http://www.indystar.com/sports/pacers/
Shunning the spotlight
As the low-key owners of the Pacers, the Simon have perfected the practice of staying behind the scenes.
By Phil Richards
phil.richards@indystar.com
May 22, 2004
When Mel and Herb Simon bought the Indiana Pacers in 1983, their purpose was to save the NBA club, not run it, and they certainly weren't interested in seeing their picture in the newspaper or having their thoughts aired on the 11 p.m. news.
"Not like Cuban," Mel volunteered.
"We're a little more aggressive in shopping center development," Herb explained.
Unlike Mark Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks owner who seems to get as much face time as his players, the Simons have remained resolutely and stubbornly behind the scenes. They hired Donnie Walsh, CEO and president of Pacers Sports & Entertainment, and they allow him to run the franchise.
That doesn't mean they aren't involved, and it definitely doesn't mean they don't care. The Pacers' owners are fans.
Herb splits time between Indianapolis and his Santa Barbara, Calif., residence, but if he's in town and his team is playing, he's beside Walsh in the stands.
"He sits there very quietly," Walsh said, "and you can tell that every cell is quivering."
David Stern knows the Simons and their Pacers passion. Shortly after being named NBA commissioner in 1984, Stern visited Market Square Arena to see the Pacers play.
"We were having a hotly contested game, and the next thing I know, Mel is headed for the middle of the floor with Herb pulling him back," Stern said.
Mel was wont to offer officials the use of his eyeglasses in those days. That night, he attempted to deliver them.
"Now whenever I get there," Stern said, "I make sure that Mel is locked in the suite."
A winning formula
Whatever, it works. The Pacers have become one of the NBA's elite franchises. They went 61-21 in the regular season, the league's best record. They are playoff participants for the 14th time in the past 15 years and will face the Detroit Pistons tonight in the first game of the Eastern Conference finals.
Mel, 77, watches from his suite, but no lock is necessary. He and Herb prefer the background. Walsh said he can "count on both hands" the number of times the Simons have visited the locker room during Walsh's 20 years with the team.
"Bad luck," Mel said with a cackle.
"There are some rare occasions we go in," Herb, 69, said. "For the championship we'll go in."
The Simons were seated side by side in Herb's handsome hardwood-paneled office atop the National City Center tower, headquarters of Simon Property Group, the largest real estate and retail estate investment trust in the United States. Family photos and mementos from a lifetime in business and sport were tidily arrayed.
The mood was light, and the brothers' affection for one another was obvious, and the opportunity to see it rare.
The Simons seldom consent to be interviewed and photographed together, and while they are aggressive and singularly successful in their dealings with their shopping center empire, they are not flamboyant there, either.
After 17 years with the team, shooting guard Reggie Miller, the perpetual Pacer, knows and appreciates their quiet ways. He wondered aloud if any of "our younger guys" had any relationship with the Simons.
Not fifth-year forward Jonathan Bender. He said he has been briefly introduced to Mel. He has not met Herb.
"I've been with an owner that comes into the pregame meeting," said Pacers coach Rick Carlisle, who during the past 20 years has played or coached for six NBA teams. "Herb and Mel Simon are at the top of the list because they have a real presence with the team and with the community on the one hand, and on the other they have an understatedness.
"I think it's appreciated by the players."
Call them invisible, but don't call them uninvolved. Mel maintains some distance, but Herb consults with Walsh almost daily. Herb not only has served on the NBA's board of governors, he has chaired it. He remains a member of the league's audit and advisory finance committees. He was an adviser during the establishment of the NBA Store, the league's merchandising arm.
"He has been involved in virtually every major decision in the NBA for close to two decades," Stern said. "And he's always pleading the Pacers' cause in every league meeting, to the point where I have to go over and use a ruler to rap his knuckles."
In the beginning
The Pacers were a struggling franchise in 1983. Their 20-62 record represented a long fall from their proud ABA days and the three championships they claimed before that league's nine-year run ended in 1976.
