Gin's start in Chicago real estate came when she answered a classified ad for a salesperson.
"It was fun and easy," Gin told a Chicago Sun Times reporter. "It
wasn't like work at all. The economy was reasonably strong, and
people were selling real estate right and left."
Still, after her bunnying days, Gin had little money to spare during her first 15 years in
Chicago. "She didn't have any money until probably in the later
70s," Richard recalls. "Starting in the middle 70s‹74, 75‹she was
starting to make her move in the world."
For a woman of Gin's ambitions,
it was inevitable that sales would lead to investment. Her first
Chicago property was a $40,000 corner building at 2100 N. Halsted,
then an area badly in need of renovation. All her years of serving
food seems to have caught up with Gin at that point. In 1974 she
formed a partnership with chef Bernard LeCoq to open Cafe Bernard
in her N. Halsted building.
Richard was on hand opening night to help an anxious Sue Ling. "I helped her in the kitchen,"
he says modestly. Gin's partnership with Bernard LeCoq has now
survived more than 20 years, but during that time the relationship
changed. "They started as partners but she outgrew that," Richard
says. "He was not able to be a [full] partner to her as she grew
into all these other enterprises and businesses. She went way beyond
[his ability to keep up]."
In any event Cafe Bernard gave Sue Ling Gin her first real financial
base. "That's when it started to move for her," Richard says of
her relatively fast success with the restaurant. By 1976 Sue Ling
Gin had an office on the 29th floor of the IBM building. From that
vantage point she kept an eye out for dilapidated, under-valued
properties, mostly in what is now the trendy Haymarket area.
In 1980 her lawyers at Jenner & Block thought it would be fun to set
her up with another hard-nosed client. MCI founder/chairman William
G. McGowan, then 52 and still a bachelor, was in Chicago for the
trial of MCI's antitrust suit against AT&T. It was the home stretch
of his epic 26-year struggle to revolutionize the telecommunications
industry. His efforts would ultimately save consumers tens of billions
a year in long-distance charges.
[CONTINUED BELOW]
One common ground Gin shared with McGowan was their humble origins.
Bill McGowan's father was a railroad engineer. From youth Bill
worked to lighten the family's economic burden. After a stint in
the army he attended tiny King's college in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
while holding down a full-time job as a night freight dispatcher.
Still he managed to graduate with scholarship offers from both
the Harvard and Wharton Business Schools. With some trepidation
McGowan chose Harvard. The onetime country yokel was so awed by
the wealth and sophistication of his classmates that he redoubled
his efforts.
"That was the first time he really enjoyed college," Richard says, recalling the long conversations
he had when his late brother-in-law would visit, "because for once
he didn't have to work while going to school." McGowan graduated
at the top of his class.
McGowan's entry into the
telecommunications business followed from his youthful enthusiasm
about the promise the nascent computer industry held out for increasing
efficiencies in labor-intensive tasks like switching long-distance
calls. A computerized switching system that linked trunk lines
between large cities to AT&T's local phone lines, McGowan believed,
could easily undersell the AT&T monopoly.
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