Ziel Feldman and Nir Meir
Ziel Feldman and Nir Meir
Chairman and Founder; Managing Principal at HFZ Capital Group
Last year's rank: 38
HFZ Capital Group broke ground on a new office development in Nomad, a 34-story office tower designed by Bjarke Ingels, in late 2019.
It was one of the many projects and initiatives that kept HFZ’s chairman Ziel Feldman and managing principal Nir Meir occupied over the last year.
HFZ is actively selling condos at several New York developments, including the Ingels-designed XI—with two twisting towers along the High Line—which was completed in 2018, and the Belnord, a restored prewar condo building on the Upper West Side.
Moreover, HFZ expanded its industrial play outside New York, after purchasing an interest in an industrial portfolio from the Reich Brothers in early 2019. Their most recent purchase, in March, was a 4 million-square-foot facility in Illinois, which they purchased from Caterpillar for $68.5 million.
In 2020, HFZ launched a new fund called HFZ Lionbridge to buy undervalued real estate companies. HFZ, its partners and Lionbridge, have seeded $50 million in the fund and hopes to raise $500 million in total. “It’s a fund to buy REIT stocks at severe discounts,” Feldman said.
“People want to invest with developers who have experience with real estate more than with a hedge fund guy who’s picking stocks,” he added.
As far as the effects of the pandemic, Feldman was bullish on the future of markets like Miami and New York. The trick is to develop properties that give people the comfort they want in the city. “The city’s dense … As a developer, you want to create an environment where people … don’t feel that density,” Feldman said.—C.G.
