Broadway, and introduce an unprecedented ninth performance each week exclusively for schoolchildren.

Real estate developer Hirschfeld is announcing his proposal to move the United Nations across town to a site five times larger along the Hudson River. Coincidentally, he owns a 20% interest in the site.

And political visionary Hirschfeld (his favorite role) is putting the finishing touches on two detailed plans: One would upgrade the subway system while lowering the fare, and the other would eradicate the drug problem in the city, the nation and the world, with 100% guaranteed success!

His ideas may seem outlandish. But some of his longshots have become wildly successful. This sparsely educated Polish-Israeli immigrant has single-handedly built an empire out of parking garages that have been valued at anywhere from $100 million to $500 million. And Hirschfeld’s trendy Vertical Club, more than a decade after opening, is still one of fickle New York City’s hottest health clubs.

Abe Hirschfeld has an unpolished mind, but it’s a brilliant one, says Ziporah, his wife of 48 years. He sees beyond the horizon.

He also makes powerful enemies.

In 1986, Gov. Mario Cuomo spent imposing sums of money and fought a bitter court battle to get Hirschfeld thrown off the ballot for lieutenant governor, saying, “I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving the state if Abe Hirschfeld were lieutenant governor.” Then-Mayor Edward I. Koch seconded that emotion with: “I wouldn’t feel comfortable if Mario Cuomo left the room!”

In 1976, Hirschfeld spat in the face of state Democratic leader Stanley Steingut for refusing to back him for U.S. Senate.

Last year, he spat in the face of Miami Herald reporter Bonnie Weston because he disliked the paper’s coverage of his feud with Miami Beach officials.

And in 1977, he locked Dorothy Green, a New York City environmental official, in his office and threatened, screaming, to keep her hostage until she issued one of his parking garages a clean-air permit. She sued him for unlawful imprisonment, and they settled out of court.

Hirschfeld neither disputes nor repents any of this, noting only that a less honest man, in similar circumstances, might have tried to bribe Green. She has confirmed that he didn’t. And there is no record, in a long, feisty and publicity-hungry career, of anyone accusing Hirschfeld of corruption.

When people say or write negative things about Abe Hirschfeld, “it doesn’t bother me, because they don’t know Abe Hirschfeld,” Ziporah says. “I know Abe Hirschfeld. He’s a good man. He’s not a thief. He’s not a liar.”

She pauses. “Sometimes it may seem as if he’s lying.” Another pause. “But it’s the way he really sees the world.”

Her claim is borne out by extended exposure. A recent afternoon spent falling through the Hirschfeld looking glass included:

* Abe in his real estate development office, showing off the flower-covered tuxedo that, as one gossip column recently sniped, makes him look like a float.

“Did you read that nice compliment about me?” he asks, beaming. Without a trace of embarrassment, he notes that every other man at the benefit where he debuted the jacket last month wore traditional black-tie. “You had to pay $5,000 to be there,” he says, chortling, “and I was the only one not dressed like the waiters!”

* Abe in his hotel facing Pennsylvania Station, explaining how he got his start in business running a factory in British Palestine. Coated in a foreign accent thick as fur, it sounds like he says he made cars for land mines. After three fruitless repetitions, he gives up and spells the unpronounceable word. It’s parts.

Abe in his Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking the Wollman skating rink, which many people think of unofficially as the Trump skating rink, after the developer who renovated it.

Present company thinks of it as the Hirschfeld rink, since, he confides, it was really his idea to get The Donald to rescue it for the city--just as his new renovated office and apartment buildings have single-handedly revitalized 1. Lower Manhattan 2. Jackson Heights, Queens, 3. Union City, N.J., 4. Miami Beach and . . . well, you get the picture.

People dislike Abe Hirschfeld because they are jealous of Abe Hirschfeld, Ziporah claims.

“When something doesn’t turn out well for him, he turns right around and does something else better,” says Ziporah.

As always, she refers to him by both his names--kind of like the Eiffel Tower. That Parisian landmark, once reviled as an architectural eyesore, has made an indelible if gaudy mark on the landscape, and is made of cast iron.