Trajectory
by David Muller

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Chapter Eighteen:
Loho Vetz

Since my father’s passing, I have been fully engaged in running his business affairs for our family.

Although my father was eighty-six years old at his passing, he was fully engaged in business at the time, and since he died suddenly, he had an enormous number of balls in the air at his passing, several of which involved enormous risk.

Having all these risky business ventures was great for my Dad. He loved waking up in the morning having no idea what was going to happen to him that day. This was great for him, but not so great for his eighty-four year old widow and her four children. Thus, my first goal was to reduce the risk in his portfolio.

Secondly, my father had a myriad of partners in his business endeavors. Every business had a different partner or group of partners. In most cases, these partners viewed me as Daddy’s little boy who used to hold his hand coming to meetings when I was little. My goal was to establish credibility with these partners, especially in those ventures that our family wishes to maintain as long-term holdings.

Levack

The riskiest project that my father was involved with was a property in a hamlet called Levack, Ontario, which is way up in northern Ontario, forty miles west of Sudbury. A bit of history of this project is in order here. Levack, Ontario is a small hamlet which exists because of the nickel mines. Although it is Sudbury that is known as the “Nickel Capital of Canada”, it is actually in Levack where the two mines are located. They used to be known as Inco and Falconbridge, but have gone through many changes in ownership and are now foreign-owned and go by new names.

Unfortunately, an unscrupulous local roofer developed a rapport with my father. This roofer had bought a former school in this hamlet of Levack and was looking to unload it. It really had no value. However, he brought a Croatian man to my father, and between the roofer and the Croatian, they convinced my father to buy the school from the roofer. The idea was that the Croatian would move to Levack and convert the school to an apartment building to rent out to miners (people who work in the mines). The Croatian had no money; the deal was that my father would put up all the money to buy the school from the roofer, and then to renovate the school to convert it into apartments. My father bought the school.

Over the years, two things happened: firstly, the Croatian man got into a domestic dispute with his wife and in order to avoid arrest, he took a taxi to the Toronto airport and flew one-way to Croatia, never to be heard from again, having disconnected his phones and all other contact points. Secondly and simultaneously, the price of nickel had fallen, making much of the mining unprofitable and thus eliminating the mines’ need for more miners, thus eliminating any potential demand for residential housing units of any sort.

Ten years passed and by then my Dad had millions into the project. My Dad, who always saw the upside of everything, would not give up the project. He tried to run it himself. When he passed away, I dropped the price of the units drastically and quickly came to find out that there was no demand for these units at any price whatsoever. Thus, I sold the entire project to a local entrepreneur for a song. My Dad would have been furious if he knew that I did that after he had “so much in it”.

The silver lining is that I merged our companies and it left our family with a giant tax loss carryforward. Our family office is now known as Loho Vetz Inc. The back of my business card reads as follows: “The name of our company, Loho Vetz, is a spelling variant of Hlohovec, the town in Slovakia in which the Muller family lived for generations, and from which Nandor and Henry and their family fled from the oncoming Nazis in 1939, first to Vienna, then to London, and eventually making their way to Canada, where they settled in Niagara Falls and started their lives over. The current generation of Mullers are the grateful beneficiaries of their ancestors’ perseverance, fortitude and hard work.”

Ohio Brass

In the mid-1980’s, my father bought a huge old empty building in Niagara Falls. It was two hundred and fifty thousand square feet, built about in the 1910’s. The company, Ohio Brass, before it closed, made ceramic capacitors for hydro wires. My father leased the building to the local paper mill, Ontario Paper Company, in nearby Thorold, Ontario. Ontario Paper used the building to store recycled newspaper, which was the raw material the factory used to make newsprint. Because the mill took its raw material in on a first in first out basis, every day, dozens of truckloads of recycled newsprint were brought in and dozens of truckloads went out to the mill.

The annual rent that the mill paid was equal to the price that my father paid for the building. Thus, every year, the building paid for itself again.

The mill itself changed ownership many times, becoming Quebec & Ontario Paper, then QUNO Paper, then Resolute Paper. In 2016, the year before my father passed away, the mill closed forever. Because most people now read their news online instead of the print edition, the demand for newsprint had plummeted over the years and thus the current owners closed the mill. There was no other possible replacement as a tenant for the Ohio Brass building; the building was too big and too old. Also, the roof leaked. This was perfect for the mill because actually they like the newsprint to be a little damp before it gets to the mill, so having a leaky roof was great. However, it was not so great for any other possible tenant, and a new roof is very expensive.

Just before he passed away, my father was approached by a realtor who convinced my Dad to sell the building to some friends of this realtor’s in a very-little-money down transaction. The friends ended up taking in a partner, then losing their half to the partner. In the end, the partner actually paid down the mortgage according to schedule. My Dad would have told me that he knew everything would work out alright!

Bright’s Canning, ABC Rail, Roadmaster and National Grocers Warehouse

Even though the Ohio Brass building was huge, the demand of the paper mill was so great that the building was full and the mill was looking for more space. Thus after buying Ohio Brass, my father bought two other huge empty buildings across the street. One was the former Bright’s Canning factory and the other was the former ABC Rail factory. My father bought these two buildings in partnership with two local partners. This partnership also owned two other buildings in Niagara Falls, one the former Roadmaster factory and the other the former National Grocers warehouse.

When my father passed away, I stepped into his shoes in this partnership of these four buildings. Because Bright’s Canning and ABC Rail were empty, and there was no prospect of the paper mill reopening, I decided to sell these two buildings to a local manufacturer that was looking to expand. At this writing, that leaves this partnership owning the other two buildings, which are both leased, one to Enerdynamics Hybrid Technologies and the other to BV Glazing Systems.

Clifton Hill Building

We still own the building at the top of Clifton Hill where the Houdini Magical Hall of Fame was located until it burned down. We are partners in that building with the grandchildren of Vince DeLorenzo, who was my Dad’s partner in that building as well as in the Cavalier Motel, which they sold several decades ago. Since the museum burned down in 1995, that building has been rented to Ripley’s International. They currently have an attraction in it called Ripley’s Selfie Studios, where visitors put together very cool Instagram posts. I had the honour of cutting the ribbon at the opening ceremonies. Check out the photo of me walking a tightrope over the Falls!

Dorchester Road Building

In the 1960’s my father bought an 85-acre vacant piece of property on the southern edge of Niagara Falls. In the 1980’s he sold ten of the acres to a company called Panalera, which built a factory that made insulating sheets for construction. The company lasted forty-two days and then went out of business. My Dad bought the building. When the Ontario provincial government opened a casino in Niagara Falls, they rented this building from my father to use as a storage warehouse and a refurbishing operation of their machinery and furniture. They have been there for several decades. Recently the Ontario government sold the management rights of the casino operation to the Mohegan Indian group out of Connecticut, so they are now our tenant.

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