Stern is chairman of Hartz Mountain Industries, a closely held New Jersey real estate developer. Hartz Mountain has more than 45 million square feet of U.S. office, industrial and retail space in more than 260 buildings, as well as residential apartments and hotels. Stern sold his pet supplies business in 2000.
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The majority of Stern's fortune is derived from closely held Hartz Mountain Industries, which owns more than 260 buildings totaling more than 45 million square feet in New York, New Jersey and across the U.S., according to the company's website. Each property has been individually valued. Occupancy rates, rent per square foot and cap rates for Stern's real estate were aggregated using data from Bloomberg, Real Capital Analytics and REIS. The analysis assumes the properties are about 50% leveraged.
Stern's largest concentration of properties is in northern New Jersey, where he owns an industrial portfolio totalling more than 19 million square feet. He also owns the Tribeca Grand and Soho Grand hotels in Manhattan.
The billionaire sold the family pet care business to private equity investor John Childs in 2000.
Father Max Stern immigrated to the U.S. from Fulda, Germany, in 1926. He made the passage accompanied by 5,000 singing canaries that he'd received from a friend who couldn't pay back a loan. Stern had become the largest livestock importer in the U.S. by 1934, manufacturing packaged bird foods under the Hartz Mountain brand.
Leonard Stern joined his father's pet food business after graduating with an MBA from New York University in 1959. He expanded into real estate development in the 1960s, acquiring two tracts of barren marshes totaling over 1,250 acres in New Jersey's Meadowlands, six miles from downtown Manhattan. His real estate assets had grown to more than 35 million square feet by the late 1980s. At the same time, Hartz Mountain branched into publishing and the carpet cleaning business.
Stern's sons, Emanuel and Edward, joined their father's business in 1990, expanding the company's real estate holdings with the Soho and Tribeca Grand hotels in New York. He sold the pet-care products business to private equity mogul John Childs in 2000.
The billionaire has three children from his first marriage.