Freewheeling Entrepreneur Gambles with History
For much of his 64 years, B. Paul Mouradian has lived as he pleased; money in his pocket, gambling at horse tracks and crap tables, showering the women and entertainers he admired with drinks and flowers. But Mouradian's life is no longer one of champagne and roses.
Poor health tempers his lifestyle and a dead general stands in the way of his latest pursuit: building a strip mall on what historians say was the first U.S. military's first boot camp. Preservationists say the 21 acres Mouradian owns in Harmony township is so significant that a national park should be built there. Township officials, meanwhile, are considering taking the land by eminent domain.
Mouradian brushes aside the talk with a flippancy that drives his critics nuts. "You feel that strongly about it?" he asks. "Fine. You sit down and write me a check. Then you can do what you want with your mouth." Mouradian's price? A crisp $60,000 per acre. "You have to understand business," says Mouradian, an accountant in Ambridge. "It's about profit and loss." " A national park is not going to make any money," he says. "They're pipe dreamers."
Mouradian likewise pooh-poos the historical value of the camp, known as Legion Ville, where Maj. Gen. "Mad" Anthony Wayne marched and trained troops from November 1792 to April 1793. The site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places for almost 20 years. "The general was training troops in Pittsburgh," Mouradian says, referring to Fort Fayette, a supply depot where Wayne's first recruits practiced shooting. But the fort was too small and the men were tempted by wine and women. Wayne moved the troops down river to Legion Ville. So, asks Mouradian, if Wayne was training in Pittsburgh, how can historians call Legion Ville the first training ground? "That was a lot of boloney," Mouradian says. "Either that or I'm going to have to go back to the dictionary and see what first means."
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Boghas Paul Mouradian sits in a booth at Mr. C's Restaurant and Lounge on Duss Avenue in Ambridge, sipping coffee and recalling his heydays. The recollections spill like candy from a bag, one after another and in no particular order. Mouradian leans his short, stout frame on one hand and cups his brown coffee mug with the other. His hand leaves the mug often. Mouradian gestures as he speaks. It is the same way when drives: One hand and arm planted firmly on the elbow rest, the other hand on the steering wheel, moving up, down and around as he chats.
The person Mouradian describes is a self-made man who paid his own way because his parents couldn't. He worked from age 11 on, delivering newspapers, setting up bowling pins or stocking grocery shelves. As a young man, he put himself through college in three years. He launched his accounting business when he was 30. "I worked hard." Mouradian says, "but I also played hard." Once, twice, three times a year, Mouradian would go to Las Vegas. "I enjoy myself gambling." he says. "I have sort of a regimen."It goes like this; Get up at 11 a.m. for brunch; gamble on horses for two or three hours; play craps; play poker; play roulette; play the slot machines; eat dinner; play stud poker;retire at 2 a.m.; then get up and do it all over again. "When I go to Vegas, I drop maybe $3,000." he says.
Over the years, Mouradian has seen some big-name performers in Vegas, stars like Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Debbie Reynolds and Teresa Brewer. "If I enjoy a performer, I always send up a bottle of champagne. Just like that," he says laughing. "The real name people have come out there, you know, and sat down for a few minutes and talked. As a rule, they'll send back a message and say. "Thank you." Mouradian remembers buying a drink for a singer in a Wildwood, N.J., nightclub. "She was built as a Brazilian bombshell, OK?" The singer sent back a message via the waiter: I will accept your drink if you join me at my table. "We spent a week together going different places," Mouradian says. "I was her escort, so to speak."
Mouradian was 15 or 16, "I don't know which," when he found his favorite drink. It happened on a Sunday in a Detroit lounge. The bartender could only serve beer or whine. "Champagne is wine, isn't it?" he recalls asking the bartender. "He said, 'Yeah.' I drank champagne ever since."In my 20s, 30s and 40s, all these places I used to go to around here ... they all carried champagne for me," Mouradian says. "They nicknamed me Champagne Kid."
Some of the bubbles, though, have popped. Mouradian married in 1977 at age 47. He divorced 14 years later. He has fallen behind in his wage tax payments to Ambridge borough. How much does he owe? "Maybe a few thousand bucks," he says. "I have a few obligations so I can't give it to them." A clerk in the wage tax office wouldn't say if or how much Mouradian owes. That's confidential, she claims. But two of Mouradian's critics got wind of it. "I've been delinquent for quite some time,' Mouradian responds. "I'm paying it off with penalty and interest. ...When and how I come up with the money is my problem, not theirs."
Mouradian is also not in the best of health. He coughs occasionally, but attributes that to his heart condition, not the cigarettes he smoked for roughly 50 years. He is a diabetic and weighs 221 pounds, at least 40 pounds more than he should. He suffered a heart attack 15 months ago. His doctor said he shouldn't drink caffeinated coffee. "I don't always listen to him," Mouradian says. Mouradian should exercise, but his legs get sore when he walks short distances. "I can't go 50 feet and they want me to walk two miles," he says. "I'm not much of an exercise man. Never have been. Even when I was playing at the country club, OK? I always insisted on a cart.
So why not retire? "I could never live on Social Security," he says. "It takes somewhere between $6,000 and $8,000 a month for me to meet my obligations." Mouradian pays the mortgage on the Harmony Township home he built after he married, even though he doesn't live there anymore. And he gives his ex-wife money to live. Mouradian has another reason for not retiring. "What am I going to do?" he asks. He could travel, but he would have to come home. Then what? "Till I drop dead, I'll be working," he says. "I enjoy working."
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Mouradian leans into the open trunk of his dented Lincoln Town Car and sifts through the clutter and suit jackets heaped inside. Behind him, on a slash of land perhaps the size of a tennis court, archaeologists spoon and sift for signs of the 202-year-old military training camp. In front of him and around him, a neatly mowed grass field opens wide, big enough, he explains, for a strip mall and motel. Mouradian fishes a book from the trunk. An inch thick and open to his favorite page, it lists the rules of conserving historical sites in Pennsylvania. Mouradian points to a brief passage underlined wobbly in red. "That means I could do what the hell I want with this property." he says. Right now, he's not sure what will take shape on the land between Duss Avenue and Route 65. He'd like to build a motel with banquet rooms. He'd like to woo three big-named tenants or some wholesale outlets. But if he doesn't, he won't lose any sleep. "Whatever I can get leases for," he says. "Doesn't make any difference."
Critics such as Harmony Township Commissioner Sandra Fidura Phillips says Mouradian will bull-doze history and the graves of 17 soldiers if he builds a strip mall. She's going to fight for a national park instead. "You just don't go in and desecrate graves to make a buck." she says. Mouradian says the graves are shown on a 1793 map and that the state wants him to pay for a machine that might locate the burial sites. Me and my French way of speaking, "I told them to go pound salt."
Mouradian simply wants to recoup the more than $600,000 he says he paid over five years to acquire the land. Several times, he says, he borrowed money from clients to pay the option fee. A $50,000 annual sum that retained his rights to buy the land. Mouradian, of course, says he could climb from his debt if he could get on with his strip mall. But first, the state insists a three part archaeological study must be done. Lately, archaeologist have found gun parts, a foundation, fire pits, military uniform buttons and burnt deer bone, all attributable to Wayne's encampment. "It's very equivalent to Valley Forge," says Rod Snyder, a spokesman for the state Historical and Museum Commission, Mouradian is not impressed. "So they found a pit," he says. "Some bones, dog bones, I don't know what. ...Just like they found a button. Big deal."