I feel for Douglas Durst. He not only grew up with a mentally disturbed and obviously psychopathic brother—who probably killed three people and now most certainly wants to kill Douglas— but the latest horror is brother Robert freely disgorging his fantasies in an upcoming TV series. When the Times came to Douglas to get his side, he could no longer restrain himself and unloaded his living nightmare.
Along with other readers of the sensational story that the Post jumped on “Douglas Durst blasts psychopath brother ahead of HBO series,” I was horrified by the salaciousness of the details and disgusted at the lack of justice. When Durst’s soft spoken father Seymour become convinced that Robert was mentally ill (he urinated in the office waste paper baskets) he legally shifted control to Douglas. This cemented Robert’s blind hatred of Douglas, and he walked out of the office and Douglas’s life except for those awful headlines—the disappearance of his wife in 1982, the disappearance then murder of friend Susan Berman in 2000, and the death and dismemberment of his neighbor in 2001. It seems very rich people like O J Simpson and Robert Durst can afford expensive lawyers who allow them to kill with impunity.
Watching these horrible tragedies unfold, one would think that Douglas Durst has spent more than a little time contemplating “how much is a life worth.” If only because he has had to fear for his own life, maybe it could make him cherish the lives of his neighbors more. Douglas Durst could be very important to you, a reader of WestView News, not because of splashy headlines, but because he could be one of our ‘local” billionaires who decides, yes, what the community really needs is not an undulating concert island, or more condos, but an emergency room with enough of a hospital to back it up.
We have 5 billionaires—Bill Rudin, Steve Witkoff, Barry Diller, Mike Novogratz and Douglas Durst—who are spending millions in or very near our community, but not one has said, ‘Oh, since the 11 buildings of 161-year-old St. Vincent’s were torn down for condos, we ought to make a donation to build not just a walk-in, walk-out urgent care facility, but a real emergency room to save the lives of local heart attack and stroke victims.
As I write these words, I realize you can’t tell a billionaire how he should give his tax deductible money, in fact, he will resent the suggestion and defiantly go in another direction. Most only want a nearby emergency room when in the ambulance after a heart attack with only 15 minutes to live.
But Douglas Durst could be different.
He had a kind and thoughtful father who collected New York historic memorabilia, and when I visited Douglas in his office at 1 Bryant Park, I stepped into an office that had one huge glass window that looked out on all of lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, and New Jersey right to Staten Island—spectacular— and out of all that beauty Douglas pointed out the building of a nonprofit charitable group they were helping. He went out of his way to tell me he and his company were a not just another ruthless developer, but people who cared.
When Douglas became the head of Friends of Hudson River Park, he was ready to put his corporate funds up to build condos along the North side of Pier 40 to save it, and even Debora “no” Glick was for it, but he was ousted by Princeton wrestling team captain Mike Novogratz, who felt Pier 40 sports was his thing, and later secretly offered $100 million for the air rights to build even more condos on top of St. John’s Terminal. But before Novogratz’s power play, Douglas was prepared to do the right thing.
Now one of the problems with billionaires is you can’t appeal to them with a profit making deal – they don’t need any more money and making more is just a game and yes, it has to be their own act of charity.
But if just one of the billionaires, maybe Douglas, could be moved, Dr. David Kaufman, who brilliantly articulated the need to save St. Vincent’s, has viable plans. He suggested adding floors to the North Shore LIJ 13th Street and 7th Avenue Healthplex and to the triangular garage site just opposite— this would provide enough floors for an emergency room or we might build a Medical Electronics Research Center and hospital on St. John’s Terminal.
I am going to ask Tim to take a few copies of this February issue up to Doug’s office for him to read. And maybe he will take his extra copy to his own doctor who, after skimming the article will smile and say “yes, well, Doug, nice, but hospitals are money losers, it is where poor people go for medical help and never pay.” Or maybe Douglas will really consider “how much is a life worth.”
Letting a few people die to make the business of medicine profitable is not acceptable. Instead of saving money and letting people die in the ambulance on the way to the fewer and fewer ever receding emergency rooms in ever increasing traffic, maybe Douglas could do the right thing as he was prepared to do for Pier 40.
Doug Durst should pick up the phone and call Dr. David Kaufman and ask him how much he should donate and where to save those lives.
