Steve Simon: Deadhead, tree hugger, extremely private business whiz, Pacers heir

Steve Simon is sitting in his office, gazing out a big window that overlooks the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

On some days inside that glitzy office, the soundtrack to his view is Spotify, lilting Grateful Dead music. “Eyes of the World” or “The Music Never Stopped.” Or Phish.

Simon is a quirky, tree-hugging environmentalist, who’s been known to sling on a backpack, take a jaunt to New Zealand and hike for weeks at a time.

He was a Deadhead — following the Grateful Dead around the country for years — and still is, in spirit.

“Are you kidding me?” Simon said. “Once a Deadhead always a Deadhead.”

Simon never wanted to be one of those young, slick, suited-up guys going into the family business. He went to Indiana University to study public environmental affairs. But he was sidetracked by a semester with a buddy on a boat trip around the world and graduated with a general studies degree.

And yet, here he is — the 52-year-old eldest son of commercial real estate guru and Indiana Pacers owner Herb Simon — running a successful private equity firm in a treacherous industry with the big boys in Silicon Valley.

Here he is, the heir who will own and run the Indiana Pacers.

Here he is, a Simon business mogul.

And, yet, he still doesn’t fit the mold.

Simon is a soft, kind, almost sappy guy. He said tears well up in his eyes at the thought of seeing the Pacers win a championship.

Tears for the team, of course, but mostly for his dad. To see his father hoist a banner into the rafters of Bankers Life Fieldhouse, his arms outstretched, joy on his face. Finally, an NBA title for his team.

“Would there be anything sweeter?” Simon said. “I would have the greatest tears in my eyes watching Herbie with the banner.”

Herbie. That’s what Simon calls his 83-year-old dad. They’ve worked in business together for decades. In swank boardrooms in high-rise buildings with bankers and partners at long, shiny wooden tables.

And it just never sounded right, Simon said, to say “Hey, dad. What do you think about that?”

And so, Simon always called him Herbie. For nearly 20 years, quietly and unbeknownst to many, Steve Simon has been learning the ins and outs of running an NBA team from Herbie. A team valued at $880 million by Forbes.

They have been plotting a succession plan that will put Steve Simon at the helm of the Indiana Pacers.

***

They had their first business meeting together about 1972. Simon was seven years old.

He and his sister, Jenny, the children from Herb Simon’s first marriage, would jet across the country with Herb and his late brother, Melvin Simon, as they set out to build a real estate business empire. Striking deals, shaking hands, schmoozing.

The two little Simons would go to places such as Des Moines and Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Duluth, Minn. Jenny and Steve loved it, flying in their family’s private planes, seeing new places. Then, Steve Simon wanted more.

He started pestering his dad to actually take him into one of those meetings at the big table. So Herb Simon did.

Nearly five decades later, Herb Simon still remembers exactly what happened at that meeting in Fond du Lac, Wis. Someone in the meeting gave little Stevie a Coke to drink.

“And he knocked it over on the table and he was so disappointed as a young kid, trying to be among the adults,” Herb Simon said. “And it’s always stuck in my mind. Little Stevie trying to see what big daddy does with business.”

But little Stevie soon grew up with a mind of his own and veered off the path to daddy’s business.

***

He was a junior at North Central High School when his family bought the Indiana Pacers. The Simons became a household name when they became Indianapolis sports heroes.

The Pacers, which had been in the city since 1967, had struggled as an NBA team after unmatched success in the ABA. In 1977, coach Bobby “Slick” Leonard and his wife, Nancy, headlined a telethon to save the team.

In 1983, the future was shaky again. The Pacers might be sold. The team might bolt Indianapolis. Brothers Mel and Herb Simon stepped up, bought the team and “saved a city,” said Jeff Smulyan, founder and CEO of Indianapolis-based Emmis Communications and family friends with the Simons.

“The city looks drastically different without the Pacers,” Smulyan said.

And so, how cool must it have been to be a teenage boy and have a dad and an uncle who owned the city’s pro basketball team.

Simon, a soccer and baseball player who liked to skateboard and was a music lover, didn’t really care for anyone to know.

