Howard H. Baker Jr., ‘Great Conciliator’ of Senate, Dies at 88

By DAVID STOUT NY TIMES

　

Howard H. Baker Jr., a soft-spoken Tennessee lawyer who served three terms in the Senate and became known as "the great conciliator" in his eight years as the chamber’s Republican leader, died on Thursday at his home in Huntsville, Tenn. He was 88.

His death was announced on the Senate floor by the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who called him "one of the Senate’s most towering figures." Further details were not immediately available.

Mr. Baker found his greatest fame in the summer of 1973, when he was the ranking Republican on the special Senate committee that investigated wrongdoing of the Nixon White House in the Watergate affair. In televised hearings that riveted the nation, he repeatedly asked the question on the minds of millions of Americans: "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"

The question, or variations on it, became a national catchphrase.

Mr. Baker’s public career included four years as ambassador to Japan, a year as White House chief of staff and two tries for the presidency. But he will be remembered as, quintessentially, a man of the Senate, ideally suited to that patience-trying institution because of his lawyer’s mind, equanimity and knack for fashioning compromises.

"He’s like the Tennessee River," his stepmother, Irene Bailey Baker, once said. "He flows right down the middle."

Mr. Baker was a senator from January 1967 to January 1985. He was the minority leader from 1977 to 1981, then majority leader after his party took over the Senate in the 1980 elections. As majority leader, a post he held for four years, he helped pass President Ronald Reagan’s first-term tax cuts.

Mr. Baker described his political philosophy as "moderate to moderate conservative." As a member of the public works committee, he helped draft the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Water Pollution Control Act amendments of 1972. But Mr. Baker said his biggest contribution to the environment was the creation of the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, a 125,000-acre national park that overlaps Tennessee and Kentucky and protects the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River. The park was created by Congress in 1974.

Mr. Baker and Senator John Sherman Cooper, Republican of Kentucky, were the main Senate backers of the park. "I’ll be remembered longer for Big South Fork than anything else," Mr. Baker told a television interviewer late in his life.

Mr. Baker opposed school busing for integration as "a grievous piece of mischief," yet he supported fair-housing and voting-rights legislation. He championed fiscal conservatism but favored big Pentagon budgets.

Friendly and unfailingly courteous, Mr. Baker was popular with lawmakers in both parties. He was a negotiator with seemingly bottomless energy and patience, and he was not above herding feuding partisans into a room and keeping them there until they came to an agreement, often one that he had helped write.

Mr. Baker’s first Senate campaign ended in defeat. In 1964, he ran to fill the unexpired term of Senator Estes Kefauver, who had died the previous summer. He tried to distance himself from the presidential campaign of Senator Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona, yet he himself ran on stances more conservative than those he would embrace later — promising to fight federal interference in local education and civil rights issues, for instance.

"I was a young man in his first race, which was a tumultuous campaign," he said later in explaining his platform.

Mr. Baker lost to the more liberal Ross Bass, but he attracted more votes than any previous Tennessee Republican in a statewide election. Two years later, he ran for the Senate again, against Gov. Frank G. Clement, who had beaten Mr. Bass in the Democratic primary. This time, he took more moderate stances, supporting fair-housing laws, for example.

Mr. Baker was endorsed by some newspapers that Mr. Clement had alienated. And Richard M. Nixon, who was trying to make friends as he positioned himself to run for president in 1968, campaigned across Tennessee on Mr. Baker’s behalf.

Mr. Baker cut into the traditionally Democratic vote, especially among blacks and young people, and won with 56 percent of the overall vote. He became the first Republican to win a Senate election in Tennessee.

As a newcomer to the Senate, he pushed for loosening the shackles of the seniority system to give new legislators more influence. In so doing, he defied not only Senate tradition but also his own powerful father-in-law, Senator Everett M. Dirksen of Illinois, the Republican minority leader.

After Mr. Dirksen died in 1969, Mr. Baker ran to succeed him as party leader. He lost to Senator Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, who had nearly a decade’s more seniority. Undiscouraged, Mr. Baker challenged Mr. Scott two years later and lost again, albeit by a smaller margin.

