They ride the 9:18 together from Great Neck to Penn Station, unrecognized by most morning commuters in the crowded Long Island Rail Road cars.
The older ones speak in Farsi as the train chauffeurs them to Manhattan, where some have amassed fortunes in New York City real estate over the last four decades.
“You’ll see four of them sitting in rows across from each other,” a commuter who occasionally rides with them said. “You hear them talking, chit-chatting. It’s how they get their day going. It’s like a club — instead of going to a golf club, they take the train together.”
The 37-minute commute is just one of many regular gatherings for the Persian Jewish real estate heavyweights who call Long Island’s Great Neck peninsula home. They also mingle and talk shop at social events, synagogues and Persian restaurants, or at weekly games of tennis, cards or backgammon. Their kids attend a handful of public or private schools and play sports together — and might grow up to ride the 9:18 (the ambitious up-and-comers usually catch an earlier train) and invest in real estate too.
They live near each other on sprawling properties in Great Neck’s wealthy Kings Point, a leafy village of 6,000 that seems worlds away from the busy streets of Manhattan. Its boldface names are behind billions in city real estate: Zar, Hakimian, Ohebshalom, Damaghi, Harounian, Namdar and Kalimian. It’s where Ben Shaoul grew up and the Moinian brothers spent part of their childhoods.
After a day of dealmaking (and the train home), they drive Rolls-Royces and Range Rovers past construction crews erecting massive houses along the village’s quiet cul-de-sacs and pull into the long, winding driveways of their own multimillion-dollar estates.
Beyond the glitz and glamour, relationships are tight and family ties are strong. Persian traditions and religious practices have traveled with them. This close-knit community has brought its longstanding values — and love of extravagant houses — to a sleepy Long Island suburb and established a laboratory for real estate success.
“It’s like the Beverly Hills of California for the Persian community,” a source said.
From the Silk Road to I-495
Persians moved in droves to the United States during the second half of the 20th century. The first wave was between 1950 and 1979, when young Iranians — like developer Joseph Moinian — came seeking higher levels of education.
The second wave began after the revolution and the fall of the shah, when many fled and settled in New York and California. The wealthiest chose fancy waterfront communities like Kings Point “in an attempt to establish standards of living on a par with those they knew in Iran,” according to a 1979 article.
Great Neck families sheltered the children of friends and relatives, and the village became a hub for the Persian-Jewish community. As their wealth grew, the Persians replaced older homes with lavish mansions. They built synagogues, schools and community centers. They opened restaurants and food markets.
Great Neck’s Persian community is divided into two groups — Mashhadi and non-Mashhadi. The devout and insular Mashhadi Jews migrated from the Iranian city of Mashhad, and many landed in Kings Point. The village has the largest percentage of Mashhadi Jews in the United States, according to the website peoplegroups.info.
The larger Great Neck area is home to 10,000 Mashhadi Jews.
“Mashhadi are more close-knit families, they are more religious,” one former Great Neck resident said. “They are very lovely people and they pretty much keep to themselves.”
One of the most prominent is Igal Namdar, whose Great Neck-based Namdar Realty Group made a fortune buying up distressed shopping malls. Namdar is considered “the guy” in Mashhadi circles and is the source of seed capital for smaller Mashhadi upstarts, a source said. The Zar, Nassim and Hakimian real estate families are also active members of the Mashhadi community.
“They are very lovely people and they pretty much keep to themselves.”
“In the Mashhadi community there are really big players,” a source who lives in Great Neck said. “They all talk to each other, they all do business together. There are brokers within the community that show them deals first because they know them. They speak in synagogue. Their families know each other.”
Mashhadis attend their own schools and synagogues and play in their own sports leagues. But lots of big real estate players hail from other regions. There are plenty of big shots in Great Neck who are Persian and Jewish but not Mashhadi, as well as circles of Ashkenazi Jews — with ancestry in Eastern Europe — and Sephardic Jews, who trace back to Spain and Portugal sometimes by way of North Africa and the Middle East.
One philosophy seems to bridge these groups.
“The secret sauce in Great Neck is it’s an immigrant community,” said Great Neck native Daniel Lebensohn of BH3. “It’s a very concentrated and cohesive community. The immigrant mentality is something very special.”
Close friendships are formed early, especially for the Mashhadis, whose families designate small groups of children for their kids to run around with every Saturday throughout childhood. Those relationships often carry into adulthood.
“The connections formed are very deep and very, very personal,” Lebensohn said. “I attribute my success to the people around me — not only my success, but my level of contentment.”
Lebensohn knew he could call on his Great Neck network when he started buying buildings and debt in the Bronx, kicking off his real estate career. The son of Austrian and Israeli Jewish immigrants, he ran around Great Neck in the 1980s with friends David Zarabi and Ari Goldman, also sons of self-made Jewish immigrants.
In 2007, Lebensohn and Goldman raised $1.85 million from a group that included Zarabi to buy a 52-unit building near Yankee Stadium, Lebensohn writes in his book, “The Art of the Real.”
Building wealth
They weren’t always in real estate. Most got their start in other businesses, like clothing manufacturing, rug merchandising and the diamond trade. Some owned property in Iran and lost it during the revolution. As they started to make money in New York, they used it to buy property.
