Allan Eisenkraft has been in real estate for 52 years and has been a force of nature in seeing the Rockland Jewish Community Center ”“ the JCC ”“ rise from a defunct Champion Paper mill to the showcase in West Nyack that opened in December.
Eisenkraft is robust in build, though now a vegan who has lost 80 pounds (with an asterisk). He possesses a broad smile, an easy laugh and a good-natured, what-the-heck willingness to demonstrate proper free-throw technique on the basketball court. He laughs aloud that at 72, “They move the rim down a little for me.” And he gives a reporter a light punch to the shoulder, flashing a bit of Bronx boyishness from Pelham Parkway, where he and his friends “interacted” with neighborhood girls on the stoops. “That”™s what we did ”“ we interacted.”
He wears a City College of New York lapel pin as a nod to his alma mater and organized his class of 1957”™s 50th reunion, which raised $835,000: $335,000 for library expansion and $500,000 for a leadership training institute with a focus on small business.
The asterisk in weight loss comes from the 30 pounds he put back on this past winter in Florida. “Socializing,” he says, laying blame. “We eat out at least three times a week. This is how Jews socialize.” He calls his Boynton Beach, Valencia Lakes winters for the last 30 years “Jewish heaven” and says, “I don”™t like the cold weather.”
The JCC gym bears Eisenkrasft”™s name, as does the JCC Wall of Honor. “I personally know one of every three or four people here,” he says, which is saying something. On a recent sunny Thursday, the JCC was packed with both paddleball players and history buffs attending an SRO lecture; others ate paninis at the kosher J Café. Many hailed Eisenkraft with a wave or a hello.
Eisenkraft also participated in a moving tribute for the touch-screen Aronson Holocaust Remembrance Exhibit; his European relatives were all murdered by the Nazis. The exhibit, he points out, was donated by Dan Regan, an Eisenkraft business partner in Yonkers.
Eisenkraft strides past the JCC teen center with a climbing wall and a pair of electronic skateboard games toward the gymnasium that bears his family”™s name. The super-modern fitness center down the hall from the gym already boasts 2,400 members, including a pair of Eisenkraft grandsons.
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Eisenkraft at the moment is seated in the JCC library checking on a date: June 12. On that day, he will deliver a lecture to the 120 JCC staff members on “investing wisely and conservatively in today”™s difficult stock market and investing safely.” Then he turns his daybook to reveal its well-inked lines. You wonder when the man takes a moment to catch a ball game on TV and admire his collection of autographed balls from the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra and Derek Jeter. “This is the diary of a retired man,” he laughs. “And this is a slow week.”
Eisenkraft remains busy in real estate, operating out of his Nanuet home. His Nepperhan Avenue office in Yonkers is now largely given over to storage, but he keeps it active, noting, “I gave myself a sweetheart lease on it when I sold the buildings.” The buildings he refers to are two of the five massive and contiguous Alexander Smith carpet mills that dominate Nepperhan. Eisenkraft bought them in 1978 ”“ a total 150,000 square feet ”“ and got to work. When he sold them in June 2005, he had ensconced 93 artists inside, creating the thriving Yoho artists colony, now being run by new owner George Huang”™s Heights Real Estate of Manhattan. “George is working the buildings like I worked them for 27 years and I did OK,” he says.
Huang said recently when he kicked off a $400,000 capital improvement project for Yoho, “I”™m not only embracing Allan Eisenkraft”™s vision, I”™m extending it.” That vision also carried across the street, where Eisenkraft built a 15,000-square-foot shopping center.
Although he just closed a deal on Route 59 in West Nyack, this day it is the JCC that has Eisenkraft beaming like a proud father. He is an executive board member and has twice been board president. “It”™s a labor of love,” he says. “The JCC is like our fourth child.”
Allan and Estelle Eisenkraft have three daughters: Sharon, Meryl and Debbie, “plus four grandsons and a partridge in a pear tree. Debbie just got married and I have placed an order with her for two granddaughters,” he says. Estelle is a JCC regular, he notes, and in October he and she will journey to Israel with a JCC group to celebrate the Jewish state”™s 60th birthday.
“This is a guy who”™s got vision,” said JCC CEO David Kirsctel. “He looks forward at the goal and he doesn”™t give up until he”™s reached that goal, no matter how many people tell him it can”™t be done.”
Eisenkraft accepts the compliment and returns it: “He”™s the best CEO a JCC could have.”
The JCC Web site is www.jccrockland.org.
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