Pacers owner Sam Nassi was awash in red ink and looking to bail. He had all but finalized a deal that would have sent the Pacers to Sacramento, Calif., when Indianapolis Mayor William Hudnut approached the Simons.
Hudnut feared that losing the Pacers would wound the city's morale, relegate it to minor-league status nationally and cripple the Downtown revitalization drive that had begun under his predecessor, Richard Lugar. In an effort to keep the Pacers in Indianapolis, Hudnut approached the Hulman family and the late Dave Thomas, a Columbus, Ohio, resident and Wendy's restaurant founder.
Both declined. The Simons were a last resort. They showed their gratitude to the city in which they had made their start -- and prospered.
"The last time I was in Herbie's office, he looked at me and grinned and said, 'Well, I've got to do it, don't I?' " Hudnut recalled.
Had the Simons declined and the Pacers moved, the Colts might have looked elsewhere when they fled Baltimore for Indianapolis in 1984.
For $11 million, according to Forbes Magazine, the Simons got $7 million in debt and a team that had sold 1,255 season tickets the previous year. The transaction was greeted with enthusiasm in the media and the community.
"Everybody was excited about us getting the team," Herb said, "except we weren't so sure we were. We didn't know what we were getting into."
What the Simons knew was business, and leadership, and delegation of responsibility. In 1986, they elevated Walsh from assistant coach to general manager. They invested his appointment with full confidence and authority.
"The first time I met with them, I spoke to them about it," Walsh recalled. "How do you want me to run this? I can run it in a first-class manner. I can run it in a 'Ma and Pa' manner.
"They wanted it run in a first-class manner, so I've always proceeded that way."
Building a better future
It required six years of drafting and building and a rotation of coaches from George Irvine to Jack Ramsay to Dick Versace to Bob Hill to Larry Brown, but the Pacers finally proclaimed their arrival with a run to the Eastern Conference finals in 1993-94, a feat they matched the following season.
The impact resounded throughout the community.
"In 1993, many businesses moved out of Downtown; we had a lot of vacancies," said Tamara Zahn, president of Indianapolis Downtown Inc., an organization dedicated to city development. "But the 1994-95 season was a really special time. Circle Centre mall (a Simon property) was just starting and it was . . . the Eastern Conference finals. Everybody was excited and Downtown was energized.
"I really think that the momentum changed at that time; that's when people started believing Downtown was going to work out."
Sound management, good business principles, a lot of patience and the magic of franchise appreciation have nicely covered the Simons' early losses. Forbes puts the Pacers' value at $280 million, with 2002-03 revenues and operating income at $94 million.
That doesn't mean it all happened without turmoil.
"We fight all the time," Mel barked.
"It's our way of doing business," Herb explained.
The Simons' individual offices spill off a roomy suite, and the doors generally are open. When Mel and Herb engage in a discussion, friends say, they do so without leaving their seats. They shout back and forth, office to office, usually with full fervor.
Whether or not to keep the Pacers was an occasional subject during the early days.
"We got in discussions," Herb conceded, "but we never seriously considered doing anything."
Come a long way
The Simons are Brooklyn, N.Y., natives who were reared in the Bronx. Their father, Max, was a tailor.
Mel came to Indianapolis in 1953, when he was serving in the U.S. Army and was assigned to Fort Benjamin Harrison. After his discharge, he went to work as a leasing agent for the Albert Frankel Co. and was joined in Indianapolis by Herb, who also worked for Frankel.
In 1960, Mel, with Herb, incorporated Melvin Simon & Associates. They began developing strip centers connected with grocery stores and drugstores. Southgate Plaza in Bloomington, Ind., was the first shopping center in an enterprise that now owns outright or has an interest in 247 properties in North America and another 47 in Europe. Simon Property Group, now run by Mel's son, CEO David Simon, is the largest mall owner in the United States.
The Simons have come a long way from nothing. They have earned their pleasures.