“There was a lot of value that didn’t seem to be unlocked,” a source said. “They started taking their money out of other industries and putting it into real estate, seeing that real estate is where real wealth can be made.”
Their investments paid off handsomely. Moinian started a women’s clothing company, then founded the Moinian Group in 1980. The company now owns and operates $10 billion in real estate. Jacob Harounian emigrated from Iran in 1970 and made money in the Persian rug business before parlaying it into property. His family’s portfolio is now valued at $500 million.
The Great Neck connections go way back. Moinian’s parents were founders of the Beth Hadassah Synagogue in Kings Point. The Harounians have lived in the village for more than four decades.
The village’s current mayor, Kouros Torkan, is a real estate developer too. Torkan’s grandparents moved to Kings Point from Iran in the late ’60s, and his parents followed shortly after. Torkan raised his family in Kings Point.
He is founder of Villadom, a Great Neck-based family-run firm that owns, manages and develops properties in New York City, Long Island and Florida.
Many of Great Neck’s biggest players own skyscrapers, but it’s not always clear who has invested in which deal. In addition to buying and selling buildings individually, some smaller operations are fueling their acquisitions with the backing of other Persian families, many of them from Great Neck.
When former Brooklyn brokers Josh Rahmani and Ebi Khalili wanted to buy a 40-story office tower at 1330 Sixth Avenue, for example, they knew whom to call. They assembled a group that included Great Neck bigwigs Hakimian Capital and Nassimi Realty to buy the building for $325 million.
Their firm, Empire Capital, also partnered with Namdar on 529 Fifth Avenue, 830 Third Avenue and 345 Seventh Avenue, usually joined by other investors from Great Neck.
West Egg
Torkan said that Great Neck — the inspiration for West Egg in “The Great Gatsby” — itself is a part of many families’ real estate strategy. Many have bought or built homes there.
“The reason we have such a strong interest in Kings Point from the Iranian community, from the Chinese community, Russians, Israelis, is that real estate values in Kings Point have always been strong,” Torkan said. “It’s a safe investment.”
As new families have flocked to the village, they have replaced the ranch-style homes built in the 1950s with grand mansions. The village has an average of 60 to 70 open building permits, Torkan said. (There are about 1,500 properties in Kings Point, which is entirely residential.)
“Over the past 20 years, there has been a surge and a big need for rebuilding those homes on the smaller side for the larger families that are moving to Kings Point,” Torkan said. “For some of the older homes that did not warrant expansion, they would knock it down and build bigger homes. The ones that warrant expansion, they have done major expansions or small partial ones.”
Some of Great Neck’s biggest homes belong to real estate players. Nader Ohebshalom of Gatsby Enterprises owns the village’s second most expensive home, according to property records — a $24 million estate on exclusive Dock Lane. Ohebshalom bought the property in 2012 for $8.8 million and built a new mansion with a tennis court, whirlpool bath and an infinity pool overlooking Manhasset Bay.
The under-the-radar Damaghi family also has an impressive collection of Kings Point real estate, according to property records. Entities that appear to be tied to the family own four mansions valued at over $15 million each, including a Colonial-style castle on Shore Drive with a market value of $25 million. Babak and Farahnaz Damaghi bought the property in 2004 for $12.8 million and replaced the Tudor-style house with a 15,000-square-foot mansion.
The Damaghi family — husband and wife Nasser and Shahnaz Damaghi and their children Nader, Kambiz and Babak Damaghi — founded First Quality Enterprises, a manufacturer of paper products and personal care items, and the clan has amassed a $182.2 million portfolio of developable land in South Florida.
Their neighbors include Albert Kalimian of A & R Kalimian Realty and Namdar, who both own homes valued at more than $10 million.
It’s not just houses. Persians have built more than a dozen synagogues and Jewish community centers over the years. A real estate who’s who serves on their boards.
“Many times, when a business goes out, you can expect a temple to come in,” Alice Kasten, then-president of the Great Neck Historical Society, told the New York Times in 2016.
The latest, the $18 million United Jewish Mashadi Center, is planned as a 75,000-square foot community space with a pool, meeting rooms and playground for its 7,000 members.
Close-knit or far-flung?
The Great Neck peninsula is changing. A wave of Chinese immigrants has been buying homes and opening business there. Downtown Great Neck is dotted with both kosher and Asian restaurants. Russians, Bangladeshi and Indian families have also arrived in recent years.
Meanwhile, some real estate players who struck it rich have left Great Neck for the big city or the beaches of South Florida — like Lebensohn, who moved first to Manhattan and then Delray Beach shortly after starting his asset management, investment and development firm.
Shaoul also decamped to Manhattan, where he runs Magnum Real Estate Group. His first real estate gig was a summer internship with his Great Neck neighbors the Ohebshaloms.
Others end up across the country in Los Angeles, clustered in Beverly Hills.
But some who left the village to attend college are coming back to raise their own families.
“The children of the original people that moved here are now married with children, and they’re moving back,” Torkan said. “I think a lot of the kids coming back miss the community. They want what they had for themselves for their own children.”