When the Senate voted unanimously to form a bipartisan committee to investigate the Watergate burglary and other wrongdoing during the presidential campaign of 1972, Mr. Scott insisted that Mr. Baker be the panel’s ranking Republican on the grounds that every senator in their party had recommended him. There was also talk that Mr. Scott was happy to put Mr. Baker in a spot that was potentially embarrassing, given his past friendship with Mr. Nixon, as punishment for having challenged him.

In any event, Mr. Baker’s performance on the Watergate committee made him a figure of national prominence, as his calm, lawyerly manner complemented the folksiness of the committee chairman, Senator Sam J. Ervin Jr., Democrat of North Carolina.

Before the 1976 election, Mr. Baker hoped that President Gerald R. Ford would pick him for his running mate. Instead, Mr. Ford selected Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, a far more partisan and sharp-tongued campaigner. (Unlike Mr. Dole, Mr. Baker never seemed consumed by politics. He liked tennis and golf and was an avid photographer.)

In 1980, Mr. Baker made a brief run for the presidency, finishing third in the New Hampshire primary, behind Mr. Reagan and George Bush. When it became clear that Mr. Reagan would win the nomination, Mr. Baker let it be known that he would like to be the vice-presidential candidate.

But Republican conservatives blocked him. The same qualities that had made him such an effective legislator — the willingness to break with party ideology and work with the opposition — made him unpopular with the party’s ascendant right wing. Mr. Baker had supported civil rights legislation, the Equal Rights Amendment and the treaty ceding the Panama Canal to Panama, much to the annoyance of conservatives.

Mr. Baker retired from the Senate after the 1984 elections. His wife, Joy, was suffering from cancer at the time, and he was believed to be wearying from the pace of the Senate. He joined the law firm of Vinson & Elkins, where he reportedly earned close to $1 million a year. In recent years, he was senior counsel to Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, a Tennessee law firm founded by his grandfather.

There was talk that Mr. Baker might run for president again, in 1988. Instead, he gave up his post with the law firm to accept Mr. Reagan’s request to become White House chief of staff early in 1987. People who knew Mr. Baker said the move demonstrated two things: his loyalty to country and party, and his lack of a burning desire to be president.

At the time, the Reagan White House was reeling from disclosures that several members of the administration had arranged sales of weapons to Iran, then used some of the proceeds to finance the opponents, or "contras," of the left-wing government in Nicaragua. The dealings, contrary to the expressed will of Congress as well as the administration’s own policies, raised questions about Mr. Reagan’s loose management style and even his awareness of events.

Mr. Baker was credited with helping to get the administration back on track, in part by improving relations with Capitol Hill — although he first had to dispel a widespread impression that he much preferred the Senate to the other side of Congress. (He had once said in jest that there were two things he did not understand: "the Middle East and the House of Representatives.")

Mr. Baker’s easier personal style was a relief to White House aides who had worked under the previous chief of staff, Donald T. Regan, a hard-driving former Marine and Wall Street executive who had clashed with Congress and with the first lady, Nancy Reagan.

But Mr. Baker had his frustrations as chief of staff. The president’s conservative advisers grumbled that Mr. Baker was too accommodating to Congress. More liberal politicians, on the other hand, complained that he had failed to persuade the president to be accommodating enough.

In late 1987, Mr. Baker lost a battle with Attorney General Edwin H. Meese III over a Supreme Court vacancy. Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. was retiring, and Mr. Reagan’s first choice to succeed him, the conservative and controversial Judge Robert H. Bork of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, was rejected by the Senate.

Mr. Baker thought the next nominee should be less polarizing, or else the president might be embarrassed again. At a tense private meeting, he urged Mr. Reagan to pick Judge Anthony M. Kennedy of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Instead, the president took the advice of Mr. Meese and nominated Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the District of Columbia Circuit, who was considered more conservative.

