Knapp's special section: Running with the ball

HOW NICK EYDE RALLIED HIS FAMILY´S BUSINESS TO SAVE A NATIONAL ICON

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Nick Eyde is a footballer and a philosopher, a cosmopolitan man and a hometown boy.

He oscillates. He stirs the drink without half trying.

"Nick is a very interesting fellow," his father, Lansing real estate mogul George Eyde, declared, as if they had just met over drinks.

By most accounts, the 35-year-old prodigal scion of Lansing´s Eyde Co. real estate and development empire was the key catalyst for one of the city´s most dramatic downtown development coups, the conversion of the Streamline Moderne Knapp´s Department Store building into the multi-use Knapp´s Centre.

"He picked up the ball and carried it on his own," George Eyde said. "Nobody in our company was interested or wanted to make [Knapp´s] what it was. Nick wanted to see it happen."

You expect Nick Eyde to say that sports taught him to work on a team. But the parallels between quarterbacking on the gridiron and calling the shots as project manager of the Knapp´s development are too facile.

For Nick Eyde, a key takeaway from six years of playing professional American football in several European cities was an appreciation for old buildings and walkable city centers. And for thinking big.

Two weeks ago, Eyde tried out the angular glass table in his future office on the third floor of Knapp´s.

"Look at the Colosseum behind you," he said, pointing to the floor. "Streamline!" The classic curves of Rome´s most famous landmark were captured in a triptych of black and white photographs, ready to hang on the wall. The resemblance to the rounded northeast corner of Knapp´s was unmistakable. Call it Streamline Ancient.

"I liked the idea of having a real positive urban experience," Nick Eyde said. "All the cities I lived in were like that. Bolzano was very interesting, the civil engineering. They don´t have much space to work with. And Rome, obviously."

Eyde played for several teams in several countries, but felt most at home in Italy. The Austrians, he said, were all business — show up for scrimmage at such and such a time. The first emails he got after joining the Rome Ducks in 2002 were very different.

"They were like, ´Come to Rome, it will be the most magical summer of your life,´" Eyde said. "Nothing about football. It was so different from Austria. And it was the most amazing summer ever."

Apologizing for the generalization, he declared the Italians the most creative people he ever met.

"You have this feeling that anything´s possible," he said. "I think I brought that sense of idealism back, looking at some of these bigger ideas."

Other principals in the Knapp´s project see Eyde the same way.

"I think his time in Europe influenced his thinking," Lis Knibbe, lead architect on the Knapp´s redevelopment, said. "He definitely understands cities."

Mark Clouse, chief counsel for the Eyde Co., said "someone coming in with a fresh set of eyes and thoughts" can get a stalled ball rolling. Nick Eyde studied the incentive packages available to get the project off the ground, huddled with Clouse to lay down the complex financial framework of the deal, and persuaded his father and uncle to let him call the plays.

"Nick´s determination on that front was key," Clouse said.

Pete Kramer, another principal in the Knapp´s project, agreed that Nick Eyde played a "prime" role in saving the iconic building. Bob Trezise, president of the Lansing Area Economic Partnership and another key player in the Knapp´s project, said Nick Eyde was "instrumental."

"Nick brought a new, very personal passion to the company," Trezise said. "If it wasn´t for him and Mark Clouse, the project wouldn´t have happened."

In "The Godfather," it took quiet Michael Corleone, the reluctant son of Don Vito Corleone, to take the family in a new direction and move to Lake Tahoe. Hot-headed Sonny didn´t have the head for complex deals. Nick Eyde recently saw the Mafia flick for the first time and loved it, especially the sequence where Michael goes to Italy.

"Who do I identify with? Maybe I´m a little bit like a Sonny, but from the reluctance in learning Italian, maybe I´m like Michael."

THE ETERNAL NOW

Nick Eyde grew up in East Lansing and went to East Lansing High School. He majored in history, with a minor in religious history, at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn.

There he was a quarterback and wide receiver on the football team. Playing multiple positions made him attractive to the European football league.

Off the field, he dived into philosophy, inspired by an outstanding professor.

To stir the drink, he studied two disciplines that are very different from one another: Lutheran philosophy and Japanese contemporary Buddhist thinking.

"Western philosophy, German philosophers, always begin with subject-object duality," he said. "There´s you, there´s me, and then we´re trying to analyze the moment."

Kitaro Nishida, one of Eyde´s favorite philosophers, sees the world differently.

"Before we break things down into subject-object duality, there´s a moment before that they call pure experience. It´s the moment, the eternal now," Eyde explained.

If you didn´t expect to plumb subject-object duality in a story on real estate development, hold on a few seconds. We´re not quite done.

"Everything´s pure in that moment of the now," Eyde went on. "The moment I put my mental stamp on it, a falling off occurs. You do the best you can but you realize that you´re not in that pure moment any more."

This is where the footballer/philosopher paradox evaporates.

Sports is one of the best ways to lose yourself in the pure moment of the now. The purest moment of Nick Eyde´s life, and a portent of his tenacity in pushing the unlikely Knapp´s project, was his stunning upset victory for Bolzano Giants the against the Bergamo Lions in 2006. As the final seconds ticked away, Eyde threw a 30-yard Hail Mary pass (an "Ave Maria pass" in Italy) for a 20-14 win.

