Think it’s bad here? Try there. For years I have been a member of the chorus of business owners who decried Los Angeles’ City Council and our former-labor-organizer mayor for their various anti-business stances. I went journalistically ballistic when City Council President Eric Garcetti wrote potential conventioneers that they should not patronize the Airport Hilton because it did not pay a “living wage” to some of its staff. Well, I won’t say all is forgiven, but they all look a lot more business friendly since I experienced a truly anti-business administration… that of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez… and learned the story of Freddy Cohen. For the past several years, the International Council of Shopping Centers has sponsored two-day seminars on crisis management for its members. I have presented these seminars in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and, earlier this month, in Colombia and Venezuela. Now THIS is anti-business. I learned one important business lesson in Venezuela (in addition to the fact that I have never seen so many beautiful women in one place): If you think that California and Los Angeles suffer from an anti-business reputation and reality, you should have been with me in Venezuela, the Land of Chavez. I have always made it a practice not to express opinions regarding the political situation in any country I visit; it’s bad form, in all likelihood I don’t have all the facts, and I am a guest in their country. So I did a lot of tongue biting (my own) while in Venezuela. And the following story will explain why: Salomon Cohen Levy was born in Jerusalem in 1927, part of a Jewish family that emigrated there from Persia, and wound up in Venezuela. In 1958, he founded a construction company, Constructora Sambil, that has built seven shopping centers (all completely non-smoking) and six hotels in Venezuela. A thriving business The centers are visited by more than 300,000 shoppers daily, and the firm has transformed the shopping center business in Venezuela, bringing modern design and business systems, leasing relationships, social responsibility, community support, and a whole host of contemporary approaches to that country’s mall sector. Sambil is greatly involved in the community and sponsors a wide range of free events for the communities in which they are located, from chess tournaments to health programs, and from mass weddings to symphony concerts. Sambil has even created within one of its centers a baseball museum, a sport the Venezuelans are clearly batty over. Salomon’s son, Alfredo Cohen Kohn, known to all as Freddy Cohen, is one of the family members who continues to guide the company’s growth, not to mention creating thousands of jobs, contributing mightily to the tax rolls, and providing a wide array of community enhancements as a natural outgrowth of their entrepreneurial successes. We shared lunch in his Isla Margarita’s hotel restaurant. In December 2008, Sambil’s newest venture, Sambil La Candelaria, was 90 percent completed, at an investment of nearly $90 million. With six stories of shopping space and community rooms, plus two stories of parking, the 700,000-square-foot center had 150 signed tenant leases. Those tenants alone would have meant 4,000 jobs for the community. In addition to 273 stores, Sambil Candelaria included a convention center with capacity for 2,000 people, a 10-screen cinema, restaurants, and a food court. Enter Chavez And then Venezuela’s president drove by the nearly completed complex located in his capital city’s center. As the Latin America Herald Tribune reported at the time: “President Hugo Chavez on Sunday ordered the expropriation of a newly-constructed American-style shopping mall in downtown Caracas… ‘We’re going to expropriate that and turn it into a hospital — I don’t know what — a school, a university,’ said Chavez.” Later, the self-styled 21st century Socialist president said that “Sambil is a monster of capitalism.” Of course, as The Economist pointed out, he had already expropriated hundreds of companies (many of them American) and “closed a Venezuelan television network, 32 radio stations and two local television channels…” On Nov. 7, 2010, the New York Times reported that Chavez has expropriated 207 businesses so far this year. Two years later, Sambil La Candelaria sits empty. Under Venezuelan law, Freddy Cohen’s family has to agree on the amount the government must pay them to expropriate their center. In two years, the government hasn’t even made an offer. So the mall sits forlornly, a ghostly monument to the ultimate anti-business society. So the next time someone tells you how unfriendly our local and state governments are to business, just be glad you aren’t Freddy Cohen. A man felt sorry for himself because he had no shoes… until he saw the man who had no feet.” Proverb Martin Cooper is President of Cooper Communications, Inc. He is Immediate Past President of the Los Angeles Quality and Productivity Commission; Founding President of The Executives; Vice Chairman of the Boys & Girls Club of the West Valley; and a member of the Boards of the Valley Economic Alliance and of the LAPD’s West Valley Jeopardy Program. He is Past Chairman of VICA and Chairman of its Board of Governors; and Past President of the Public Relations Society of America-Los Angeles Chapter and of the Encino Chamber of Commerce. He can be reached at [email protected].
