Eli Broad, billionaire who helped reshape Los Angeles, dead at 87

LOS ANGELES — Eli Broad, a self-made billionaire, philanthropist and art collector who used his wealth to reshape the cultural landscape of Los Angeles, died Friday. He was 87.

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Broad died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after a lengthy illness, Suzi Emmerling, a spokeswoman for the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, told The New York Times. No cause of death was given.

Broad’s fortune was estimated by Forbes at $6.9 billion. He moved to California more than 50 years ago and became successful in the home construction and insurance industries before concentrating on several civic projects in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“We join the city of Los Angeles in mourning the loss of Eli Broad. The city and the nation have lost an icon,” Los Angeles Times Executive Chairman Patrick Soon-Shiong and his wife, Michele Chan, said in a statement. “Eli’s life story is an inspiration and a testament to the possibilities America hold. The Broads’ support and leadership of the cultural, educational and medical institutions that sustain us have been transformative. Our thoughts are with Edye and their family and we’re forever grateful to her and Eli.”

Broad played a major role in creating the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, The New York Times reported. When the museum was on the brink of financial collapse in 2008, Broad bailed it out with a $30 million package, the newspaper reported.

The civic transformation of Los Angeles was Broad’s “driving force,” Barry Munitz, a longtime associate and former chancellor of the California State University, told the Los Angeles Times in 2004.

Broad spent millions to assist medical and scientific research programs, including stem cell research centers at UCLA, the University of Southern California, the University of California at San Francisco and Harvard University, the newspaper reported. He was also a booster of public education reform who funded charter schools and a training academy for school district executives.

Working with civic leaders and developers, Broad helped shape a plan to transform Grand Avenue, in Los Angeles’ neglected downtown, into a cultural and civic hub, The New York Times reported. The renovations included restaurants, hotels, a park and a museum, the Broad, that would house his collection of more than 2,000 contemporary works.

Broad also collected enemies with his hard-driving, impatient style.

“I’m not the most popular person in Los Angeles,” he wrote in his 2012 work, “The Art of Being Unreasonable: Lessons in Unconventional Thinking,” a memoir and business-advice book.

Broad characterized himself as a “venture philanthropist” and expected his generosity to bring more than praise and naming rights, the Los Angeles Times reported. He regarded his donations as investments.

“I am a builder,” Broad once told the newspaper. “I don’t like to preside over the status quo and simply write checks.”

Born in New York on June 6, 1933, Broad was an only child who grew up in Detroit, the Los Angeles Times reported. His father, a Lithuanian immigrant, worked as a house painter before operating several five-and-dime stores. His mother was a seamstress who later worked as a bookkeeper for her husband.

Broad graduated with a degree in accounting from Michigan State University in 1954 and married Edythe “Edye” Lawson the same year. In 1956 their son Jeffrey was born, followed three years later by another son, Gary.

After working for a small accounting firm, Broad formed a partnership in 1957 with Donald Kaufman to build tract houses in the Detroit suburbs, The New York Times reported. He and Kaufman borrowed $25,000 from Broad’s father-in-law to launch Kaufman and Broad, now known as KB Homes, the Los Angeles Times reported.

In 1971, the partners diversified, spending $52 million for a Baltimore insurance company, Sun Life, which became a moneymaker when Broad began selling annuities and financial planning services to baby boomers. The company was renamed Sun America in 1993 and was sold to the American International Group in 1998 for $18 billion, the newspaper reported.

Broad is survived by his wife and sons.

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