Building Collapse Puts Owner in Spotlight : Quake: Northridge complex where 16 died is part of a real estate empire built by an Indian immigrant. Some see him as role model, but he has been the target of several lawsuits on his properties.
In the 25 years since he immigrated from India, Shashikant Jogani quietly built a real estate empire, borrowing to buy apartment buildings no one else wanted, fixing them up, then leveraging them to buy more.
He became a rich man, and one of Los Angeles’ largest residential landlords.
But 30 seconds of shaking on Jan. 17 brought one of Jogani’s jewels--the three-story, 164-unit Northridge Meadows apartment building--groaning to the ground as the first floor collapsed, killing 16 tenants. The Reseda Boulevard complex, the scene of the highest concentration of quake fatalities, came to symbolize the temblor’s deadly force.
The tragedy has thrust Jogani, a savvy businessman with a passion for privacy, into the spotlight. The picture that emerges from interviews with associates and clients and from public records is one of paradox.
He is respected as an example of American entrepreneurial success, but acknowledges serious financial difficulties.
The quake has forced the evacuation of hundreds of the apartments he controls, amounting to 15% of his holdings. Four years ago, his wealth was estimated at $375 million; last week, Jogani issued a statement to The Times asserting that aside from the estimated $9 million loss at Northridge Meadows, the continuing recession has meant that “equities in my other properties have vanished.”
Jogani is considered a role model in the Southland’s closely knit 3,000-member community of Jains, an Indian religious sect that teaches asceticism, nonviolence and vegetarianism. Yet at least one tenant, a creditor and the city of Los Angeles filed lawsuits against Jogani, asking the courts to force him to better maintain his residential properties.
Although he has earned a reputation as a shrewd and skillful negotiator, some say Jogani will never distinguish himself as a great communicator.
After the quake, survivors attacked their landlord as distant and aloof from their misery.
But an aide insisted that Jogani donned a hard hat and personally helped tenants salvage belongings, and offered generous terms at his other apartment complexes for those left homeless.
“No matter how great my loss,” Jogani said in a prepared statement, “it does not compare to the loss of those who died in the earthquake.”
Jogani learned about the collapse of Northridge Meadows while listening to his battery-powered radio after being jolted awake in his Glendale home. The news pitched him into “shock and grief,” according to the Jogani statement.
*
He said he offered tenants discounted lodging at another apartment building in Van Nuys, but that only five families accepted. He said he promptly returned security deposits and refunded prorated rents. He hired engineers to make sure it was safe to re-enter Northridge Meadows.
Those who know him say Jogani, 47, never has been comfortable in the spotlight. In fact, drawing attention to oneself goes against the teachings of Jainism. The sect’s name is derived from the words for conquering the body, or material self.
Although he drives a 1987 Cadillac, Jogani is the Jains’ most obvious example of an American success story.
“He has been a pioneer in the Indian community,” said Dr. Krishna Reddy, president of the Federation of Indo-American Associations .
Born near Bombay, Jogani came to California in 1969 to study chemical engineering at USC. As a young man, Jogani and other Jains lived on Berendo Street in Los Angeles.
Now he owns a 38-unit apartment building worth $1.5 million on that street.
For a while after graduating from USC, Jogani sold beads and worked as a hotel bellhop, then started a jewel business called Gemlust. He still runs several jewelry companies from his Hill Street offices in the Los Angeles jewelry district.
Diamonds gave him seed money. He comes from an old family, which with other Jain families has been heavily involved in the uncut diamond trade for a century. But real estate was Jogani’s path to fortune.
In the late 1970s, he attended a few seminars, read some how-to books and started buying apartment buildings.
“California real estate is where the real money is,” Jogani said in an interview three years ago. “Most of the big millionaires in America made their money in real estate. I take my clue from that.”
He bought his first apartment building in 1979, a small Glendale complex he purchased for about $500,000. By 1990, a profile in the business magazine Forbes estimated the value of Jogani’s holdings at $375 million--but noted they were encumbered by $280 million in debt.
He is worth “much less” now, said Jogani’s attorney, Steven E. Glass, because Jogani and other landlords have been pummeled by falling property values and escalating vacancy rates.
Property records show that Jogani and his wife, Renuka, own more than two dozen Valley apartment complexes, located in working class neighborhoods in Van Nuys, North Hollywood, San Fernando, Sylmar, Northridge and Canoga Park. He also owns properties in Hollywood, as well as more than two dozen properties in Orange County.
Northridge Meadows was a good example of how Jogani built his fortune. He bought the complex, then nearly 10 years old, from builder Brian Heller in 1981, paying about $3.5 million. Property records show the complex was in “fair” condition and Jogani took out a $500,000 conventional loan.
In December, 1992, he restructured his financing for the building. Jogani, acting as an individual, sold the property to S J Properties No. 4, one of his holding companies. The building was assessed at $6.8 million, nearly twice what it was worth 10 years earlier, and he took out a $1.2-million mortgage from First Nationwide Bank.
*
Some of Jogani’s holdings have been more controversial.
Two apartment buildings on Blythe Street in Van Nuys allegedly were notorious drug-dealing havens in 1988, when the city attorney’s office filed a nuisance abatement lawsuit against the Joganis. The city sought to close down the apartments for a year, but the case was resolved when the Joganis agreed to install lighting, erect a chain-link fence, remove graffiti and hire security guards to patrol the grounds.
Court records show that Jogani has been named as a defendant in scores of other lawsuits over the last decade. Many of the cases could be classified as routine stumble-and-fall litigation. One pending suit, scheduled for a hearing this week, accuses Jogani of tolerating slum-like conditions in a North Hollywood complex.
In another lawsuit, a creditor sought a court order forcing Jogani to maintain a 46-unit apartment building at 8634 Columbus Ave., in North Hills, which the lender alleged was deteriorating while Jogani was defaulting on his loan payments. The building was yellow-tagged after the earthquake, with repairs estimated at $200,000.
Late last year, Jogani was accused in a lawsuit by the NAACP’s Legal Defense & Education Fund of discriminating against prospective African American tenants by charging them higher rents and security deposits and limiting their numbers.
Jogani would not discuss details of his financial situation, nor would several banks that hold large Jogani mortgages on Northridge Meadows and other condemned or damaged Jogani properties.
Jogani, who declined repeated requests for an interview, said in the prepared statement that the Northridge earthquake “has been devastating to me personally and financially.”
*
Northridge Meadows is a “total loss” and “must be demolished and the land cleared as soon as possible,” he said.
Engineers who studied the building shortly after the collapse noted an absence of plywood in the walls. The material would have stiffened the structure and enhanced its ability to withstand the quake. The building met code requirements in effect when it was completed in 1972.
Jogani said he, like most apartment building owners, has no earthquake insurance. The premiums are too expensive and the deductible too high.
Gordhan Patel, vice president of the Federation of Indo-American Associations and a longtime Jogani friend, said Jogani was deeply depressed by the deaths at Northridge Meadows.
“The loss of human life is totally unacceptable to the Jain belief,” Patel said. “Any living organism, you do not harm it. You do not even kill a fly. . . . I am sure it has crossed his mind, ‘Why my building?’ ”
