Who

The son of New York real estate royalty, Doug Durst is the developer behind 4 Times Square and the soon-to-be-completed Bank of America tower. He's also the brother of a serial killer.

Backstory

Like most other major players in the New York real estate world, Durst comes to the game by way of family. His grandfather, Joseph Durst, founded a development concern called the Durst Organization in 1915, first buying a small office on 34th Street and then going on to acquire a handful of other Midtown commercial properties. When Joseph died, Doug's father Seymour took over and significantly expanded the firm's reach, becoming an office-building pioneer on Third and Sixth Avenues and slowly acquiring parcel after parcel in and around Times Square. (Legendarily eccentric, he also installed the debt clock in 1989 on West 42nd Street to remind America of its spendthrifty ways, and served as housing columnist for homeless paper Street News.)

Seymour died in 1995 and Doug, a Berkeley grad who'd already spent almost three decades at the Durst Organization, took the reins. He first made his mark with 4 Times Square, the blue-chip building that's home to Condé Nast and Skadden Arps and which paved the way for the renaissance of Times Square. While continuing to expand the family business in recent years, Durst has simultaneously cultivated a reputation as the city's most environmentally conscious developer, adding green touches such as geometric heating devices that reuse rainwater. Now the Durst Organization's co-president, he runs the company with the help of the other co-president, his cousin Jonathan "Jody" Durst.

Of note

Durst is finishing up his biggest project since 4 Times Square, the 54-story, 2.2-million-square-foot Bank of America Tower—otherwise known as One Bryant Park—which Durst is promoting as one of the city's most eco-friendly towers. (Although Durst has long marketed himself as a green developer, he doesn't have a unblemished rep with environmentalists: Durst's plans for Pine Plains, a second-home community in Dutchess County, has engendered opposition from a handful of prominent New Yorkers who have homes in the area, including Tim and Nina Zagat, Andrew Jarecki, and George Rush and Joanna Molloy.) Elsewhere, he recently completed his two biggest residential projects to date: the Helena, a Bruce Fowle-architected, 37-story rental building on West 57th Street; and the Epic, a 58-story building on West 31st Street. One non-real estate asset in the Durst Portfoilo: the eight vessels belonging to the New York Water Taxi.

Family ties

Doug's brother is Robert Durst, who has thrice been accused of murder but has never been convicted at trial. Robert's alleged victims include his wife Kathie, who vanished in 1982, and his wife's friend Susan Berman, who was shot dead in 2000, just days before she was due to testify about Kathie's disappearance. After the second murder, Robert retreated to Texas; when the dismembered body of his neighbor washed ashore in late 2001, a national manhunt ensued. (It ended when Durst was caught stealing a chicken salad sandwich in Bethlehem, Penn.) At trial, defense attorneys attributed his erratic behavior to having witnessed his mother's suicide when he was a young boy—she jumped off the roof of the family mansion in Scarsdale—and a jury accepted Rob's excuse that the killing was in self-defense. As one would expect, these days Doug is estranged from his brother; Rob even sued him in a dispute over the family fortune in 2006.

Personal

The reclusive Durst and his wife, Susanne, have three grown kids—Kristoffer, Anita, and Helena, after whom his 57th Street building is named. Anita is the founder of Chashama, an alternative arts group that stages beyond-weird art exhibits, plays, and dance performances in vacant Durst-owned storefronts in Times Square. The Dursts live on a 15-acre property in Katonah, and also co-own McEnroe Organic Farm, one of the largest organic farms in New York, in the upstate town of Millington.

No joke

In keeping with his eco-friendly shtick, Durst is said to always wear green socks.