Not Much More Than a Speck
Meeting with thefrontpageonline.com, Mr. Katersky vigorously insisted that the power sweep-out is scarcely more than a technicality, hardly more than paperwork. The team’s contract merely ran out, he said, and by a symmetrical coincidence at a conjunction when he and his partners had exactly completed their promised rejuvenation of the studio. Just after lunch, the Chairman of the Board, jacketless and tieless as is his custom, looked more haggard than fresh as he met with the newspaper. He painted a glowing picture of the fiscal and creative health of The Culver Studios. With the firmness of cement, he asserted that virtually all of the significant furniture in his life remains untouched, except for one little corner.
Who Can Tell a Difference?
“There really aren’t many changes,” Mr. Katersky said. “Myself and my partners have finished what we came to do. We were hired when the studio was purchased from Sony (April 2004). Our job was to fix it. Turn it around. Fill it up. Put it on course. Get it in shape. We have done that. The studio is full, basically. It is on plan this year, financially. It will make it, and probably will exceed its plan by the end of December. Totally in the black, doing exceedingly well.” By contrast, when the Katersky group teamed with Pacific Coast Capital Partners and Lehman Brothers to buy the historic lot from Sony, “it was considerably short of being in the black,” he said. But the question persists as to why the men who say they reversed the studio’s descent are being forced. “We had a contract,” Mr. Katersky said. “Our contract has expired. We are 3 guys who are entrepreneurs. We have a lot of other things we are doing. The studio we are building in Albuquerque will be twice as big as this one. We have several projects in Europe, a project in Hollywood, at Selma and Vine, to build a 120,000-square foot office building, across from a new W Hotel that is going to be built. Our plate is full.
The Psychology of Goodbye
“We came here, and we did what we said we were going to do,” Mr. Katersky said. “Our contract is up. The majority owner of the facility is Lehman Brothers through Pacific Coast Capital Partners. It is not us. We have a minority interest.” When the assertion “the decision to leave was not yours,” was put to Mr. Katersky, he replied laconically, “Look, the contract expired. We only expected to be here for a… We negotiated a contract, and we did what we said we could do within that period of time. We did it. There is nothing else for us to do here. We are guys who go and do projects. That is what we do.”
Next: Outgoing Chairman of the Board Hal Katersky peers into his, and Culver City’s, future.