Judge Ginsburg’s candidacy soon collapsed amid revelations that he had smoked marijuana in his youth, and Judge Kennedy was named to the Supreme Court after all. But vindicated or not, Mr. Baker never had as much influence with Mr. Reagan as did Mr. Meese, the president’s old friend from California and ideological soul mate.

When he resigned on June 14, 1988, Mr. Baker cited the continuing concerns over his wife’s health. But there was no denying that he had said, just over a year before, that he would stay to the end of the Reagan presidency.

Mr. Baker was the United States ambassador to Japan for four years beginning in early 2001. In 2005, he became an adviser to Citigroup on international issues.

Howard Henry Baker Jr. was born on Nov. 15, 1925, in the Cumberland Mountain town of Huntsville, a Republican-leaning region of Tennessee that had resisted secession at the time of the Civil War. His grandfather was a judge, and his grandmother was the first woman to serve as sheriff in Tennessee.

His mother, Dora, died when Howard was 8. Three years later, his father married Irene Bailey. Howard Baker Sr. was a congressman from Tennessee from 1951 until his death in January 1964, whereupon his wife was elected to fill out the balance of his term.

Howard Jr. was a champion debater in elementary school. After graduating from a military academy in Chattanooga in 1943, he entered a Navy officer-training program and studied electrical engineering at the University of the South and Tulane University. He did a brief tour of duty as a lieutenant, junior grade, on a PT boat in the South Pacific as World War II was ending.

After the war, he switched from engineering to law, earning his bachelor’s and law degrees from the University of Tennessee. He prospered in both civil and criminal law and invested profitably in banking and real estate. During his father’s first term in Congress, he met Joy Dirksen, the daughter of Senator Dirksen. They married in 1951.

Joy Dirksen died in 1993 after a decade-long battle with cancer. Three years later, he married former Senator Nancy L. Kassebaum of Kansas, daughter of Gov. Alfred E. Landon of Kansas, the 1936 Republican nominee for president.

She survives him, as do a son, Darek; a daughter, Cissy Baker; four grandsons; a sister, Mary Stuart, and a half-sister, Beverly Patestides.

Mr. Baker was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Mr. Reagan in 1984.

In 2007, Mr. Baker and three other former Senate leaders founded the Bipartisan Policy Center, which promotes bipartisan solutions to the nation’s problems. The other co-founders were Bob Dole and former Senators George Mitchell and Tom Daschle.

Some fascinating "what ifs" attached to Mr. Baker’s years in Washington. Just before becoming Mr. Reagan’s White House chief of staff, for instance, he turned down an offer to head the Central Intelligence Agency.

More intriguingly, he was rumored to be under consideration as Mr. Nixon’s running mate in 1968. Had Mr. Nixon selected him and gone on to win the election, and had Mr. Baker remained on the ticket for the Nixon landslide victory of 1972, Mr. Baker would have become president when Mr. Nixon resigned in 1974.

Or would Vice President Baker have been close enough to Mr. Nixon, and shrewd enough about the White House inner circle, to prevent the misdeeds of Watergate, or at least halt the cover-up in time to preserve the Nixon presidency?

Instead, Mr. Nixon tapped Gov. Spiro T. Agnew of Maryland. When Mr. Agnew resigned the vice presidency in 1973 amid a corruption scandal stemming from his time as governor, Mr. Nixon chose Representative Gerald R. Ford of Michigan to replace him, and Mr. Ford succeeded Mr. Nixon.

And on the morning of Oct. 29, 1971, Mr. Nixon offered Mr. Baker a nomination to the Supreme Court, according to White House tape recordings made public in 1998. Mr. Baker told Attorney General John N. Mitchell, who had tendered Mr. Nixon’s offer, that he wanted to remain in the Senate.

Think it over, Mr. Mitchell urged.

Mr. Baker did. He called Mr. Mitchell back later that day and told him he would rather stay in the Senate, but that he would accept the court nomination "if the president insists."

"Well," Mr. Mitchell said, "we don’t want a reluctant candidate. Besides, he has already chosen Bill Rehnquist."

Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.

This Is Your Brain on Writing
Carl Zimmer NY TIMES

A novelist scrawling away in a notebook in seclusion may not seem to have much in common with an NBA player doing a reverse layup on a basketball court before a screaming crowd. But if you could peer inside their heads, you might see some striking similarities in how their brains were churning.

That’s one of the implications of new research on the neuroscience of creative writing. For the first time, neuroscientists have used fMRI scanners to track the brain activity of both experienced and novice writers as they sat down — or, in this case, lay down — to turn out a piece of fiction.

The researchers, led by Martin Lotze of the University of Greifswald in Germany, observed a broad network of regions in the brain working together as people produced their stories. But there were notable differences between the two groups of subjects. The inner workings of the professionally trained writers in the bunch, the scientists argue, showed some similarities to people who are skilled at other complex actions, like music or sports.

The research is drawing strong reactions. Some experts praise it as an important advance in understanding writing and creativity, while others criticize the research as too crude to reveal anything meaningful about the mysteries of literature or inspiration.

Dr. Lotze has long been intrigued by artistic expression. In previous studies, he has observed the brains of piano players and opera singers, using fMRI scanners to pinpoint regions that become unusually active in the brain.

Needless to say, that can be challenging when a subject is singing an aria. Scanners are a lot like 19th-century cameras: They can take very sharp pictures, if their subject remains still. To get accurate data, Dr. Lotze has developed software that can take into account fluctuations caused by breathing or head movements.

For creative writing, he faced a similar challenge. In previous studies, scientists had observed people doing only small tasks like thinking up a plot in their heads.

Dr. Lotze wanted to scan people while they were actually writing. But he couldn’t give his subjects a keyboard to write with, because the magnetic field generated by the scanner would have hurled it across the room.

So Dr. Lotze ended up making a custom-built writing desk, clipping a piece of paper to a wedge-shaped block as his subjects reclined. They could rest their writing arm on the desk and scribble on the page. A system of mirrors let them see what they were writing while their head remained cocooned inside the scanner.

To begin, Dr. Lotze asked 28 volunteers to simply copy some text, giving him a baseline reading of their brain activity during writing.

Next, he showed his volunteers a few lines from a short story and asked them to continue it in their own words. The volunteers could brainstorm for a minute, and then write creatively for a little over two minutes.

Some regions of the brain became active only during the creative process, but not while copying, the researchers found. During the brainstorming sessions, some vision-processing regions of volunteers became active. It’s possible that they were, in effect, seeing the scenes they wanted to write.

Other regions became active when the volunteers started jotting down their stories. Dr. Lotze suspects that one of them, the hippocampus, was retrieving factual information that the volunteers could use.

One region near the front of the brain, known to be crucial for holding several pieces of information in mind at once, became active as well. Juggling several characters and plot lines may put special demands on it.

But Dr. Lotze also recognized a big limit of the study: His subjects had no previous experience in creative writing. Would the brains of full-time writers respond differently?

To find out, he and his colleagues went to another German university, the University of Hildesheim, which runs a highly competitive creative writing program. The scientists recruited 20 writers there (their average age was 25). Dr Lotze and his colleagues had them take the same tests and then compared their performance with the novices’.

As the scientists report in a new study in the journal NeuroImage, the brains of expert writers appeared to work differently, even before they set pen to paper. During brainstorming, the novice writers activated their visual centers. By contrast, the brains of expert writers showed more activity in regions involved in speech.

"I think both groups are using different strategies," Dr. Lotze said. It’s possible that the novices are watching their stories like a film inside their heads, while the writers are narrating it with an inner voice.

When the two groups started to write, another set of differences emerged. Deep inside the brains of expert writers, a region called the caudate nucleus became active. In the novices, the caudate nucleus was quiet.

The caudate nucleus is a familiar part of the brain for scientists like Dr. Lotze who study expertise. It plays an essential role in the skill that comes with practice, including activities like board games.

