Hartz Mountain Industries
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hartz Mountain Industries (HMI) is a private family owned and operated corporation known for its pet products and its real estate holdings, founded by German-American businessman Max Stern. Leonard N. Stern is Chairman and CEO. It is based at 400 Plaza Drive in Secaucus, New Jersey, in the Harmon Meadow Plaza retail shopping complex in the Secaucus section of the Meadowlands.
Max Stern emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1936 with five singing canaries, and began manufacturing bird food under the Hartz Mountain brand in 1932. He later sold pets such as canaries, parakeets, hamsters, tropical fish, and associated supplies throughout the U.S. and Canada, and eventually introduced pet supply departments into more than 30,000 supermarkets in North America and the United Kingdom.
Hartz Mountain began construction of its first speculative industrial building in Bayonne, New Jersey in 1966, and made its first major land acquisition with a 750 acre tract of land in the New Jersey Meadowlands. Hartz (HMI) currently owns more than 1,800 acres of land close to Manhattan, and its real estate activities account for most of its business, with over 200 buildings boasting over 38 million square feet of industrial, commercial, office, retail and hospitality space.
Max’s son, Leonard N. Stern, who joined the company in 1959, is the current Chairman and CEO. His son Emanuel Stern is President and Chief Operating Officer, and his son Edward Stern also works for the company.
[edit] Former Hartz properties
Hartz Mountain’s businesses also included a publishing company, Harmon Publishing. Hartz purchased New York City’s alternative newspaper, The Village Voice, in 1986, as well as other such periodicals in cities such as Los Angeles, Seattle, Minneapolis, Cleveland, and Orange County, California. The combined circulation of these papers was 950,000. Other holdings included the Carpet Magic Company, which manufactured and maintained carpet cleaning machine rental departments in 20,000 retail locations, and S.M. Cork, a leading general merchandise service distributor of the United Kingdom. Hartz no longer owns these properties.
