Richard LeFrak

When a developer finishes a 385-unit apartment building near a major metropolitan area, that’s always impressive — which is what Richard LeFrak did last summer with the opening of the Bisby at Newport in Jersey City, N.J.

When the same developer is already at work on the next tower in the area that promises to be more than 40 stories, again, it’s impressive. (Again, LeFrak.)

When you’ve already done about 20 or so similar projects on the site encompassing 5,500 units, you’ve leapt well beyond the descriptor “impressive.”

“The place was a little sketchy,” LeFrak said about the kingdom he helped forge in Jersey City starting in the 1980s. “At that time it was a blue-collar town on the waterfront. The whole image of the place was like the world had passed it by. But it was across from the World Trade Center, and had a PATH station that could get you to Manhattan in five minutes. It was a big plot of land where we could make our own community — and, if you do it correctly, people will come.”

That’s exactly what happened. Of course, Newport, LeFrak’s Jersey City kingdom, is really just a fraction of what the family has developed or bought over the years. All told, LeFrak the company (which has Richard’s sons Harrison and Jamie as vice chairs, and Adam Silfen as president and chief operating officer) has developed or bought some 22,000 apartments in New York, New Jersey, South Florida and the West Coast over the years.

Their most ambitious project to date might be the 184-acre, 5,000-unit, $4 billion SoLé Mia in North Miami, which LeFrak is building with Jackie Soffer’s Turnberry. Richard LeFrak told CO in April that the project is about 20 percent done, and he expects to be working on it for another 15 years. LeFrak has already moved about 1 million cubic yards of dirt to create roads and infrastructure, and put a 7-acre freshwater lagoon in the middle of the complex.

“People think it’s always about money, but it really isn’t,” LeFrak said from his Florida office. “It’s seeing it, doing it, and changing something. You know, Jersey City, as far as I’m concerned — the politicians can talk all they want. My father and I changed Jersey City. We did. Everything else that happened there came as a result of what we did, because we had the balls to go over there.”