Posted Mar 28, 2009, 1:14 PM
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Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: B3K Halifax, NS
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Medjuck’s towering compromise
Entrepreneur proceeds with project without his ‘important focal point’
By BILL POWER Business Reporter
Sat. Mar 28 - 8:38 AM
Centennial Group CEO Ralph Medjuck holds the model tower that won’t be included in his waterfront development, on Wednesday. Mr. Medjuck will be inducted into the Junior Achievement Nova Scotia Business Hall of Fame this June. (Tim Krochak / Staff)
WHEN YOU GROW UP Jewish in a tough neighbourhood, sometimes banging on doors of large individuals who prefer to spend their rent money in other ways, you quickly learn the value of compromise.
Ralph Medjuck, chairman and CEO of Centennial Group Limited, likes to say some of his most important business lessons came on the fly and on the street from the days of his youth.
"There are times when you have to go with the flow. There are times when that can be painful, but it is sometimes necessary to get the project to proceed," the soft-spoken entrepreneur and community philanthropist said in an interview in his office at the top of Summit Place, overlooking Halifax Harbour and the stomping grounds of his youth.
Mr. Medjuck said one of the more painful compromises Centennial Group has made recently was the decision to drop the $10-million, 40-storey tower that was a key element of the estimated $100-million residential-hotel project that will soon rise from a vacant 1.4-hectare site between Salter Street and Bishop’s Landing.
The waterfront project was approved last year but a construction start date has not been set.
The decision to proceed without the tower to get the project moving was a difficult one, said the 76-year-old developer as he gingerly lifted a tiny replica of the spire from the model of the complex that sits by a window in his office overlooking the construction site.
"The tower was an important focal point for the project. It was a shame to remove it," he said of the compromise to get clearance for the project at Halifax city hall.
The Halifax waterfront in the 1930s and 1940s provided lots of first-hand lessons about business survival and success. The family business — Irving Sales Ltd. — was located right in the middle of a ramshackle and chaotic urban waterfront and the teenaged Ralph Medjuck was doing deals even before he completed public school.
At 15 he was delivering groceries and collecting rent in some of the grittiest neighbours Nova Scotia has produced.
Crews from the big fishing boats that tied up on the waterfront would often stop in Irving Sales looking for gramophones, pedal-operated sewing machines and other modern gadgets that were popular at the time in the seafaring communities of Newfoundland.
"I think by the time I was in Grade 6 I knew I would be doing my own thing instead of working for somebody else," the business chief said of the early days.
"I was totally caught up in the business of buying things and selling them at a higher price to make a profit."
These days just about anybody who lives or works in Halifax has at some point contributed to the success of Centennial Group’s coffers through tenancy or business activity at about 40 big buildings the developer and his team has brought to the city and its environs over the past 50 years.
The list of successful Centennial Group projects includes the Fenwick Building, the Citadel Inn, the Centennial Building, the Prince George Hotel, Cambridge Suites (Halifax, Sydney and Toronto), Park Victoria apartments, and Northwood Towers and Manor.
Over the years there have been significant projects in other Canadian centres, including the $200-million Young-Richmond Centre, ongoing involvement in the family hotel business, and some intriguing play in the Nova Scotia offshore energy sector through Scotia Energy in the early 1980s.
However, Mr. Medjuck always found time to participate personally and financially in a host of endeavours.
Recognition for his business and community successes will come by way of induction into the Junior Achievement Nova Scotia Business Hall of Fame this June.
Automobile dealer Al MacPhee and former Dartmouth mayor Joseph Zatzman will also be inducted into the hall.
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