The young often live In the future The old, too often, In the past Those who have age, But never grow up Live the Present As if it were last. Now Past and Present And Future Each one an important Key. But the Gate to Success As Life meant it Has not just one lock But three.
—Roy H. Park, Jr. unpublished (1980)
As the 1970 song by America goes, “I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name,” but, in my case, I still didn’t get out of the rain. The past had been turned upside down, emptied; the future, for growth, anyway, pretty much cut off. So I was left with the present.
The timing on the sale of Scranton at the end of 1984 was particularly sad for me since the operating profit that year came in at $587,000, the largest in the history of our outdoor companies. During the next four years, I was thankful that while we had been pumping capital improvement money into Scranton, the division now gone, we also had initiated a capital-improvement program in New York State.
Being concentrated there, I moved quickly to get involved with our state outdoor advertising association, which at the time was called the Roadside Business Association of New York. In 1985, I was elected president and in 1986 we strengthened the association to represent all of the outdoor companies doing business in New York outside of New York City. We changed our name to the Outdoor Advertising Council of New York, Inc., and I served as president until 1991, and then chairman, until 1995. Dave Feldman, from 1996, has served as chairman to this day.
Despite the loss of the vast majority of our national business (when buys were made in Scranton, they used to overflow into our New York markets), operating profit in 1985 increased from $587,000, as I said, (when we had the billing from Scranton) to $603,000. In 1986, operating profit went up 58 percent to $943,000, and the following year 43 percent more to $1,328,000.
But even though our sales and profit ratios were growing and doing well, the weekly management meetings continued, and I learned that my CEO status didn’t mean much. With everything going well for the company I ran, my father could still not avoid involving himself in the day-to-day operation of Park Outdoor. He still owned the company, and the proceeds of my efforts were his. Every move I made was closely monitored, and many good opportunities were restricted or thwarted.
I had endured seventeen long years of rough road working for my father, and the road ahead didn’t look any better. I learned a lot, but that knowledge taught me that to survive I had to look to the future. Despite the fact that I had returned as president and CEO of Park Outdoor Advertising, my father had no intention of taking his finger out of the pie.
When I had an opportunity to expand into Erie, PA, where our corporate sales manager lived, in order to give our company another large city to help attract business, I faced strong resistance from my father. Even though the company had enough money to make the acquisition, he told my mother that Erie was a bad place to do business, was infiltrated by organized crime and that expanding into that area would be dangerous. As usual, she believed him, at first, but I am reminded that at our next board meeting, when my case was laid out, she supported me in making a bid to buy a small paint bulletin plant in the market.
My father reluctantly agreed, but it was increasingly evident to me that he had little interest in seeing my operation grow or expand, other than making sure there was growth on the bottom line. The meeting with the two partners took place in a hotel in Erie over a late dinner; they had requested that neither of us have lawyers present. I had prepared a letter of intent that required their signatures, in which my offer was stated in writing. The owners tried every tactic to try to keep a copy of the unsigned agreement overnight, which would have given them the ability to shop it with other buyers. The meeting dragged on into the late hours without their signing. I laid a check for $50,000 on the table as our good-faith down payment and told them they could cash the check as soon as the agreement was signed.
Their eyes kept focusing on the check, but they still held off signing and finally insisted on calling their lawyer. He came to the meeting in the restaurant with pajamas on under his coat, and I exercised an equal right to call my own lawyer 250 miles away in Ithaca. I made sure I gathered up the check and the unsigned agreement when I left the table to make the phone call to him at home at 11:30 pM. We stuck to our guns, and shortly after midnight the agreement was signed, the check collected by them. The deal was done.
But my father’s tight reign on making the moves that we needed to make, as well as constant nitpicking each week in the management meetings, made me realize that if I waited out the next four years we had agreed upon before exercising my right to purchase the company, there would not be much of a company to purchase.
Our company was also being drained with rental payments.
Along with the outdoor companies, my father originally bought several parcels of land occupied by billboards belonging to the sellers. Some fifty parcels of land were purchased along with the billboards, and in some cases as many as six billboard structures were located on a single parcel of land my father then owned.
These lands were transferred from the outdoor division and put into his real estate operation, RHP Incorporated. Park Outdoor was paying lease rental to the real estate company under this arrangement, and some of these lease rentals were exceedingly high.
After he concluded the agreement with me, I noticed some of these parcels were being sold. Our outdoor division would have matched any offer, both to preserve the boards as well as eliminate the leases, but we were not given a chance to do so. Each time a piece of land on which we owned billboards was sold, we were faced with negotiating a higher lease rental, or removing the boards. Hardly the act of a father who wanted to see the operation run by his son succeed.
As I have said, the outdoor division also paid rent to RHP Incorporated for the ten of us housed at headquarters, and I use “headquarters” loosely. Remember my description of our dismal, belowground quarters. We had been put in the basement because Pops couldn’t find other tenants desperate enough to rent the space.
When I got word through the office grapevine that plans for a new lease with a substantial increase in our rent were in the works, I exercised my right as president and CEO. I began looking for new office space and learned 3,000 square feet was available in a building recently vacated by the telephone company in downtown Ithaca that was owned by a friend. At the time, the space was an open shell and had to be built-out into individual offices. I designed the build-out, my friend started construction and I went out looking for new office furniture.
I knew the move, when it took place, had to be swift. If my father had known ahead of time, he would have tried to prevent it and certainly wouldn’t have sold us the decrepit, second-hand furniture and equipment we were using but didn’t own, even at its depreciated value.
I negotiated trade-outs with current and new advertising clients for furnishings and state-of-the-art office equipment, and just before the new lease was drawn, the space was finished and fully furnished. In one weekend our entire staff, using our own vehicles, made the move. On Monday morning we were fully operational in our new quarters. We even transferred our telephone number.
When Bob Burns, my father’s real estate representative, came to the basement on Monday for a signature on a new lease, he returned to tell my father no one was there. The first thing my father asked was if the furniture was still there, and Burns replied yes, but no humans were evident. There was no way my father could imagine we had all taken the day off at the same time, and I let him sweat it for a while before I told headquarters we had moved and that there was no need to bring down a new lease.
After we vacated the basement office space, my father’s real estate division was never able to rent it again. It was used mainly as storage.