When we first start learning a skill — be it playing a piano or playing basketball — we use a lot of conscious effort. With practice, those actions become more automatic. The caudate nucleus and nearby regions start to coordinate the brain’s activity as this shift happens.

"I was really happy to see this," said Ronald T. Kellogg, a psychologist who studies writing at Saint Louis University. "You don’t want to see this as an analog to what James Joyce was doing in Dublin. But to see that they were able to get clean results with this, I think that’s a major step right there."

But Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist, was skeptical that the experiments could provide a clear picture of creativity. "It’s a messy comparison," he said.

Dr. Pinker pointed out that the activity that Dr. Lotze saw during creative writing could be common to writing in general — or perhaps to any kind of thinking that requires more focus than copying. A better comparison would have been between writing a fictional story and writing an essay about some factual information.

Even the best-designed scanning experiments might miss signs of creativity, Dr. Pinker warned. The very nature of creativity can make it different from one person to the next, and so it can be hard to see what different writers have in common. Dr. Pinker speculated that Marcel Proust might have activated the taste-perceiving regions of his brain when he recalled the flavor of a cookie. But another writer might rely more on sounds to evoke a time and place.

"Creativity is a perversely difficult thing to study," he said.

Woman Sentenced to 41 Months for Fake Water Park

Monique Madan NY TIMES

 

An Orange County, N.Y., woman who duped investors out of more than $1 million through a fictional proposal to build a water park for foster children was sentenced on Tuesday to 41 months in prison.

The woman, Liliana Trafficante, used the funds for personal expenses, including rent and personal debt, said John C. Meringolo, a federal prosecutor.

Before being sentenced, Ms. Trafficante asked for leniency, apologizing to the judge, Deborah A. Batts of United States District Court in Manhattan, and acknowledging that she made a "huge mistake."

"I was a fearful person," Ms. Trafficante said. "I gave into my fears."

Ms. Trafficante, 47, was arrested on May 26, 2010, and was accused of soliciting more than $1 million under false pretenses, transferring the funds into her personal bank account, a complaint said. She told investors that the water park would be on a 120-acre lot in Goshen, N.Y., court records show.

Ms. Trafficante represented herself as the owner and founder of Manhattan-based International Dreams, an entity that prosecutors said she made up. She was also affiliated with other fake entities, some purporting to have offices at 255 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, a complaint said.

The government said that numerous emails were sent between Ms. Trafficante and investors, discussing their donations. In one email, Ms. Trafficante thanked an investor for a contribution, adding that "these steppingstones may seem small but they were vital in facilitating the big funds."

Mr. Meringolo said Ms. Trafficante’s crime was "not to be taken lightly, solely because of the victims."

"The impact that this had on the victims she’s defrauded is immense," Mr. Meringolo said. "These victims desired to help orphans in some way. It is very unlikely that the victims will get their money back. This crime is particularly reprehensible in the eyes of the government."

After pleading guilty in 2010, Ms. Trafficante was on bail pending trial when she was arrested again, this time on state charges. She served 14 months in prison for the state charges, and was then immediately taken into federal custody to serve an additional seven months.

"I have learned a lot in these 21 months; they have taught me a lot," Ms. Trafficante said in court. "Before this, my spirituality was not strong. But now, I have a church backing me up at home. I can now be a better mother to my son."

Her lawyer, Eugene E. Ingoglia, asked the judge for "the lowest possible sentence." He stressed that his client "has a mental disorder."

"She has narcissistic behavior," Mr. Ingoglia said. "I’m not saying she’s an angel; she’s certainly not. All I ask is that you take into consideration her mental illness."

Judge Batts concluded that Ms. Trafficante was "legally mentally competent at the time of her plea until now," and ordered her to serve the prison term, followed by three years of supervised release. Ms. Trafficante was also ordered to pay $750,000 in restitution; at least 15 percent of any gross pay after her release must go toward that purpose.

