Purpose Agents of Change

An Interview with Jessica Goldman Srebnick, Chief Executive Offi cer, Goldman Properties

received numerous accolades, including an Will you discuss the history and heritage of award as a Woman of Style and Substance from Goldman Properties? the Project to Cure Paralysis in January My dad started Goldman Properties in 1968. 2009 and the International University He had one employee, and he and my mother Center for Leadership named Goldman Srebnick pooled all the money that they had received as one of 50 Prominent Women who lead busi- wedding gifts and bought their fi rst property nesses in Florida. on the Upper East Side of City. They then spent the next few decades going into COMPANY BRIEF For more than fi fty years, underserved, underdeveloped, underappreci- Goldman Properties (goldmanproperties.com) ated neighborhoods and started to revitalize and has been reconstructing and transform- breathe new life into communities that a lot of ing declining historic districts such as SoHo people would look at as hopeless and crime- in , Center City in , ridden and dilapidated. in Miami, and most recently My father was a visionary because he would Miami’s Wynwood, into thriving global destina- see things that others couldn’t or wouldn’t. He tions. Goldman Properties’ portfolio of assets has would close his eyes, paint a picture in his mind been the recipient of multiple awards includ- of what a neighborhood or community would ing the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce look like, and then he would spend the next Lifetime Achievement Award, Developer of 10 to 20 years bringing that painting to life. It’s the Year from American Institute of Architects, appropriate that we have morphed into a very the Louise DuPont Crown in Shield Award, artistic type of a company, and we’ve devel- the highest honor awarded from the National oped a real deep passion for the arts and the Trust for historic preservation, Urban Land infusion of arts into communities as an agent Institute’s (ULI) Lifetime Achievement award, of change. ULI’s Global Excellence Awards for Wynwood We like to think of ourselves as agents of Walls in 2016 and was named a fi nalist for ULI change, and we just happen to use real estate Vision Awards for the Wynwood Garage in 2019. and business and big ideas to do that, whether Jessica Goldman Srebnick in front of a painting of her father, Tony Goldman, founder of Goldman Properties

EDITORS’ NOTE Jessica Goldman Srebnick served as a managing partner of Goldman Properties and the Chief Operating Offi cer of its hospitality division before being named CEO of the company in September 2012. She had joined the company, founded by her father, Tony Goldman, in 1997. Earlier, she spent fi ve years as the associate fashion director at Saks Fifth Avenue. Today, she continues to play a key role in perpetuating Tony Goldman’s vision for acclaimed street art museum Wynwood Walls and produced a book on the project. She also co-produced the docuseries Here Comes the Neighborhood on the transition of the Wynwood Arts District, and executive produced One Day on Earth in collaboration with her father. Goldman Srebnick is an active member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) and co-chaired its Global Leadership Conference in Miami in 2009, for which she received the Key to the City of Miami-Dade County. She participates in the YPO/Harvard Business School President’s semi- nar and has been a guest lecturer at Harvard Business School. Goldman Srebnick has Michael Vasquez painting at Wynwood Walls

36 LEADERS POSTED WITH PERMISSION. COPYRIGHT © 2020 LEADERS MAGAZINE, LLC VOLUME 43, NUMBER 2 it’s hospitality where we had our fi rst restau- around the world and a rant called Greenstreet Café which was in New lot of people were ask- York City in what was a former garbage truck ing to have us become garage. We had another restaurant called SoHo involved in their projects. Kitchen and Bar where we served 110 wines Our fi rst client was by the glass. That was back in the ’80s, when Steve Ross. I will forever no one had ever heard of doing that. It was be grateful to Mr. Ross coming up with ideas and allowing ourselves because he looked at to push the envelope as far as service and con- what we were doing in cepts and an infusion of creativity. Wynwood and said, “I SoHo was really our first big neighbor- want this in my new sta- hood back in the 1970s. Then we came to dium.” I started a whole Miami Beach in the 1980s, the Art Deco district new company with him of Miami Beach, and my dad fell madly in love as my fi rst, fabulous cli- when he turned a corner on Fifth and Ocean and ent, and it has morphed saw all the Art Deco architecture concentrated in into clients such as the one neighborhood. He started buying a property NFL. I just curated the a month for 18 months with no bank fi nancing face of the Super Bowl and money borrowed from aunts and uncles and ticket and a whole infu- cousins and friends. sion of art into the Super Then we went to Philadelphia and bought Bowl which is one of Wynwood Garage real estate in Center City Philadelphia, where it the biggest games on the was check-cashing stores and porn shops, and planet. We did a project with the company now it’s one of the most vibrant communities in Public art is really important to my fam- Wilson, which makes footballs and basket- Philadelphia. ily and to me personally. Artists have this balls and baseballs. This was an art inte- Wynwood was a neighborhood that my beautiful way of being social agents of gration into Wilson footballs and while brother, Joey Goldman, had found for our family. change and utilizing their talents to bring this may not be changing a neighborhood, He recognized the possibilities having been raised beauty and to bring hope, and a lot of it is changing a product. It is looking at what we learned with something that might be considered ordi- Wynwood Walls was nary and approaching it in a different way. that, in many cases, That’s what I love to do, because I believe this was a person’s that any simple form can be turned into fi rst experience getting something creative. It can be a canvas for close up to artwork creativity. because galleries and Goldman Global Arts is a very holistic museums can tend to approach to arts because we have art galler- be intimidating. This ies, so we sell the work of the artists that we was art in a very non- work with and represent. We curate and pro- intimidating matter, and duce work for other clients, utilizing a stable today we get over 3 of artists that we have worked with and some million visitors a year that we haven’t worked with. I’m on a con- into Wynwood Walls. stant journey to fi nd great artists. Other cities are We also have a growing retail compo- coming to us, want- nent where we collaborate with artists on ing to understand how products, whether they are baseball hats or Wynwood Kitchen & Bar we’ve done what we’ve T-shirts or coloring books or water bottles. done and how they can Those are things that I never imagined I’d be in a family that was no stranger to trying to fi nd do it in their cities. I speak quite often on utiliz- doing but there’s a desire, and people want opportunity and looking beneath what was there. ing art to change perception and to create con- creativity in their life, whether it’s in their At the time, my dad had just undergone a versation and to create hope, and about utilizing work environment, their play environment or double lung transplant, and I think he recognized real estate as a canvas. We are a very creative their home environment. that time was very precious, and he would say that company. I think my dad would be incredibly We are try ing to put as much art into the those four years, the last four years of his life, were happy and proud at how our company has led world as possible.• probably his most productive. We infused every- by example. thing we had learned over the many, many years Was the new of neighborhood revitalization into Wynwood company that you and we believed that this neighborhood would created a natural become a center for the creative class. That was extension of the real the idea and that was the goal. estate business or do We opened Wynwood Walls. We opened you see it is a sepa- restaurants. We have a restaurant called Joey’s rate company? and a restaurant called Wynwood Kitchen and That’s a great Bar. We started to curate tendencies of other question. They are like-minded people that were not afraid of two separate compa- being pioneering since it was a neighborhood nies, but in one sense, that forced you to be pioneering because there it is the artistic arm of was nothing here. Goldman Properties, Almost four years ago, I started another com- although there are also pany called Goldman Global Arts because as the a lot of other things lead curator for Wynwood Walls, I recognized that Goldman Global how impactful and empowering that project is Arts does. The inside dining area of Joey's restaurant

VOLUME 43, NUMBER 2 POSTED WITH PERMISSION. COPYRIGHT © 2020 LEADERS MAGAZINE, LLC LEADERS 37