Page 20 - Issue 45 Sept2020

18 SEPTEMBER 2020
FAMILY VALUES
Sanzari drawing on 75 years of stability, relationships to guide tenants through COVID crisis
Alfred Sanzari Enterprises is marking its 75th anniversary at a time unlike any in its history.
Like other landlords, the company has spent months with its buildings mostly empty as businesses cope with the effects of the pandemic. But the family-owned firm has weathered the crisis and helped its tenants do the same thanks to its own financial strength and ability to act quickly, which stem from a patient, low- leverage approach that goes back decades.
“One thing that I’ve learned about my grandfather and now my father is that they treat tenants like partners and they understand that, in order for us to succeed as a landlord, we
need our partners to succeed at their respective business and industry,” said Ryan Sanzari, the company’s chief operating officer and third- generation executive. “So if our tenants don’t survive and they don’t succeed, our partnership (is missing) one of two necessary halves.”
The Hackensack-based firm has shown its support by both agreeing to rent deferrals for some tenants and preparing its buildings for life after COVID-19. Sanzari never closed its properties throughout New Jersey’s coronavirus outbreak in March and its subsequent recovery, as some of its tenants are essential businesses that continued to operate. But the landlord has also taken steps so
that businesses could come back at
a moment’s notice, considering the uncertainty from agencies at different levels of government.
“Companies and tenants could return at any time, so we really made it a priority and we succeeded, I’m proud to say, of not shutting down and keeping our buildings open,” Ryan Sanzari said. “And in the event that a tenant walks in one week and decides that they’re going to even have one or two people there, that building will be operating as normal.”
ANOTHER POINT OF PRIDE for the Sanzari family has been the company’s financial stability and independence since its earliest days under the late Alfred N. Sanzari, its founder and
namesake. As CEO and President David Sanzari recalls, his father in the mid-1960s turned down a $4 million mortgage for a 32,000-square-foot project in South Hackensack, one of its first industrial buildings, because it was double what he needed to cover the land and development costs.
“Ever since day one — right, wrong or indifferent — he always was a low-leverage guy and that followed through to me,” said David Sanzari, who joined the firm in 1972. “I’m still the same way.”
The approach has been crucial
to having flexibility with rents, withstanding economic downturns and helping tenants in their own times of need.
“That’s really the main ingredient
to staying strong in this business — because, typically, with a lot of folks in this business, they just leverage the hell out of the property and they take all of that tax-free money,” he added. “Which is great when you get it, but you’ve got to remember: You do have to pay it back, and when there’s a downturn you’re really up the creek because you need to pay that mortgage.”
Sanzari has stuck to its mantra of only borrowing what it needed, even as it embarked on what was perhaps its most ambitious period of growth. After delivering the 68,000-square-foot Elmwood Park Plaza in 1976, its first office project, the company went on to build nearly 1.2 million square feet of additional office space between 1982 and 1985, starting with Heights Plaza in Hasbrouck Heights and Court Plaza in Hackensack. That period
also included the start of what is now its flagship Glenpointe campus, a 50- acre property in Teaneck that today includes 650,000 square feet of office space, 700 hotel rooms, retail and a spa and fitness center.
“Now that I’ve looked back at it, I don’t know how the hell we did
By Joshua Burd
David Sanzari (left), CEO and president of Alfred Sanzari Enterprises, and Ryan Sanzari, chief operating officer, stand outside the firm’s headquarters at Court Plaza in Hackensack. The father and son represent the second and third generations at the 75-year-old commercial real estate firm.
Photo by Aaron Houston for Real Estate NJ