Hartz Mountain Industries sold twin office buildings in Jersey City, N.J. for $310 million in April and, shortly thereafter, bought a 52-story luxury apartment building in Chicago for more than $300 million,
the
Wall Street Journal
reported.
The company, run by the Stern family, initially made its fortune in the pet-supply business.
The
Journal
report noted that the company was seeking to diversify. It began buying apartments last year and plans to build apartments on land it owns in New Jersey, the article said.
The company’s portfolio includes roughly 30 million square feet of industrial, office and retail space, as well as such hotels as the Soho Grand Hotel and the Tribeca Grand Hotel in New York. Much of the property is within 10 miles of the company’s Secaucus, N.J., headquarters.
Emanuel Stern, the 48-year-old president of Hartz, told the
Journal,
“We’re morphing into a fully diversified real-estate operator and developer by finally getting into residential businesses in a substantial way.”
The family sold its pet-supply business — which was founded by Emanuel Stern’s grandfather Max in the 1920s — about 11 years ago, the article said.
In the late 1960s, Max Stern’s son Leonard, now 73, started the company’s real-estate division, focusing initially on industrial properties. He also purchased the
Village Voice
newspaper, which Hartz owned for about 15 years before selling it in 2000.
(Source:
Wall Street Journal,
May 11, 2011.)
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