An Interview With Jared Kushner

Image: Brent Murray

1 of 6 NEXT

His real estate-rich family has long operated the levers of power and influence in New Jersey, but few in Manhattan had heard of Jared Kushner until he bought the New York Observer two years ago, at the age of 25, for a reported $10 million (with Observer founder Arthur Carter retaining a small stake).
      
Since then the tall, handsome, and eligible Harvard grad—who also boasts law and business degrees from N.Y.U.—has been a staple of the gossip columns (as the on and off boyfriend of Ivanka Trump) while striking up friendships with wizened media moguls like Rupert Murdoch, who has taken a lively interest in the young man's progress.
    
And Kushner's progress has been impressive. With Observer editor in chief Peter Kaplan, he redesigned the lobster-hued weekly, took it tabloid, and added staff, while launching a separate company, under the Observer brand name Politicker, that offers insider news on the Web to political junkies in New Jersey, California, Kentucky, and 13 other states. Last year, young Jared led the Kushner Companies' team that paid $1.8 billion for the 1957 vintage landmark skyscraper at 666 Fifth Avenue— the highest price ever commanded for a single building in New York until the recent $2.9 billion deal for the General Motors Building.

During some of that time, Jared's father Charles—a major Democratic donor who built the Kushner empire of 25,000 apartment units in the Northeast—was in federal prison for witness tampering, tax evasion, and filing false campaign reports. The elder Kushner had pleaded guilty after prosecutors accused him of hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, a potential witness against him, and then showing a tape of the encounter to his sister.

Charles Kushner was freed in August 2006 and remains close to his son, who gave Portfolio.com an exclusive interview while, a few yards away, his father presided over a meeting with potential investors at Kushner corporate headquarters at 666. The press-shy Charles greeted this columnist when Jared pulled him out of the meeting. "How'd he do?" the father asked proudly, then looked back toward the meeting in progress and confided to his son: "Fascinating. German money."

Lloyd Grove: Nice piece of property you've got here.
 
Jared Kushner: Thank you, it's great. [In the 15th floor lobby of his family real estate company at 666 Fifth Avenue, Kushner points to a framed photograph of a dog-eared first page from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and the opening words, "It was the best of times..."] And this is actually a great photo that I bought, for here. The reason I loved it was that I saw when we bought this building-

L.G.: —Tale of Two Cities?
 
J.K.: Well, that's what it's from. But when you think of this, you think, "It's the best of times, it's the worst of times." But I love how we bought this building literally right after my father came out of prison, probably five, six months after. And the thought that I had was, It's kind of like the juxtaposition of going from the worst of times to the best of times. How you never want to break a record, paying the biggest price, but to think that five months earlier, we were living through my father being in prison, and then, coming out and together buying the largest single asset.

L.G.: $1.8 billion.
 
J.K.: Yeah. And so I love the, "It was the best of times..."
 
L.G.: You got the good half!
 
J.K.: I got the good half. [Leading the way into the elevator down to the main lobby of 666.] We'll run down and I'll show you the lobby. Do you have any interest in real estate?
 
L.G.: Only in the pornographic sense that everybody else does.
 
J.K.: Real estate is like porn for rich people.
 
L.G.: By the way, Jared. There's some publication [the New York Observer] that pretended to put out a list of the 100 most powerful people in New York real estate, and you weren't on the list. You was robbed, man. Who are these people who don't know anything?
 
J.K.: [Laughs.] I guess I've got to lobby them to get on there. It's a true test of the fact that it's a smart list that I wasn't on it. It shows they have good judgment. [Pointing out highlights of the Isamu Noguchi-designed lobby in the midst of renovation, including the famed Noguchi waterfall.] This obviously was done by Noguchi, the ceiling and the waterfall, which is priceless art. But the granite on the walls, I thought was that they got a bulk deal on pink granite. It looks pretty but the way that it's shined, between the wall and the floor, it's just that the light wasn't great. So what I did in here—obviously we're starting to get some very big rents in the building—I wanted to give the tenants the same kind of feel as in the more upscale buildings. So we put wood on the walls here, with a silver column, kind of gave it a little darker feel. We did the lighting up there across, and the sculpture. And then we honed the granite here. The difference is, because the way it comes off the ceiling now, instead of the shine, it looks like there's more continuity. So I wanted to kind of reduce the light, but keep the light focused on the art. A little more of a dramatic feel. Once it's all open, it'll be phenomenal. We also added more retail here, which has probably increased the value of the building by $50 million. In the process, we upgraded the lobby, and you know, making it kind of more formidable, for an office building of the caliber of the location.

1 of 6 NEXT