Putin’s War on Pillows

Masha Lipman The New Yorker

The Moscow International Open Book Festival is an annual event in which writers, poets, translators, graphic designers, and publishers meet with readers in tents outside a large exposition hall. There are also dance and music performances and workshops. Cookbook authors offer freshly prepared food. There is a children’s book program and there are plays. This year, two puppet productions caught the attention of the government. One, "Herbivores," had been described by a critic as "a kind of fairytale on steroids." The other, a children’s show called "The Soul of a Pillow," is set in a nursery school, and the characters are children’s pillows. There’s one that is different—filled with buckwheat hulls instead of down and feathers. It has a hole in it, and is afraid that it will be discarded as garbage, but it is eventually befriended by a boy, also a loner.

On June 9th, two days before opening, the festival received a letter on the official stationery of Vladimir Aristarkhov, the First Deputy Minister of Culture. "According to available information, in the play ‘The Soul of a Pillow’ one may discern elements of propaganda of homosexuality among minors," he wrote. "The play ‘Herbivores’ has foul language. The content of both plays is in conflict with traditional moral values accepted in the Russian culture." The letter warned, "In the event that these items are kept in the program, the Ministry of Culture will withdraw its consent to feature as an official patron."

Given the absurdity of the reprimand, the government’s threat to withdraw its patronage may seem laughable, but, as Vladimir Putin’s regime has stepped up constraints on self-expression, Russians are reacting by and large with submission, not resistance. The festival’s organizers were no exception. They agreed to remove the productions from the program.

This month marks the first anniversary of the infamous anti-gay bill, which I have written about before. It bans "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations" among minors—part of the Kremlin’s general shift toward social conservatism. Since Putin has repeatedly emphasized Russia’s "traditional values" as a safeguard against the immoral and decadent West, scores of aggressive loyalists have rushed to vilify and condemn unpatriotic Russians who share Western values or who are just too modern and independent-minded, whether in art, culture, or politics. Kirill Serebrennikov, an innovative Moscow theatre director, says he has been barred from guest tours in the provinces. A primary-school math textbook was pronounced unfit, because it mentions characters from Western fairy tales. Local administrators have come up with suggestions (so far mostly declined) for determining which books should be removed from libraries. A member of the Public Chamber, a government-organized civic assembly, called for the use of a single, approved schoolbook of Russian literature, so that children won’t be exposed to unwanted ideas. Russia’s brilliant art critic Grigory Revzin was recalled from his position as curator of the Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and a prominent historian, Andrey Zubov, was fired from his university—in both cases for criticizing the annexation of Crimea.

This week, as news of the Culture Ministry’s "Pillow" ultimatum spread, a large group of the festival’s participants, in a rare instance of solidarity, resisted. "We are saddened to announce that we are cancelling our presentations," a respected publishing house, Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie ("New Literary Review"), said in a statement. "We can’t afford not to react to the Ministry of Culture’s attempts … to establish censorship and decide what is in conformity with ‘Russia’s traditional moral values.’ " Memorial, an organization that has been engaged in human rights, historical research, and education for many years, also condemned the Ministry’s letter. A children’s-book publisher, KompasGid, stated, "Unfortunately, the government’s attempts to regulate cultural life are no longer a surprise," and added, "But this doesn’t make them any less absurd or outrageous."

Several other publishers, along with authors and cultural figures, have refused to participate in the event, as well. Many said they would move their events to alternative venues. The Open Book Festival has become a festival of civic disobedience.

The festival opened on Wednesday, as scheduled, but a notice appeared on its Web site: "ATTENTION! Dear guests of the festival! For reasons beyond our control, changes have been made in the festival’s program. Please, be careful and check the program on the Web site." Those who refused to participate held their events in a large downtown café, in Memorial’s own offices, or at the Andrei Sakharov Center.