Herb favors travel. Mel loves golf. Mel built a golf course on the grounds of his Carmel estate, although knee and back problems limit the frequency with which he uses it.
"He wants to play well. He tries hard," said Michael Browning, an Indianapolis developer who owns a golf course home just down the road from Mel in the Dominican Republic. "And he's fun to play with."
Logo Athletic founder Tom Shine, now Reebok's vice president for Sports & Entertainment Worldwide, has been a friend of the Simons for 20 years. Shine was married in the Dominican Republic in 2000, amid the Pacers' run to the NBA Finals. Mel went to great lengths to assure a satellite hookup to his home.
After the ceremony, the wedding party and 200 guests retired to Mel's for the reception. Soon enough, nearly everyone was jammed in the television room, rooting the Pacers past Milwaukee, their first-round opponent. No one was more intense than the Simons.
"I walked out with Herb," Shine recalled, "and he said, 'Well, we won the game, but we missed your reception.' "
Mel once owned a home in the Palm Beach, Fla., area, and for a time he commuted to work in Indianapolis. His jet taxied at 7 a.m. and he would walk into his office a few minutes after 9. Each day.
Jim Browning (no relation to Michael) is a friend and business associate. During a visit to Mel's Florida residence, Mel's wife, Bren, mentioned that the house had 52 rooms, of which Mel had been in about five.
"Why?" Browning asked.
"She said, 'Well, he's got his favorite rooms, his favorite chairs, and he just doesn't need the rest of it.' "
Browning was an original partner in the Indianapolis firm Browning Day Mullins Dierdorf, which served as coordinating architect on Circle Centre mall and has been involved in a number of Simon projects. Browning oversaw the landscaping of the back yard of Herb's Northside home. As such, he spotted an invoice for daffodils and tulip bulbs in an amount that might have financed construction of a small home. He called Herb to tell him the price was outrageous, that he was being gouged.
"And Herb said, 'Will they be pretty?' " Browning recalled.
"I said, 'Goodbye, Mr. Simon.' "
"They live in lavish houses and have a lot of things," Browning continued, "but somehow I just don't read showoff in it, and they're very generous. Look in any direction in Indianapolis and you'll see something they helped out in some way."
The Simons' most recent philanthropic gesture benefited Indiana University, of which David Simon is an alum. The brothers and their families donated $9 million earlier this month for construction of a life sciences research building on the Bloomington campus.
Their Pacers exhibit the same generosity. During the past 10 years, the Pacers Foundation has given grants, scholarships and in-kind donations of $3.5 million to youth agencies throughout the state. Pacers Sports & Entertainment has given another $5.1 million.
The giving began, one might say, in 1983 when the Simons saved the Pacers for Indianapolis.
Enjoy them tonight. Mel and Herb certain will.
Mel Simon
• Age: 77
• Hometown: Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., reared in the Bronx
• Family: Wife, Bren; children, David, Deborah, Cynthia, Tamme and Joshua; Joshua, also called Max, died in 1999 at age 25.
• Education: City College of New York, bachelor's
• Professional: Co-chairman, Simon Property Group
• History: Came to Indianapolis in 1953 while serving in the U.S. Army and assigned to Fort Benjamin Harrison. Stayed after military separation and worked as a lease representative for Albert Frankel Co., an Indianapolis shopping center developer. In 1960, incorporated his own real estate investment company, Melvin Simon & Associates, with his brother, Herb.
Herb Simon
• Age: 69
• Hometown: Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., reared in the Bronx
• Family: Wife, Diane; children, Jennifer, Stephen, Sarah, Rachel, Asher
• Education: City College of New York, bachelor's
• Professional: Co-chairman, Simon Property Group
• History: Working with his brother, Mel, grew Melvin Simon & Associates into the nation's largest shopping center and mall owner, with 247 properties in North America and 47 in Europe. Company went public in 1993, when most of its properties were moved into Simon Property Group. Merged with DeBartolo Realty Group in 1996. Market capitalization of $29 billion.
