Brooklyn Building
Mana came to America on a one-way ticket in his mid-20s. Living in a derelict building in Brooklyn, he took a job with an Israeli renovations contractor, and soon bartered to use his van for night deliveries.
He started out delivering towels to gay saunas and eventually turned the gig into Moishe’s Moving. His non-union prices undercut the trade union monopoly, and his moving business made him a millionaire in just a few years.
Mana also founded a document management company, GRM, which is now more like a tech company with imaging and digital storage serving 15 U.S. cities, a business that the Bloomberg index values at more than $200 million.
Milk Studios
But real estate was in his blood; he was, after all, the son of real estate brokers. He bought a building in New York’s then-neglected Meatpacking District in 1998, and set up Milk Studios for fashion photography.
Mana’s transition to the art world started when clients sought his help storing their collections. The idea evolved into Mana Contemporary, a 1 million-square-foot cultural center in an old tobacco warehouse in the former industrial backwater of Jersey City. It includes art studios, exhibition spaces and art storage.
Mana is already a major player in downtown Miami, having spent about $300 million purchasing properties. “He bought by the pound, not the ounce,” said Lyle Chariff, president of Chariff Realty Group in Miami.
He’s taken a similarly aggressive approach in Wynwood, where since 2009 he’s acquired more than 40 acres of land. He recently received approval to build 9 million square feet with buildings as high as 24 stories, the previous limit was 12.
Cultural Institutions