Alternative venues may still be found in Moscow, but, as Putin’s government clamps down on freedom of expression, the public realm—in art and culture, civic organizations, and nongovernment media—is shrinking by the day. The trend will almost certainly continue, and calls to mind many earlier periods of repression in Russian and Soviet history. "The aggressive, hard, dense cultural and psychological environment that has emerged is forcing people of a certain state of mind to raise their hands and admit: I can’t bear it anymore," Alexander Gorbachev, the thirty-year-old editor of Afisha, Russia’s best arts and culture magazine, said in an interview. He has quit his job and is about to leave the country.

Photograph: Davide Monteleone/VII

Bayside Tower posible agreement?

By Andres Viglucci

aviglucci@MiamiHerald.com

The 1,000-foot-tall, $400 million observation tower that developer Jeff Berkowitz wants to build on the downtown Miami waterfront has been alternately hailed as visionary and decried as a folly. And that’s when it’s not provoking sniggers for its suggestive shape.

But Berkowitz and the city are now dead serious about getting SkyRise Miami built on a 1.85-acre spit of publicly owned land behind Bayside Marketplace.

To pave the way for the tower, Berkowitz, Miami officials and Bayside’s operators have reached a complex deal — virtually all of it to be privately financed — that would result in an extensive facelift for the aging retail and entertainment complex while plowing tens of millions of dollars into the cash-strapped city’s coffers.

First, though, Miami city commissioners must agree to put the deal, which calls for extending Bayside’s lease to 99 years, up for a referendum as early as August. The commission will take up the proposal Thursday.

Then, if voters approve, Berkowitz, who has pledged to dip into his own pocket for the first $30 million of the tower’s cost, must raise the balance from private investors.

Berkowitz and Miami administrators say the risk falls entirely on the developer, while the potential payoff for the city and Bayside operator General Growth Properties — which would be obligated to spend at least $22 million on improvements — is substantial.

The agreements are premised in part on some prodigious attendance and revenue projections for SkyRise that its proponents contend are entirely realistic — more than three million visitors a year and first-year revenue of $100 million.

Under the new lease, rental payments to the city for use of the Bayside property, which includes the tower site, would rise from the current $1 million a year to a minimum of $2.6 million in the first year of expanded operations — $1.06 million from SkyRise and $1.5 million from Bayside. The rents would increase annually based on inflation.

Both entities would also give the city a percentage of gross revenues above a certain cut-off point, meaning the city stands to earn $200 million more over the life of the lease, according to projections provided by Berkowitz. Under the current Bayside lease, the city is entitled to a percentage of profits, but that clause has not yielded a penny in 27 years of the mall’s operation, Miami officials say.

In addition to increased rent, Bayside must make a one-time, $10 million payment to the city. The city could also see additional revenue from an expanded parking garage and a valet lot beneath the tower’s base of at least $241,000 a year, in addition to the minimum $675,000 share it now gets from the parking operation. SkyRise would provide a new fire substation and a new marina office to the city without charge.

"The city was extraordinarily aggressive in negotiating," said Berkowitz, a veteran mall developer whose projects include Dadeland Station and The Shops at Fifth & Alton in Miami Beach. "These were the most brutal negotiations I’ve ever been involved in."

General Growth communications vice president David Keating declined a request for an interview.

Miami administrators say the agreement gets the city several things it wants at no cost to taxpayers: a revamp of Bayside, substantially improved lease terms and a major new tourist attraction they believe could do for Miami what Gustave Eiffel’s pet project did for Paris 125 years ago.

SkyRise would include three observation decks that would provide views with a 40-mile radius, enough to see the Everglades, north Key Largo and northern Broward County on a clear day, Berkowitz says.

It would also constitute, in effect, a vertical entertainment center, with a fine-dining restaurant, a nightclub, a ballroom, a store and three theme-park-style rides: A 570-foot controlled bungee jump and a 650-foot "drop" ride that Berkowitz says would be the longest in the world, both of which would operate along the tower’s exterior flanks; and a theater designed by the creators of Soarin’, the simulated hang-glider ride that is Disney World’s most popular. SkyRise’s version would have visitors "fly" above South Florida and "plunge" below the Atlantic Ocean for a view of reefs and marine life.

