Torah with the CEO

Joseph Korff, Principal, founder of The Arc Companies, has been involved in real estate transactions in a number of different capacities for more than 40 years. He has been the managing partner or principal/advisor in sophisticated real estate transactions involving billions of dollars.

Joe Korff has structured and restructured complex financing, acquisitions, development and dispositions. Over the years, he has focused on large development projects, and through his expertise in site acquisition and strategic planning, created value in otherwise undervalued properties.

He has exposure to all forms of product types including office, residential, hotel, retail, institutional, time-share, resort and land development deals. He has done assemblages, dealt with government agencies in regulatory and development capacities, turned around distressed assets and handled all aspects of development.

Joe Korff’s involvement as a managing partner/principal in real estate transactions includes:
- The assemblage, financing, rezoning, design and leasing of a 1.4 million square foot development site in Mid-Manhattan, taken by eminent domain.
- Purchase of an out–of–service hotel in Horsham, Pennsylvania repositioned for sale to a prominent regional retailer.
- The purchase, repositioning and sale of a former Marriott Hotel another out–of–service hotel at Kennedy Airport, converted to a Radisson, now run as a DoubleTree.
- The purchase, repositioning and sale of the former Days Inn at LaGuardia, an out-of-service hotel that became the Wyndham Gardens at LaGuardia Airport.
- The purchase, repositioning and sale of Tannen Towers, a partially occupied apartment building in Atlantic City which was vacated, rezoned, designed for time share, and sold to Fairfield Resorts, now known as Wyndham Skyview Tower.
- The purchase and conversion to condominium ownership of Murray Hill Terrace in Manhattan. Mr. Korff and his partners went to contract on Murray Hill Terrace in twenty–four hours, cashed out investors in less than three years and retained a significant number of units as well as valuable Third Avenue retail space.
- The assemblage, design, financing, construction, marketing and sale of the Solaria Riverdale, an iconic luxury condominium.
- The acquisition, management, re-tenanting and design for conversion of a major historic multifamily building located in the heart of the West Village of Manhattan, an area and a repositioning creating rapidly accelerating value from the date of pricing.

Joe Korff’s involvement as a principal/advisor includes:
- The acquisition and renegotiation of a land lease covering more than a hundred acres adjacent to Tampa International Airport and its transformation into an office complex and the largest upscale real estate mall on the West Coast of Florida, Taubman’s International Plaza.
- The advancement of development sites for a multiplicity of uses aggregating 8,000 acres on the West Coast of Florida near Fort Myers and the restructure of its debt after the enterprise lost its major lender who exited the lending market in Florida.
- The restructure, assembly and development of adjoining sites in Midtown Manhattan to create $165MM John Jay College Phase I, the first and largest turnkey development deal in the history of New York.
- The negotiation on behalf of management of a leveraged buyout of New Seabury, the largest resort on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
- The sourcing, financing and acquisition of I.R.C. Section 1031 tax-free exchange properties for an investor group. These included a double net leased Lowe’s in Pennsylvania; three triple net leased medical facilities in Tennessee and Mississippi ultimately leased by Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare; and a Walgreen’s in upstate New York. The acquired assets provide high returns, liquidity, and geographic and property diversity relative to the risk profile of the asset types.

Marc Bodner could have gone home most days after putting in his nine to five as a computer programmer and systems analyst and patted himself on the back for a job well done. Had he limited himself to that, he might be in the same position today, 20 years later. But Bodner took a much greater interest in his employer, Allied Supply, a wholesale distributor that sold non-food products to supermarkets and drug stores. “I wanted to learn the business, so on my own time, at night, even sometimes on Sundays, I went out to try and open up accounts, which led me into learning the sales side of the business. I also learned the company’s warehouse processes and redesigned most of its systems,” says Bodner, while seated comfortably at the head of his dining room table, well after office hours, but with a night of family and community activities ahead of him. “The key point here is, I did all this without asking for increased pay. I just got very involved in all aspects of the company.” At the ripe old age of 23, with a degree in corporate finance and computer science from Touro College, Bodner amassed enough knowledge in key areas of the company that when opportunity knocked to buy out one of the firm’s partners, Allied’s three other partners welcomed Bodner with open arms. He eventually became the company’s president and CEO. About seven years ago, the big payoff came when Allied Supply merged with L&R Distributors. Today, at age 43, Bodner is president and owner of the combined entity. Today, L&R employs more than 900 people at four distribution centers, shipping more than 35,000 items to some 12,000 retail locations across the United States. In 2013, L&R shipped over 85 million pieces of merchandise and its revenues reached the nine-figure level. To Bodner, L&R is more than just a business. It’s also a laboratory of sorts, where he can plug the Torah concepts of emunah and bitachon into his workplace, keeping himself inspired and motivating his colleagues at the same time. “Bringing mussar into the workplace is a positive because it’s a very humbling experience,” says Bodner. “Be humble and let people see that you’re humble and they tend to respond better.