NEW YORK—In his Midtown Manhattan office building, James LeFrak, 34, pointed to a nondescript shack in the photograph. The shack was surrounded by a desolate landscape and old cars parked in no particular order.
“This is the PATH station,” said LeFrak, referring to the Port Authority Trans-Hudson rapid transit system that now carries nearly 250,000 passengers 24 hours a day to and from Manhattan. “Of course at that time, in 1983, they weren’t running trains there regularly, the train only stopped there twice a day. Once in the morning and once at night. The passenger count was only seven passengers at a time.”
Now that shack has been transformed into a spacious glass-walled station, with four escalators and neatly manicured grounds outside. The transformation is one that has swept through the 400-acre area of Jersey City nestled on the Hudson River since the LeFrak’s grandfather, Samuel LeFrak, began building on it.
The area, renamed Newport, went from unused rail yards of the Erie Railroad in the 1980s to one of the largest planned communities in the country—valued now in the billions. Newport has become a city unto itself, with nine high-rise rental apartment buildings, condominiums, eight office buildings, a private school, and slew of retail shops.
James recalled his grandfather’s vision for the odd plot of land. “He loved the opportunity of having such a big site … he realized that by adding all these new things he could completely re-identify a location since it wasn’t starting with the preconditions of existing buildings.”
With so much power over Newport, Samuel LeFrak and his son Richard were able to help in turning around the economically dreary Jersey City and imbue the area with its own personality, which residents have described as clean, safe, and convenient.
“It’s quite peaceful … It’s nice being away from the city, but you’re still very close, it seems completely different,” said one Newport resident of three months, who works in New York City.
“I like the fact that everything you need is here, there’s shops and restaurants, and the waterfront, and a new grocery store, and there’s a mall near by, and its nice and kind of clean and there’s security everywhere, I kind of like that,” said Stella Spanos, a Newport resident for one and a half years.
Compared to Manhattan, prices at Newport are also more affordable.
Spanos said she pays $2,200 a month for a one bedroom. “It’s a high rise building with a doorman and all of that, and that’s going to be quite a bit more in Manhattan,” she said.
Royal Blood
In America, where no monarch reigns supreme, billionaire families like the LeFrak’s are the closest thing there is to royalty. Their real estate holdings include approximately 35 million square feet of property, mostly in the New York and New Jersey area—more than twice that of Donald Trump.
