Harlon shuffle.

• Author: Hetzer, Michael
• Position: Harlon Properties Inc. - Company profile

Harlon shuffle

Harrison Lasky is an easy target these days. Less than seven years after assembling his first major Triangle parcel, near Raleigh-Durham International Airport, he is mired in the largest personal bankruptcy in North Carolina history. He owes $113 million to hundreds of creditors. He lists assets - not counting real-estate properties - of just $4.4 million.

A shrewd, capable developer who honed his skills in fast-paced Florida, Lasky's company, Harlon Properties Inc., dragged the provincial Triangle into the glitzy 1980s and made millions in the process. But Lasky and his former partner, Lon Rubin, are often blamed for the inflated land prices and real-estate glut that plague the market today.

It's debatable whether so many of the Triangle's real-estate woes should be laid on Lasky's doorstep. But Lasky, who declined to be interviewed, could argue convincingly that he is as much a victim of his success as his mistakes. In the heyday of the mid-'80s, his deals revealed that land in the Triangle was undervalued as much as 10 to 15 percent.

His projects showed how a well-conceived development strategy could unlock that wealth. A kind of real-estate feeding frenzy followed, and construction skyrocketed.

In 1984, there was some 800,000 square feet of office space in the Research Triangle Park area. The next year, that had grown to 1.3 million - and vacancies reached a staggering 38 percent.

But the developers swept on, committed to multiphase projects for which they already had financing. By 1986, RTP had nearly 2.5 million square feet of office space. "Once a problem appears, you can't stop the economy on a dime," says Carolantic Realty Vice President Richard Hibbits.

Still, many developers say greed is the key to Harlon's downfall. "I'll say it again: You can trace [Lasky's] problems directly to greed," says James Anthony Jr., president of Anthony & Co., a commercial brokerage in Raleigh.

Others view Lasky's story as one of mismanagement and simple bad luck. Whatever you call it, the legacy of this riches-to-rags tale will be with the Triangle real-estate market for a long, long time.

"Everybody's got such strong feelings about those guys and what they did to destroy our market," Anthony says with a bitter laugh. "You have to have a sense of humor in retrospect at the damage that's been done, or you'll go crazy."

Harlon Properties Inc. was founded in Florida in 1977 and had commercial and residential operations in Florida...