On the opening night of his family buying the team, Simon skipped the basketball fanfare and went to his junior prom.

“I wasn’t jumping up and down. I was probably a little … sheepish is probably the wrong word … but it wasn’t like I was thrilled,” he said. “I wasn’t like, ‘Wow. We have this basketball team and this is going to be great.’ I was never into the notoriety or the spotlight.”

Simon definitely does not like the spotlight. He says he has never granted an interview to media, and he’s been asked plenty of times.

“I’ve always been able to operate effectively under the radar,” he said. “A, it’s my style. B, it just fits me.”

But he started thinking, as a Pacers owner and the next man to lead the city’s beloved team, maybe he should “come out, so to speak.”

“I guess I’m a big enough part of the team, involvement wise, that it’s time,” he said. “But it’s not easy.”

****

Deep down, that may be why following in his family’s business footsteps didn’t come easily. He preferred to blend in.

“I had no desire,” said Simon, a married father of four who lives in Mill Valley, just north of San Francisco. “Back then, I didn’t really have a big ambition. And as I was finishing school up, I was thinking I wouldn’t go in that direction.”

But then he did, kind of.

The Simons had major interest in an Indianapolis company then-named Logo 7, a licensed sports apparel manufacturer. After college, Simon went to work for that company, with a bit of an ulterior motive.

“I was a tree hugger at the time, so I was trying to get them to clean up their environmental (footprint),” he said.

Along the way, he learned a lot about business, about marketing, about company financials. And, he grew up.

“And then at some point, I said, ‘Wow, you know they’ve had such an interesting ride in business,’” Simon said. “It was almost reluctantly in my mid 20s, I thought, ‘It’s probably worth learning the business and seeing what the whole Simon thing is all about.”

He joined Simon Property Group doing leasing and development, the foundation of the business at the time. He worked in big box leasing, the strip center division and marketing.

Yet, in his free time, he was still that roving music lover. One night, after driving to a Steely Dan concert in Chicago, he and some friends went looking for a hotel room. They were exhausted. It was 4 a.m.

Chicago was booked. They found a low-rate motel in Schaumburg, Ill. There were no rooms left, but there was half of a suite with a desk and a couch.

Simon said yes, no hesitation, and he and his friends crashed on the floor of a dirty motel, Simon with enough money in his family to buy a penthouse suite – to buy a hotel.

“That’s Steve. Steve is that kind of go-with-the flow guy. He’s never changed,” said Bob Laikin, one of those friends who slept on the floor. “He is loyal to his friends and what you see is what you get.”

***

People in business liked Simon. They respected Simon. His flair was different, but different didn’t mean bad.

And he does stand out in the business world.

“Very simply, he has the Simon heart,” said Rick Fuson, president of Pacers Sports & Entertainment, who has known Simon since he was 17. “He’s a caring man. He’s smart. He’s a challenger, which is great for us. He is a wide thinker. He doesn’t just accept things as normal because there could always be a better way to do it.”

Refreshing. Unpretentious. That’s what Laikin always liked about Simon, who was a kid brother, of sorts, to him. Laikin’s family and the Simons were friends growing up, involved in the Indiana Democratic party, members of the same synagogue.

Years later, when Laikin took his wireless communications company, BrightPoint, public in 1993, he turned to Simon. BrightPoint was one of the fastest growing companies in the world. Simon wasn’t even 30 years old. Laikin wanted him on the board.

“He was our youngest board member and had very little experience, yet he was a fantastic board member,” Laikin said. “He did his job. He took it seriously. He was fair but firm.”

Simon – whether he wanted it or not – had the Simon business sense.

He went on to run the family’s private real estate holding company, Melvin Simon & Associates, for years. Then, he got an itch to go out on his own, and to do it outside of Indianapolis.

In 2001, he moved to San Francisco and started building Simon Equity Partners – his own firm which handles venture, private equity and real estate.

Laikin says Simon has stood his ground with the big businessmen on the West coast, becoming known as a guy who has a knack for sniffing out just the right products to invest in.

Yet, Simon has managed to keep that fun, quirky personality. On the Simon firm's website, Fred Flintstone's image stands in for the missing photograph of a member of the advisory board.