Shunning the spotlight
As the low-key owners of the Pacers, the Simon have perfected the practice of staying behind the scenes.
By Phil Richards
phil.richards@indystar.com
May 22, 2004
When Mel and Herb Simon bought the Indiana Pacers in 1983, their purpose was to save the NBA club, not run it, and they certainly weren't interested in seeing their picture in the newspaper or having their thoughts aired on the 11 p.m. news.
"Not like Cuban," Mel volunteered.
"We're a little more aggressive in shopping center development," Herb explained.
Unlike Mark Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks owner who seems to get as much face time as his players, the Simons have remained resolutely and stubbornly behind the scenes. They hired Donnie Walsh, CEO and president of Pacers Sports & Entertainment, and they allow him to run the franchise.
That doesn't mean they aren't involved, and it definitely doesn't mean they don't care. The Pacers' owners are fans.
Herb splits time between Indianapolis and his Santa Barbara, Calif., residence, but if he's in town and his team is playing, he's beside Walsh in the stands.
"He sits there very quietly," Walsh said, "and you can tell that every cell is quivering."
David Stern knows the Simons and their Pacers passion. Shortly after being named NBA commissioner in 1984, Stern visited Market Square Arena to see the Pacers play.
"We were having a hotly contested game, and the next thing I know, Mel is headed for the middle of the floor with Herb pulling him back," Stern said.
Mel was wont to offer officials the use of his eyeglasses in those days. That night, he attempted to deliver them.
"Now whenever I get there," Stern said, "I make sure that Mel is locked in the suite."
A winning formula
Whatever, it works. The Pacers have become one of the NBA's elite franchises. They went 61-21 in the regular season, the league's best record. They are playoff participants for the 14th time in the past 15 years and will face the Detroit Pistons tonight in the first game of the Eastern Conference finals.
Mel, 77, watches from his suite, but no lock is necessary. He and Herb prefer the background. Walsh said he can "count on both hands" the number of times the Simons have visited the locker room during Walsh's 20 years with the team.
"Bad luck," Mel said with a cackle.
"There are some rare occasions we go in," Herb, 69, said. "For the championship we'll go in."
The Simons were seated side by side in Herb's handsome hardwood-paneled office atop the National City Center tower, headquarters of Simon Property Group, the largest real estate and retail estate investment trust in the United States. Family photos and mementos from a lifetime in business and sport were tidily arrayed.
The mood was light, and the brothers' affection for one another was obvious, and the opportunity to see it rare.
The Simons seldom consent to be interviewed and photographed together, and while they are aggressive and singularly successful in their dealings with their shopping center empire, they are not flamboyant there, either.
After 17 years with the team, shooting guard Reggie Miller, the perpetual Pacer, knows and appreciates their quiet ways. He wondered aloud if any of "our younger guys" had any relationship with the Simons.
Not fifth-year forward Jonathan Bender. He said he has been briefly introduced to Mel. He has not met Herb.
"I've been with an owner that comes into the pregame meeting," said Pacers coach Rick Carlisle, who during the past 20 years has played or coached for six NBA teams. "Herb and Mel Simon are at the top of the list because they have a real presence with the team and with the community on the one hand, and on the other they have an understatedness.
"I think it's appreciated by the players."
Call them invisible, but don't call them uninvolved. Mel maintains some distance, but Herb consults with Walsh almost daily. Herb not only has served on the NBA's board of governors, he has chaired it. He remains a member of the league's audit and advisory finance committees. He was an adviser during the establishment of the NBA Store, the league's merchandising arm.
"He has been involved in virtually every major decision in the NBA for close to two decades," Stern said. "And he's always pleading the Pacers' cause in every league meeting, to the point where I have to go over and use a ruler to rap his knuckles."
In the beginning
The Pacers were a struggling franchise in 1983. Their 20-62 record represented a long fall from their proud ABA days and the three championships they claimed before that league's nine-year run ended in 1976.
