How Leonard built the fortune
Stern's story starts with canaries. His father, Max Stern, emigrated from Germany in the 1920s with a shipment of singing birds and built a business selling them, together with bird seed and supplies, in the United States. That company became Hartz Mountain. Leonard joined it as a young man and pushed it into supermarkets and discount stores, adding flea collars, pet food, grooming products and accessories. Under his leadership Hartz became the best known name in American pet supplies.
The larger source of his wealth, however, turned out to be land. In the late 1960s and 1970s Stern used profits from the pet business to buy large tracts in the New Jersey Meadowlands, then marshland seen as of little use. As the area was developed, Hartz Mountain Industries built warehouses, office parks, hotels and residential projects around Secaucus and Harrison, and later expanded into Manhattan office buildings and other markets.
He sold the pet products business in 2000 and kept the real estate company, which remains privately owned by the family and has been his main asset since.
Building on the Meadowlands required long negotiations with state regulators, who created a commission to control development and protect wetlands in the area. Stern worked within that framework for decades, and his company became one of the largest private landowners in the region. The shift of warehouse and distribution activity toward northern New Jersey, close to the ports of Newark and Elizabeth, added to the value of his holdings.
Companies and holdings
His principal holdings and ventures:
- Hartz Mountain Industries, a private real estate developer and owner based in Secaucus, New Jersey, with industrial, office, hotel and residential property
- Hartz Mountain pet products, the family company he ran for decades before selling it
- The Village Voice, the New York weekly newspaper he owned from 1985 until 2000
His son Emanuel Stern leads Hartz Mountain Industries as president, and the company has continued developing in New Jersey, including large residential projects along the Hudson waterfront.
Beyond New Jersey, the company has owned or developed office towers in Manhattan, shopping centers and properties in other states. Because it is private, details of its portfolio and finances are only partly public, and the family has expanded it mostly by reinvesting earnings rather than raising outside capital.
Early life and career
Leonard Norman Stern was born in New York City in March 1938. He grew up around the family business and began working there while still a teenager. He studied at New York University, earning an undergraduate degree in 1957 and a Master of Business Administration in 1959, an unusually fast path.
He took on leadership of Hartz Mountain soon after finishing his studies, while his father was still active, and spent the following decades building it into a national brand. His move into property was gradual, starting with land for company warehouses and growing into a separate development business that eventually outgrew the original company.
Running a consumer products company and a property business at the same time gave him two quite different sources of cash. The pet business provided steady income from mass retail, while property offered long term growth, and he gradually shifted his attention toward development as the land values rose.
Philanthropy and public life
Stern is best known publicly for his gifts to his alma mater. In 1988 he made a major donation to the New York University business school, which was renamed the Leonard N. Stern School of Business. He has continued to support the university over many years.
He has also been a long-time advocate on homelessness in New York. In 1986 he founded Homes for the Homeless, a nonprofit that runs family shelters and education programs, and he has written and spoken about policy on family homelessness. His ownership of the Village Voice made him a visible figure in New York media in the late 1980s and 1990s. He has lived in New York throughout his career and remains closely associated with the city's business and civic life.