In 2008, Meir Laufer, a small-time New York real estate developer, was taking a spin aboard the London Eye, the 443-foot ferris wheel on the banks of the Thames, when he decided on a scheme: He would bring a similarly enormous ferris wheel to New York, but make it even bigger.

When he got back stateside, he divulged his grand ambition to a colleague, Eric Kaufman, whose main business was converting condos. Two years after inspiration struck, however, Laufer and Kaufman were still having trouble getting their project off the ground. They had tried to secure a plot at South Street Seaport, then Governors Island, but were rebuffed by the city on both fronts.

Laufer and Kaufman were looking for someone who could add gravitas to their scrappy outfit and make their dream a reality. So they arranged a meeting with Rich Marin, a financier who had just been canned by Africa Israel USA, the investment fund of Israeli diamond magnate Lev Leviev. In a stroke of prodigiously poor timing, Leviev’s firm had gone large on American real estate in 2007, just as the market was starting to crater, ultimately bringing the financial industry—and the global economy—down with it. The fund had gone on a $3 billion buying spree that included 22 marquee properties in New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Miami. Called in to steady the ship, Marin orchestrated a deft restructuring, refinancing three times, whittling down the imperious debt load to a more manageable $1.2 billion, and avoiding bankruptcy.

It was a feat many thought impossible. And for all that he’d been turned out—licking its wounds, the firm pivoted away from the American market, leaving Marin high and dry. In December of 2010, Laufer and Kaufman met Marin at the Cornell Club, the Manhattan outpost of Marin’s alma mater, to get him on board. The plan, at that point, was spectacular in its simplicity: The ferris wheel would be some 600 feet tall, largest in the world, and cost some $200 million to complete. Laufer and Kaufman supplied the idea—Marin would furnish the expertise to make it happen.

Marin wasn’t a construction guy—by his own estimation his construction experience could “fit in a teacup”—but he knew deals, fundraising, and finance, and he had a flair for the ambitious. If the ferris wheel worked out, a project of this stature would win him back his seat at the big boys table in the world of New York finance. After an hour of hashing out the particulars, Laufer, Kaufman, and Marin all shook hands and parted ways. Marin was in.