Pacers owner Sam Nassi was awash in red ink and looking to bail. He had all but finalized a deal that would have sent the Pacers to Sacramento, Calif., when Indianapolis Mayor William Hudnut approached the Simons.
Hudnut feared that losing the Pacers would wound the city's morale, relegate it to minor-league status nationally and cripple the Downtown revitalization drive that had begun under his predecessor, Richard Lugar. In an effort to keep the Pacers in Indianapolis, Hudnut approached the Hulman family and the late Dave Thomas, a Columbus, Ohio, resident and Wendy's restaurant founder.
Both declined. The Simons were a last resort. They showed their gratitude to the city in which they had made their start -- and prospered.
"The last time I was in Herbie's office, he looked at me and grinned and said, 'Well, I've got to do it, don't I?' " Hudnut recalled.
Had the Simons declined and the Pacers moved, the Colts might have looked elsewhere when they fled Baltimore for Indianapolis in 1984.
For $11 million, according to Forbes Magazine, the Simons got $7 million in debt and a team that had sold 1,255 season tickets the previous year. The transaction was greeted with enthusiasm in the media and the community.
"Everybody was excited about us getting the team," Herb said, "except we weren't so sure we were. We didn't know what we were getting into."
What the Simons knew was business, and leadership, and delegation of responsibility. In 1986, they elevated Walsh from assistant coach to general manager. They invested his appointment with full confidence and authority.
"The first time I met with them, I spoke to them about it," Walsh recalled. "How do you want me to run this? I can run it in a first-class manner. I can run it in a 'Ma and Pa' manner.
"They wanted it run in a first-class manner, so I've always proceeded that way."
Building a better future
It required six years of drafting and building and a rotation of coaches from George Irvine to Jack Ramsay to Dick Versace to Bob Hill to Larry Brown, but the Pacers finally proclaimed their arrival with a run to the Eastern Conference finals in 1993-94, a feat they matched the following season.
The impact resounded throughout the community.
"In 1993, many businesses moved out of Downtown; we had a lot of vacancies," said Tamara Zahn, president of Indianapolis Downtown Inc., an organization dedicated to city development. "But the 1994-95 season was a really special time. Circle Centre mall (a Simon property) was just starting and it was . . . the Eastern Conference finals. Everybody was excited and Downtown was energized.
"I really think that the momentum changed at that time; that's when people started believing Downtown was going to work out."
Sound management, good business principles, a lot of patience and the magic of franchise appreciation have nicely covered the Simons' early losses. Forbes puts the Pacers' value at $280 million, with 2002-03 revenues and operating income at $94 million.
That doesn't mean it all happened without turmoil.
"We fight all the time," Mel barked.
"It's our way of doing business," Herb explained.
The Simons' individual offices spill off a roomy suite, and the doors generally are open. When Mel and Herb engage in a discussion, friends say, they do so without leaving their seats. They shout back and forth, office to office, usually with full fervor.
Whether or not to keep the Pacers was an occasional subject during the early days.
"We got in discussions," Herb conceded, "but we never seriously considered doing anything."
Come a long way
The Simons are Brooklyn, N.Y., natives who were reared in the Bronx. Their father, Max, was a tailor.
Mel came to Indianapolis in 1953, when he was serving in the U.S. Army and was assigned to Fort Benjamin Harrison. After his discharge, he went to work as a leasing agent for the Albert Frankel Co. and was joined in Indianapolis by Herb, who also worked for Frankel.
In 1960, Mel, with Herb, incorporated Melvin Simon & Associates. They began developing strip centers connected with grocery stores and drugstores. Southgate Plaza in Bloomington, Ind., was the first shopping center in an enterprise that now owns outright or has an interest in 247 properties in North America and another 47 in Europe. Simon Property Group, now run by Mel's son, CEO David Simon, is the largest mall owner in the United States.
The Simons have come a long way from nothing. They have earned their pleasures.