The hairpin-shaped tower would occupy what is now a marina parking lot. Its base would contain two areas — an open-air covered amphitheater and a shop — that Berkowitz said would be publicly accessible without a tower admission charge, as well as an interactive exhibition space.

The developer says he will also extend the landscaped Baywalk from Bayfront Park all along the back of Bayside, now an unappealing hodgepodge of a service area for the marina and restaurants, to the base of SkyRise and create an adjacent public plaza.

Berkowitz has also sought $10 million in state money for improvements, including a reconfigured access road at Bayside’s southern entrance and the Baywalk extension. The Florida Legislature approved $2 million, but that was vetoed by Gov. Rick Scott. Berkowitz said he would probably try again for the money.

The tower project has not drawn organized opposition, but it has received some skeptical scrutiny from blogs like the Crespogram Report and Curbed Miami, which have questioned its viability and its unusual design.

Its architect, Arquitectonica co-principal Bernardo Fort-Brescia, has likened its shape to a jumping fish or a cresting wave, and said it is designed as a mostly porous structure to allow it to withstand winds of up to 186 miles per hour. Berkowitz says the design has been engineered and tested in wind tunnels several times.

Though some wags have compared the tower to various phallus-like objects, most people seem to like it, said Berkowitz, even as he chuckled over an online comment by one woman who said it reminded her of a sex aid.

Berkowitz also said SkyRise’s design and mix of attractions have no rival among the score or so of popular and profitable observation towers around the world, most of which are shaped like pointed spires, including Tokyo’s 2-year-old Skytree, which attracted over 6 million visitors its first year.

"I can tell you I’ve visited 12 towers around the world, and there’s nothing that approximates what we’re trying to do," he said in an interview. "This is a totally unique design. It’s going to be a symbol of the new Miami."

The deal also requires Bayside to embark on extensive renovations demanded by the city. Some officials, including City Commissioner Marc Sarnoff, whose district includes downtown and who chairs the Downtown Development Authority, have long complained that General Growth has allowed the property, which opened in 1987, to become rundown.

On a recent visit, sections of the complex, including common areas, the food court and some restaurants, appear dated and even dingy. Signage is often cheap-looking, railings are corroded and some outdoor dining areas are cluttered. Still, General Growth says the complex receives over 20 million visitors a year.

Sarnoff says he wholeheartedly supports the SkyRise proposal, but questions whether the agreements require Bayside to do enough to improve its appearance and maintenance.

"The lease requires it be kept in a first-class condition. It’s not even second-class condition now," Sarnoff said. "My paramount concern is that we see a significant change in the capital infrastructure and maintenance of Bayside, because it needs a lot."

The agreements would extend Bayside’s lease, which still has 46 years to run, by an additional 53 years.

City administrators say they will hold General Growth’s feet to the fire. The agreements not only enumerate improvements — including new flooring, paint and finishes, lighting, restrooms, repairs to worn stairs and a total redo of the food court — but also include renderings detailing how they should look when done, said Deputy City Manager Alice Bravo.

In addition, Bayside will be required to add two levels to its three-level garage and cover its blank garage facade on Biscayne Boulevard — where the Bayside sign now sits on a landscaped plot — with 17,000 square feet of new shops opening to the sidewalk, Bravo said. Critics have long complained that the garage wall constitutes a dead spot along the boulevard and that Bayside’s design isolates it from the street.

"The idea is that a street is more inviting if you have activated storefronts rather than just the side of a parking garage," Bravo said.

The retail operations and SkyRise together should prove profitable for Bayside’s operator, she said. Because SkyRise would sublease from Bayside, the tower also must pay rent separately to the mall operator, starting at $1.35 million a year, and improvements made by its operator should be commensurate, the city says.

"We think that it will be a benefit to Bayside," Bravo said. "We see the renderings of SkyRise, and we see it’s a modern, up-to-date design. We want Bayside’s appearance to improve as well to match that."

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/06/11/4172532/bayside-lease-skyrise-up-for-miami.html#storylink=cpy