Yes, moving to California made sense for Simon — but he says the relocation was only partly for business.

“It was part, I wanted to try it somewhere else. It was part family connections here. I loved the Bay area and I loved the Grateful Dead and I loved San Francisco and its culture and its food,” he said. “And it’s liberalism, in a way. It wasn’t a grand plan but I came out here and built a great life out here.”

***

Indianapolis is still home, too. Simon comes back – a lot.

What people don’t know, fans don’t know, is that Simon has been helping to run the Pacers for years. He’s been involved with the franchise since before Conseco (now Bankers Life) Fieldhouse was built. That was 1999.

And even before that, he was soaking it all in. In the early 1990s, at Market Square Arena, Simon would go back to the owners’ suite at halftime. It was a tiny tucked-away room, not fancy.

He would sit there like a fly on the wall and just listen. He would listen to Mel and Herb and former Pacers president Donnie Walsh.

The men would huddle and talk about what was going on with the game. With the business. On the court. Off the court. Simon would listen, not saying a word.

“Steve learned how to be the owner of the team in the way that Herb taught him,” Laikin said. “Herb trusts Steve beyond belief and respects him.”

The team, in Herb Simon’s mind, is his son’s team.

“He can do anything he wants, except I can disagree with him once in a while,” Herb Simon said. “That’s about it.”

And he can still veto his son.

“Oh yes. I love that,” Herb Simon said. “It’s one of my great joys.”

The humor. That’s the thing about Herb and Steve. They laugh. They jest. They jab.

“But it doesn’t mean we don’t take this very seriously,” Steve Simon said.

The succession plan, for Herb Simon to be out and Steve Simon to be in, isn’t a straight line. It’s an up and down and curvy road. And it’s a road that doesn’t have an end until Herb Simon steps down or dies.

Until then, they work together. Steve Simon is more involved with the budget and day-to-day matters.

“Besides helping make major financial decisions, as importantly, my job is to make sure we have the right talent and resources to execute on our strategic initiatives,” he said, “and empower them to lead and execute without micro management.”

What he brings to the table that his dad has not necessarily brought as team owner is some pushback, Simon said.

“I question. I can be, sometimes, the Dr. No. I have a little more critical eye than my father,” he said. “He’s been a great owner for so long and sometimes plays more of a cheerleading component and I can be more of a questioning component and probing component.”

Stephen Stitle, managing partner for Indiana operations of SmithAmundsen law firm, has seen that side of Simon and agrees.

“I think he will be assertive. He’ll listen, but he will not be a pushover,” said Stitle, who worked with Simon on the boards of the Pacers Foundation and Simon Youth Foundation. “I think he will have his own ideas.”

But there is one idea that really matters to Herb Simon. The idea the Pacers belong in Indiana.

“That’s my final legacy,” Herb Simon said. “I want to make sure it stays here.”

That will be in his will. He wants the Pacers in Indianapolis for as long as he can make it happen.

“My job is, before anything happens to me, to make a long-term deal with the city,” he said, “so we can keep the team here for at least the next 25 years.”

Steve Simon doesn't offer specifics on what might change for the team when he officially takes over. But he is most definitely thinking about the consumer side of things.

"There are a bunch of pieces to the business, but thinking about our brand and how we articulate it, how we create content, how we’re resonating with our consumers or our fans and making connections with them and wowing them ... that does invigorate me. I love brands. "

Yes, Steve Simon has a lot of ideas for the Pacers. Moving the team isn’t one of them.

"These deep connections have been made," he said. "It's, in large part, a byproduct of all the great heritage. All the great teams. Reggie's (Miller) incredible love and long-term representation of our franchise so well and Larry (Bird) and everyone up through our team now. Everyone has these cherished memories of the Pacers in Indianapolis."

The city built the team and the team built the city, he said.

“The answer is we always want this team to stay in Indianapolis where it belongs, period,” said Simon, who plans to keep some roots in California. “We’ve had this great love affair with the city. This team only fits in Indianapolis. There is nowhere else it fits.”

Follow Dana Benbow on Twitter @danabenbow. She can be reached at 317-750-7794.

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