Richard LeFrak
Richard LeFrak
Chairman and CEO at LeFrak
Last year's rank: 45
Richard LeFrak continues to lead one of the most prominent privately held real estate firms based out of New York City, where the family-run juggernaut got its start under LeFrak’s grandfather Aaron LeFrak.
Its portfolio spans nearly every sector of commercial real estate and includes some 400 buildings in the New York area, South Florida and the West Coast, many of them developed by the firm itself. Probably the best-known collection is LeFrak City in Queens, with its more than 4,600 housing units over 20 buildings. The firm and its affiliates also own more than 50 Class A office buildings across the country.
As big as it’s gotten, though, it’s still not enough. In late 2019, its chairman and chief executive touted the work done transforming a 184-acre former landfill near the North Miami waterfront into a planned community on par with LeFrak City. Dubbed Solé Mia, it’s due to have 4,390 housing units in 12 buildings as well as 1 million square feet of commercial space. The first phase opened in January 2019, and the rest will roll out over the next several years. North Miami’s city manager has called it “a game-changer” for the Florida municipality.
As for planned communities closer to LeFrak’s home base, the company continued this past year and a half to tweak the layout and the amenities of its Newport complex in Jersey City, N.J. Specifically, it tried to add a 3.47-acre Hudson River park to the complex, but that plan failed to pass the local planning board this June. It’s clear though that LeFrak will try something else with the parcel.
LeFrak has also of late contributed both to the 2020 reelection effort of his old friend President Donald Trump and to the Jersey City Medical Center Foundation to support the response to the novel coronavirus pandemic at that health care facility.—T.A.
