Content area
Full Text
In 1963 two young businessmen in their mid 20s -- one dealing in pet products and the other in warehousing -- felt the lure of real estate and formed a partnership.
Today Leonard Stern is chairman and Gene Heller is president of Hartz Mountain Industries Inc., a company that has developed properties in 18 communities, leased more than 25 million square feet of office and industrial space, rented hundreds of retail shops and restaurants, built 25 miles of road and renovated several million square feet of industrial space.
"Leonard Stern was looking for a hobby when he went into real estate," Heller explained in the lavish Hartz Mountain offices in Secaucus. He smiled wryly at the humor of that recollection.
The hobby-turned-serious-business is now the real estate arm of the Hartz Mountain Group, an umbrella organization, privately owned, that also includes the original pet products business, a clay mining operation, international operations, research, home carpet care and publishing. (The group recently bought The Village Voice.)
Although neither Stern nor Heller had previous experience as large-scale real estate developers; they were bright and they learned quickly. With the daring that only the young possess and uncanny insight they succeeded where more experienced developers feared to venture. As a result of their energy, imagination and gut courage, huge chunks of land in Hudson County and beyond have been transformed.
The pair pioneered the mixed-use design concept in New Jersey and served as a catalyst, along with the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, for the development of the Hackensack Meadowlands. Taking off from the Meadowlands, their projects have reached into Jersey City, Weehawken, Kearny, Ridgefield Park, Manhattan and Long Island and central New Jersey.
Heller told the story in his irregularly shaped office in Harmon Meadow, Hartz Mountain's newest mixed-use development in Secaucus. Now 51 years old, but still very much a young man on the move, Heller was examining maps and renderings of future developments. His own office -- clear glass pitted against black reflecting glass, wood paneling and floating ceiling, marble floors abutting gray carpeting -- shone as an example of company style. It was located in a multistory building wrapped around a lushly landscaped atrium with glass elevators.
Stern and Heller were both...