Until that day, the Lions had rolled up 73 straight league games and eight straight championships, the longest streak in European football history.

"Guys were crying on the field," Eyde said. "Some of them were in the twilight of their career, and they´d never beaten Bergamo. Not even close. I had played them twice previously and lost 55-0 and 35-7. Then all of a sudden this team clicked."

A modest display of medals and news clippings from Eyde´s football career were in a frame on the floor, across from the Colosseum, ready to go on the wall.

´RAKE THE LAWN´

Eyde´s football moment passed, as all moments do, but the possibility of the impossible stuck with him.

"Your body and everything, it takes a toll," he said. "I was all in, playing football, but something toward the end of the [2006] season — it was a void, so to speak. I felt I was coming to the end of something. Call it being burned out, living out of a suitcase that many years."

He applied for a diplomatic job in Italy. In the meantime, he began working for his father´s company. For years, George Eyde had kept at him to quit football and do something else.

Two daunting projects facing the Eyde Co. put a hook into Nick. One was the former Owens Corning Fiberglas headquarters in Toledo, a landmark 28-story mid-century glass tower in serious need of renovation.

George Eyde took Nick to Toledo to show him the building.

"Before I knew it he was going down there by himself," George said. "He was leaving me behind. I thought, ´OK, go ahead.´ He´s well on the way to getting that one recovered." Several members of the Knapp´s team, including Ann Arbor´s Quinn Evans Architects, are also working with Nick Eyde on the Toledo project.

The other elephant in the Eyde Co. portfolio was Knapp´s, a national treasure of Art Moderne architecture that sat idle for more than a decade. By 2007, it was literally crumbling from rust. The clock was ticking and it was time for another Ave Maria pass.

"I asked him if he´d work on this building and he said, ´OK, sure,´" George Eyde recalled.

Nick´s brother, Nathaniel, has seen such exchanges before.

"That´s a good attitude to have in a family business," Nathaniel Eyde said. "´This lawn needs to be raked.´ ´I´ll do it.´"

For Nick Eyde, the family business was getting a lot more interesting than yard work.

The apartments, office strips and other suburban projects the Eydes had pursued in the past didn´t sing to Nick the way these two projects did. Both projects were potential game-changers for their respective cities. Both had the weight of history. Both were big.

Nick Eyde started researching financing and design options and put out feelers to the city. A Section 108 loan from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development got the ball in winter 2008-09 in the air and the touchdown drive was under way.

FAMILY REUNION

While working on Knapp´s, Nick inspired another restoration at home.

George Eyde´s family is coming back together.

Since 2010, Nick´s two brothers, Nathaniel, 39, and Matt, 43, have also returned to the family business from farflung detours. Both were impressed by Nick´s work on the Toledo building and Knapp´s.

Matt was an actor living in California, Chicago and New York and owned a gym in LA.

"I didn´t know how I would fit in to the family partnership," he said. "It was hard for my dad to let controls go."

By 2010, Matt had enough of acting, sold the gym to a celebrity trainer and headed back home.

"The first to go back was Nick," Matt said. "I started watching that. I saw some of the brilliant stuff he was doing."

Nathaniel was working at Marcus & Millichap, a large real estate brokerage in California. After coming back to Lansing in early 2011, he was instrumental in the purchase of Meridian Crossings in Okemos.

Nathaniel and Matt are sales and leasing specialists. They might woo a company or show an apartment to a prospective tenant.

"Our job is to fill the place," Nathaniel said.

"I love working with my brothers," Matt said. "These guys want to carry it on and I want to learn from them. I´m finding my niche."

In March of this year, Nick´s sister Evemarie, 44, came back to the fold and became a partner in the business. After more than 20 years working at high-end retailers like Tiffany & Co. and Baccarat Crystal in Chicago and New York, she was ready to pitch in at the Eyde Co. and take on a role as Nick´s "right-hand man."

Since coming back, she has taken on everything from ordering furniture to masterminding the grand opening banquet.

"It just felt right," Evemarie said. "I love working with my family, and I´ve been blessed to come into this project Nick has been working on for so long."

Evemarie joked that her father has called every one of his kids "a couple times a week for 20 years," asking them when they´d come back.

George Eyde and his wife, Maryann, 70, are relishing the Knapp´s moment all the more as the family assembles in its wake.

"I created this business," George Eyde said.

"It was my dream for them come back and operate it themselves, to get along and work as a family, and it looks like a good possibility that will happen. Four down and two to go."

Two more daughters still live out of town. Nancy, 37, works for a contracting company in Washington, D.C., and Sarah, 40, is a co-producer for David Letterman in New York.

The family reunion, combined with two major projects, add up to a major convergence in Nick Eyde´s life.

"When you get immersed in something, it takes you," he said, oscillating back to Western philosophy.

"It´s like Goethe. If you put yourself out there in the universe, and you put yourself into something, usually the universe responds in kind and pulls you along."


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