Morton "Morty" Sarubin, a politically connected Baltimore developer whose noted projects included the luxurious Peabody Court Hotel and the Beethoven Apartments in Bolton Hill, died Saturday of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at Keswick Multi-Care Center.
The developer, who was labeled "the landlord with a golden touch" in a Baltimore Magazine article, was 85.
Mr. Sarubin was born in Baltimore and raised on Callow Avenue. He attended Polytechnic Institute and was 15 when he enrolled in 1940 at the University of Maryland.
During World War II, he left college and enlisted in the Army, where he studied Chinese at Georgetown University. After the war, he returned to College Park but did not earn a degree.
In the early 1950s, he went to work for the Regal Shop, a family-owned department store in the 600 block of W. Baltimore St.
In addition to the store, his family had other real estate holdings, including the old John Frederick Wiesner brewery in the 1700 block of N. Gay St.
Mr. Sarubin became a full-time developer in 1958 when the store was claimed by eminent domain for expansion of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. "Originally it was done for tax reasons," he told Baltimore Magazine in a 1974 profile. "After that, I just got involved and intrigued with the residential real estate business."
In the early 1960s, before it became popular, Mr. Sarubin believed in purchasing and renovating downtown buildings, and one of his earliest successes was combining a string of rowhouses at Park Avenue and McMechen Street, which he transformed in 1966 into the Beethoven North Apartments.
Ensuing years saw Mr. Sarubin expand his holdings to include the Uplands Apartments, a 1,000-unit apartment complex on Edmondson Avenue, which he rehabbed in 1972 after persuading the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to insure a $12.7 million loan to cover the cost of the work.
In 2003, HUD foreclosed on a partnership headed by Mr. Sarubin that defaulted on a federally backed loan after the 46-acre West Baltimore complex fell into disrepair.
The city later purchased the site and planned to build market-rate houses and 176 homes for families earning no more than $53,840 a year, The Baltimore Sun reported.
Mr. Sarubin also owned and rehabbed apartment complexes in Oakland and Cumberland in Western Maryland and in the late 1980s developed the Foxchase Apartments in Alexandria, Va.
By 1974, he had added to his portfolio the Mount Vernon Apartment Hotel and the Charles, Blackstone and Ivy Hall apartments.
There is "good money to be made downtown," Mr. Sarubin told The Evening Sun in a 1974 interview, explaining that his key to success was to "catch a building before it has gone down."
He also said that older buildings had a "certain aura, or charm," that was invariably missing in modern-day structures.
In 1974, Mr. Sarubin signed an option to purchase the Belvedere Hotel, which had been closed since 1971 and briefly did duty as a college dormitory.
When financing fell through, the landmark hostelry was sold to developer Victor Frenkil, who restored the hotel at Charles and Chase streets to its glory days.
"His career was not without controversy," said a daughter, Leslie S. Ries, a lawyer and developer who lives in Stevenson.
A disastrous six-alarm winter fire in early 1978 damaged the Beethoven North Apartments, killing a Central District patrolman and leaving 77 residents homeless.
Thus began a nearly two-year courtroom odyssey between preservationists who wished to see the Beethoven's Second Empire façade restored while its owner sought to have it demolished, citing restoration costs of at least $1 million or more.
In 1979, Mr. Sarubin put forth a plan for the Beethoven site should he be allowed to remove the structure. He proposed building a park for dogs complete with fire hydrants of various sizes. The dog park was to be called "Scenic Haven for Itinerant Terriers."
The late Robert J. Thiebolt, who was then lawyer for the Mount Royal Improvement Association, which had been fighting over the apartment building since the fire, told The Evening Sun in a 1979 interview that he wouldn't oppose the plan if "Mr. Sarubin agrees to live in the middle of his park."
In 1979, Mr. Sarubin agreed to sell the building to the city for $1 million; it was later restored.
"He did some wonderful restorations but had his ups and downs," said former state Sen. Julian L. Lapides, a longtime Bolton Hill resident and activist.
"He was doing restoration work in Baltimore at a time when it was a vitally important choice, and he deserves credit for preserving buildings and selling them to people who felt likewise," Mr. Lapides said.
Barbara A. Hoff, who had been director of the Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation, got to know Mr. Sarubin during the Beethoven controversy.
She pointed to the change in the tax laws that encouraged preservation. "It made historical preservation more advantageous than to tear down buildings," said Ms. Hoff, now a Los Angeles preservation consultant.
"Morton, who later hired me as a preservation tax consultant for the Peabody Court, also believed in investing his own money in preservation," Ms. Hoff said. "He really wasn't the bad guy that people thought he was."
In the early 1980s, Mr. Sarubin began restoration of the Mount Vernon Place Apartment Hotel at 612 Cathedral St., which had been built in 1924.
With its glassed-in rooftop restaurant — The Conservancy — the Peabody Court Hotel opened in 1985 to great fanfare.
After buying out his partners, Georges and Danielle Mosse, in 1987, Mr. Sarubin sold the hotel four years later for $8.1 million to Metropolitan Commercial Properties Inc. of Baltimore.
The hotel, which was later renamed the Latham Hotel, Baltimore, is today known as the Clarion Hotel at Peabody Court.
Frank A. Gant, a partner in the Baltimore architectural firm of Gant & Burnett, was Mr. Sarubin's architect on the apartment-hotel conversion. "Morty always had something cooking — 50 percent which he completed, and 50 percent which he didn't — but he always had a vision," said Mr. Gant.
"There were times when he drove people crazy, and there were times when they were unhappy with him, but they couldn't help but like him," Mr. Gant said. "He was a generous and gracious man."
Mr. Sarubin, who enjoyed holding court in the Prime Rib and the old Eager House, sipping a neat Jack Daniel's, retired several years ago as a developer but continued to manage several properties that he owned.
In 1974, he explained his philosophy in the Baltimore Magazine interview: "You have to create an illusion, an aura about a building. There's a different approach in each case, but whichever way you do it, hopefully you hit the right formula and you've got a winner."
Mr. Sarubin, who lived at 11 Slade in Pikesville, was an avid power boater.
He was a member of Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, and his philanthropic interests included the Park School and the Fuchsia Foundation, a cancer support organization.
Services were Monday.
Also surviving are his wife of 64 years, the former Phyllis Peskin; two other daughters, Flora S. Stelzer of Mount Washington and Judith G. Sarubin of Chevy Chase; and seven grandchildren.