Pair Forms New French Connection

Trying to cash in on the Japanese investment boom:

It might be called “good ol’ Yankee ingenuity,” and, yes, the players are Americans, but like many Americans, these two were born elsewhere. One is from France. The other, from Japan.

They met in Venice--California, that is.

“We saw each other at art gallery openings,” Ted Tokio Tanaka remembered. “And then, about five weeks ago, we started talking. I told him about a project I was doing in England. He told me about his plans in France. Then I said, ‘Why don’t you pay my expenses for a week, and I’ll take a look at this place of yours in France?’ ”

A week in France, all expenses paid? It might sound like a dream but to Tanaka, it was another project, albeit one of his more exciting projects.

Came to California

Tanaka is an architect--has been since 1969, after graduating with a degree in architecture from Arizona State University. He came to the United States with his parents in 1958, when he was 16. He opened his own office in Venice in 1978--the same year Francois Geis arrived in Philadelphia.

Geis, now 36, came to the United States for the first time as a tourist in 1972. He liked it so much he came back to live, in 1978. After a year in Philadelphia, he headed West, thinking of working as a photographer in California. Instead, he went to work as a waiter, then a cook at the Rose Cafe in Venice.

His parents were both teachers, but Geis was not much of a student, he admits. “I was never the best kid in school. I was always reading magazines.”

Nevertheless, he only worked at the cafe for four months, then briefly returned to France as a personal guide for the cafe’s owner.

Back in Venice, he had a girlfriend who was taking aerobics. “I didn’t like what she was wearing,” he recalled. So, in December, 1980, he started designing aerobics sportswear under the label Dance France.

He sold the business in December, 1986, to Danskin, with the provision that he would stay on for four more years as a designer and marketing consultant.

“I started out with less than $500,” he said, “and I had no experience in the garment business, so the banks wouldn’t lend me anything, but I grossed $250,000 to $300,000 the first year, $600,000 the second and $1.2 million the third, when I took over a 10,000-square-foot warehouse and 4,000-square-foot office on Main Street.” In 1986, he estimated that his company grossed $6 million in sales.

“My main client was Jane Fonda.”

His main clients for his new venture will be, he hopes, the Japanese, and once again, his plan isn’t something most banks would finance:

With the help of Tanaka, Geis expects to transform a chateau, built in 1906 on the site of a 16th-Century castle, into a corporate retreat, to be sold as time-shares, at $50,000 for two weeks plus maintenance fees, to 20 companies.

Good Exchange Rates

He bought the chateau in 1985 for about $400,000. Exchange rates were so good then for Americans that he also bought a 16th-Century castle a three hours-drive from Paris and is turning part of it into six master suites, which he plans to rent at $1,000 each for three days, including meals and a car.

“I started work on that a year ago this month, and I’ll open it in less than a year,” he said.

He expects the chateau to open in 1990 or 1991. He already put $1 million to $2 million in refinishing the exterior and redesigning the landscaping. “Our budget is $5 million,” Tanaka said.

He is working on interior drawings, so Geis can show the Japanese completed designs when he goes to Tokyo to market the time-shares in September. Geis left for Japan last Wednesday to schedule the fall meetings.

“They know me over there because of Dance France,” he noted.

He has some fitness contacts, which should prove useful. Besides swimming in a large indoor pool planned in what was the 23,000-square-foot stables, hiking on the 60-acre grounds, hitting golf balls on the planned putting range, and playing tennis on the yet-to-be built courts, guests will have a choice of such diverse activities as yoga, the martial arts, meditation, ceramics, gardening, astrology, computers, underwater massage and body wraps.

The 23,000-square-foot chateau will be turned into eight suites and common spaces such as a dining room for 40 people, a bar, library, game room, conference rooms and a media room that will be like a little movie theater, Tanaka said, while the stables will have 12 suites as well as the pool, under a glass roof. The suites will be 750 to 1,000 square feet in size.

Tanaka, who has designed a shopping mall under construction near Bath in England and a number of Southern California residences and commercial buildings, also plans to design the chateau furniture.

Geis removed existing furnishings. Among them: many antiques, which he sold for a tidy $100,000.

A Car Per Suite

“Between Francois and me, we’ll design almost every item in the chateau, including the dishes and what the staff will wear,” Tanaka said.

He will design a place for a telefax in every suite. “And every suite will have the use of a car,” Geis added. There will also be a helipad.

The chateau is 5 1/2 hours by car or 1 hour 15 minutes by plane from Paris. It is a 2-hour drive from Bordeaux.

Known as Chateau de Fleurac, it was built, ironically, by a Parisian who was in the clothing business but wanted to grow grapes to make wine. When a 1904 post card was issued with a drawing of the chateau, it was part of a 4,000-acre estate, which dwindled after a disease destroyed the grapes.

Valley of Castles

The chateau has had only five or six owners since it was built, Geis said, and they mainly kept horses there. It is in a valley surrounded by other chateaux and castles, one that is now a Tibetan monastery, another--on 3,000 acres--that is owned by a man about Geis’ age who commercially raises fish and 5,000 sheep.

“His great great grandfather was best friends with Napoleon (Bonaparte),” Geis said, “and he has boxes of stuff from the (Napleonic) campaigns. He also taught me to open a bottle of champagne with a saber.”

Geis was born about 600 miles from the region, so he finds it as fascinating as a stranger.

His chateau is about seven miles from the caves of Lascaux and Rouffignac, which draw an estimated 400,000 visitors a year--”but not the Japanese,” he said. “They haven’t discovered the area yet.”

Permit Process

If he has his way, they’ll discover it through Chateau de Fleurac. Of course, he hopes he’ll have the same success with it as he did with Dance France.

Tanaka is already having fun with the project. He is interviewing French architects to help him get through the permit process. “We’re writing in English, French and Japanese, and we’re using the metric system,” he said.

And he’s making his own pitch to the Japanese. “I’m doing a proposal for a Japanese ski resort.”