Where Frick was focused and diligent, Symington has let himself be distracted by other matters, particularly politics and vacations.
During the crucial days of development of the Camelback Esplanade, by far the governor's grandest real estate project, a former partner, I. Jerome Hirsch, repeatedly criticized Symington for failing to devote adequate time to the project.
Hirsch warned in October 1983 that the project could turn out to be a "white elephant" for its primary investor, Southwest Savings, if Symington didn't reform his loose management style. By the spring of 1984, the situation was proving to be intolerable for Hirsch.`
"Since the project began, you have taken, and plan continuing to take, significant vacations; you are continuing to be heavily involved in politics; you have increased your membership and activities on nonprofit local corporate boards . . . and you are still actively seeking other major real estate projects," Hirsch wrote in a May 8, 1984, letter to Symington.
The Esplanade project, located at 24th Street and Camelback Road, later failed, dragging Symington into the RTC civil suit and a subsequent criminal investigation. Massive publicity and litigation ensued.
In the end, J. Fife Symington III was no Henry Clay Frick.
@rule:
@body:All is quiet on a mid-June afternoon on the Symington estate. Only the faraway hum of a freeway interferes with the pleasantly chaotic chirping of scores of birds nesting in the nearby woods. But it isn't hard to imagine how lively the estate must have been at one time.
A manicured croquet court for afternoon matches. A walk through the arbor into the rose garden. An early-evening dip in the swimming pool. It all must have been inviting to a young John Fife Symington III and his friends.
But the brick mansion is eerily empty now. Most of the outlying acreage has fallen into disarray. The orchard is dead. The green houses are crumbling. The rose bushes are dying. The pool's water is algae green.
Forty-six years after Martha Frick Symington purchased the estate, the governor's childhood home has been sold.
A developer, who plans to subdivide the 38 acres of the estate, purchased the property from Martha Symington for $1.65 million on June 14.
The governor's mother has since moved down to the bottom of the hill she once overlooked, into a duplex, for which she paid $427,000 cash.
The sale of the Symington estate marks the end of an era of grand country living for the prosperous family, an era dating back 100 years to Henry Clay Frick.
All that is left from the old days are the trust funds.
And they will always be there, no matter what a governor might do.