Herb favors travel. Mel loves golf. Mel built a golf course on the grounds of his Carmel estate, although knee and back problems limit the frequency with which he uses it.
"He wants to play well. He tries hard," said Michael Browning, an Indianapolis developer who owns a golf course home just down the road from Mel in the Dominican Republic. "And he's fun to play with."
Logo Athletic founder Tom Shine, now Reebok's vice president for Sports & Entertainment Worldwide, has been a friend of the Simons for 20 years. Shine was married in the Dominican Republic in 2000, amid the Pacers' run to the NBA Finals. Mel went to great lengths to assure a satellite hookup to his home.
After the ceremony, the wedding party and 200 guests retired to Mel's for the reception. Soon enough, nearly everyone was jammed in the television room, rooting the Pacers past Milwaukee, their first-round opponent. No one was more intense than the Simons.
"I walked out with Herb," Shine recalled, "and he said, 'Well, we won the game, but we missed your reception.' "
Mel once owned a home in the Palm Beach, Fla., area, and for a time he commuted to work in Indianapolis. His jet taxied at 7 a.m. and he would walk into his office a few minutes after 9. Each day.
Jim Browning (no relation to Michael) is a friend and business associate. During a visit to Mel's Florida residence, Mel's wife, Bren, mentioned that the house had 52 rooms, of which Mel had been in about five.
"Why?" Browning asked.
"She said, 'Well, he's got his favorite rooms, his favorite chairs, and he just doesn't need the rest of it.' "
Browning was an original partner in the Indianapolis firm Browning Day Mullins Dierdorf, which served as coordinating architect on Circle Centre mall and has been involved in a number of Simon projects. Browning oversaw the landscaping of the back yard of Herb's Northside home. As such, he spotted an invoice for daffodils and tulip bulbs in an amount that might have financed construction of a small home. He called Herb to tell him the price was outrageous, that he was being gouged.
"And Herb said, 'Will they be pretty?' " Browning recalled.
"I said, 'Goodbye, Mr. Simon.' "
"They live in lavish houses and have a lot of things," Browning continued, "but somehow I just don't read showoff in it, and they're very generous. Look in any direction in Indianapolis and you'll see something they helped out in some way."
The Simons' most recent philanthropic gesture benefited Indiana University, of which David Simon is an alum. The brothers and their families donated $9 million earlier this month for construction of a life sciences research building on the Bloomington campus.
Their Pacers exhibit the same generosity. During the past 10 years, the Pacers Foundation has given grants, scholarships and in-kind donations of $3.5 million to youth agencies throughout the state. Pacers Sports & Entertainment has given another $5.1 million.
The giving began, one might say, in 1983 when the Simons saved the Pacers for Indianapolis.
Enjoy them tonight. Mel and Herb certain will.
Mel Simon
• Age: 77
• Hometown: Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., reared in the Bronx
• Family: Wife, Bren; children, David, Deborah, Cynthia, Tamme and Joshua; Joshua, also called Max, died in 1999 at age 25.
• Education: City College of New York, bachelor's
• Professional: Co-chairman, Simon Property Group
• History: Came to Indianapolis in 1953 while serving in the U.S. Army and assigned to Fort Benjamin Harrison. Stayed after military separation and worked as a lease representative for Albert Frankel Co., an Indianapolis shopping center developer. In 1960, incorporated his own real estate investment company, Melvin Simon & Associates, with his brother, Herb.
Herb Simon
• Age: 69
• Hometown: Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., reared in the Bronx
• Family: Wife, Diane; children, Jennifer, Stephen, Sarah, Rachel, Asher
• Education: City College of New York, bachelor's
• Professional: Co-chairman, Simon Property Group
• History: Working with his brother, Mel, grew Melvin Simon & Associates into the nation's largest shopping center and mall owner, with 247 properties in North America and 47 in Europe. Company went public in 1993, when most of its properties were moved into Simon Property Group. Merged with DeBartolo Realty Group in 1996. Market capitalization of $29 billion.
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