NEW YORK -- For a chap whose ambition in his college days at Brown was to be a sculptor, Benjamin Lambert hasn't done badly in business.
At the age of 42, he is a dynamic figure in the world of multi-million dollar real estate deals. He owns Eastdil Realty.
Lambert bought back Eastdil last June from the Paine Webber group in Wall Street. He had first acquired Eastdil in 1970 with several partners. He sold it five years later, although he remained with the company four more years.
His motive for buying back the company instead of agreeing to run it for Paine Webber? 'I have to have something new to do constantly.' And that isn't easy unless you can call your own shots.
In his determination to do his own thing, he decided to be the only American participating in the first 'Asian Property in the '80s' real estate investment conference in Hong Kong in December. 'I happen to believe Asia is fast becoming the most important source of new capital in the world,' he said.
In his meteoric career in real estate, Lambert has been the chief financial negotiator in the $337 million Irvine ranch sale in California, the biggest single land deal in the country's history. He has guided foreign investors in buying billions of dollars worth of real estate in the United States. He arranged the financing for more than 20 huge shopping centers. He is handling the real estate liquidation of the Korvette, Food Fair and City Stores chains. He has just become involved in Chrysler Corp.'s program to sell off more than $100 million worth of real estate.
Lambert now hopes to achieve his biggest coup, to find someone who will pay the Prudential Insurance Co. $1 billion for the huge World Trade Center on the Hudson River in midtown Manhattan.
He also admits he has considered running for public office, mainly because 'nobody should keep on doing the same thing forever.' His growing interest in politics goes somewhat deeper than personal ambition. He said he is convinced the 1980 presidential election proved beyond doubt that the present system has become unworkable.
'The first thing we need to do is to limit the president to one six-year term so he can be an administrator in the White House instead of a perpetual candidate,' he said. He also thinks the tenure for members of Congress should be changed. 'Representatives should be elected for longer terms, senators for shorter terms.'
Lambert says if something like this is not done, the whole U.S. government system may become impotent.
But if he is pessimistic about the immediate outlook on the American political scene, he is quite optimistic about American society. He spends a lot of time with his three daughters, aged 17, 14 and 11, and their friends. He is impressed by the earnestness, clear-eyed realism and moral convictions of today's teen-agers and college students. He thinks they are much more earnest and much more stern morally than the kids of the 1960s and early 1970s were.
'For example, I find many of these kids taking a good hard and disapproving look at our government's actions in bailing out Lockheed and Chrysler Corp. with government funds or loan guaranties,' he said.
'Of course,' he said, 'the youngsters also are much exercised over the immediate and long-range distribution of wealth.'
Despite their earnestness, Lambert doesn't see American kids going in much for old-fashioned puritanism, the kind of philosophy that is characterized by romantic pessimism -- the belief that man must look beyond this world for salvation.
He said the big reason for the mental and moral toughness of today's teenagers and college students is their enormously greater access to information than former generations had.
This access, he said, is about to be multiplied many times by the development of the videodisc, which, because it is relatively cheap, will have an almost revolutionary impact on education and entertainment, and consequently on the intellectual, moral and social life of the country.
Lambert is a partner in a small company engaged in developing the educational opportunities of the videodisc.
He also is interested in more teaching of the history of art in the schools because he says that, in every age, painting and the other arts have provided the widest and most penetrating reflections of what is really happening in the world. For this reason, he would like to design a course in the history of art in this century for high school youngsters.
Lambert majored in art at Brown but gave up his sculpting ambitions early, realizing he didn't have enough talent to make a living at it.
Not having specialized in useful business courses in college, he had to take any job he could find on leaving school. He spent two years hawking remnants of fancy fabrics in the New York theatrical and garment districts for Burlington Industries.
'I had to carry two big bags of samples around but I learned a lot about business on that job and met hundreds of interesting people,' he said. 'I really enjoyed it.'
Then he caught on with a mortgage firm and soon was on his way to the big time in real estate.
Lambert's family founded the Lambert Trophy for the best college football team in the East each year.
'My father was in the jewelry business then and, although he didn't like to admit it, the trophy was in part a promotion scheme for the business,' Lambert said. 'The first year it was awarded, Fordham and Pitt were the chief contenders. Dad was hoping Fordham would win so he could make a big splash in New York in handing out the award, but Pitt won and Dad had to go make the award in Pittsburgh instead.'
The family now has added the Lambert Cup and the Lambert Bowl to the trophy for the best teams in two classes of smaller eastern colleges. Ben Lambert is trying to figure out a way to institutionalize the awards and make the annual ceremonies occasions for raising funds for some worthwhile causes.
Ben Lambert is tall and strapping and was a good prep school footballer himself. He went out for the freshman team at Brown but soon realized he never would be good enough for the varsity. Tennis is his game now.
