It was a normal conversation between mother and son; they were driving home from a family gathering in their hometown of Newark when the mother of NBA superstar Shaquille O'Neal noticed of how much their city has changed over the years, as Dan Ivers of NJ narrated in the report.
"She said, very sadly, 'This city used to be so beautiful, I wish somebody would come back and fix it up,'' he said in an interview Tuesday. "And I knew she was talking about me." And like most dreams, that conversation with his mother was what sparked the NBA great's Newark real estate journey.
After four years of finally saying goodbye to the sport, O'Neal is now focused on his career as a TV personality and at the same time on several real estate ventures in Newark, Atlantic City, Orlando, and his adopted home of Atlanta, GA.
It all started with buying and selling refurbished small houses, but O'Neal's Newark holdings has become bigger over the years, with bringing the city's first movie theater in decades and what would be Newark's first high-rise apartment in half a century, "One Riverview".
"The first thing we started doing was asking the city to tear down these projects, and start giving them some Applebee's, you know, let's start giving them some mixed-use development. Let's give them places where they can feel good about themselves," he said.
But for the 43-year-old hardwood superstar, he's still far from being a real estate mogul, and that he owes his success to Boraie Development, a New Brunswick based developer that helped him with the nitty gritty work like looking for sites, putting permits in place, and manning the construction process.
"I wish I could take that title. You know what I realized in sports, if you have the correct teammates around you, you can do anything," he said.
O'Neal and his partners are also making sure that they won't be leaving longtime residents feeling left out amidst the development in downtown Newark; saying that they intend to make their ventures most accessible for those who already call the city their home.
"We're looking at a lot of stuff. Newark has record of building good quality affordable housing," said Boraie Vice President Waseem Boraie. "You need something to turn the tide. (One Riverview) is 100% market rate to prove a point - that Newark can handle market rate."
Shaquille O'Neal's net worth is $250 million.
