Jeffrey Gural didn’t set out to become a real estate mogul. The chairman of GFP Real Estate — which owns and manages nearly 19 million square feet in New York City — packed up after college and headed west to work for California’s highway department.
“I had no interest in the family business,” Gural told the crowd The real deal’s Salon Series event Thursday evening. “I wasn’t one of those people where their dad would drive them around and show them buildings on the weekends. My dad was golfing on the weekends.” His father, Aaron Gural, was chairman of Newmark & Company from 1957 to 1998.
But fate – and his father and his partners – had other plans. After moving back to New York and working for Morse-Diesel Construction Company for a while, Gural joined the family real estate business. That would become the basis for a commercial real estate empire.
Gural, whose passion was construction, started buying up old warehouses and turning them into cooperatives. “It didn’t make any money, but it was fun,” he said. He then teamed up with Barry Gosin, who brought ambition, flash and a hunger for deals.
“I didn’t want to be particularly rich. I thought the middle class was good,” Gural said. “Barry was driven.”
In the 1980s, they started snapping up B- and C-class buildings across Manhattan in back-of-the-envelope deals in forgotten manufacturing blocks that are now the neighborhoods where everyone wants to be. Gural would find the buildings and Gosin would handle the rental.
“If I thought a building could make 10 percent in two to four years, I would buy it,” he said.
Over the next four decades and several recessions, Gural grew the landlord and management company, eventually changing the name to GFP Real Estate to eliminate confusion between the company and its subsidiary, Newmark Knight Frank.
Gural stuck to his position of holding on to properties and resisting the urge to sell.
“I hated selling,” he said. “I look around and who are the richest real estate people in New York? The people who never sell.”
Today, GFP is transforming its most famous asset — the Flatiron Building — into luxury condos that so far start at just under $11 million for a 3,000-square-foot unit, according to a bid plan filed with the attorney general’s office. A buyer recently signed the first contract on the renovation and there are two other offers for the building, Gural said.
Gural is also managing partner of the Meadowlands Racetrack and owns a racino and casino in upstate New York, where he responds to every commentary card and is known for his orange Crocs.
Read more
Here’s what we know about the Flatiron Building renovation
Flatiron Building developers reveal prices for 18 units of the conversion
GFP is planning another FiDi office-to-resi conversion
#Salon #series #highways #highrise #buildings