As if running The Shops at Atlas Park complex wasn’t enough of a challenge, Dale Hemmerdinger has also accepted the position of chairman of the MTA.
The Hemmerdinger family has built a village for shopping, dining, recreation, beautification and simply enjoying leisure time at the many sitting areas surrounding the handsomely landscaped square. It is truly an oasis in our frenetic-paced city and lives.
The 25-acre site was formerly the Atlas Terminal - a 40-building enclave for manufacturing with Long Island Rail Road tracks running through. With the decline of manufacturing, the Hemmerdingers decided to demolish the buildings and build the unique “Shops at Atlas Park.”
It took guts and a belief in the Queens market to support their huge investment, but the third and fourth generations of Hemmerdingers are overseeing the rebirth of their ancestors’ legacy.
Late last year, Hemmerdinger was nominated by Governor Eliot Spitzer to be the 9th chairman of the MTA, and he was recently confirmed by the New York State Senate to serve until June 30, 2011. Therefore, I was interested in meeting the man that would influence all our lives and was willing to take on an enormous task that he admits consumes half his day, seven days a week!
The unpaid role is to oversee the agency that employs more than 70,000 people. As chair, Hemmerdinger will be responsible for seven bridges, two tunnels, and all the LIRR and Metro North rail lines, as well as all New York subways and buses. The lines serve over eight million people a day.
As the president of Atco Properties & Management and Atlas Real Estate Funds, Hemmerdinger has been described in a multitude of articles written about him as a philanthropic real estate mogul. That sounds very intimidating, but when I met the handsome, impeccably dressed man wearing a Hermes tie I was immediately at ease. We even bonded over our respective grandchildren.
I got to talk to a man who is proud of his heritage, his children, his family and his commitment to leaving our city a better place.
He is personally and professionally committed to having a positive impact in his new role.
Hemmerdinger’s grandfather came to America from Germany in the 1880’s, living first in Brooklyn before moving his family to the farmlands of Queens. Over the years he kept adding to his holdings. Eventually, his success bought him a home in Forest Hills Gardens, and they became the first Jewish family to live in that community.
From there he added more and more buildings and passed it on generationally. A great immigrant success story!
I was interested in how his family-owned business survived and flourished through the generations. It certainly is challenging working with relatives!
He shared with me honestly, “I’ve always surrounded myself with people I thought were smarter than myself. My children, Kate and Damon, were free to pursue any career. They chose to join the business. Kate, with two babies, does an amazing job juggling family and business and Damon has brought his shopping center experience, working for a company in Connecticut, to The Shops at Atlas Park. They are very hands-on and hard working. They were brought up that way and not to feel a sense of ‘entitlement.’”
In deciding to find another use for the former terminal, Hemmerdinger explained that they did their homework on how to convert the enormous acreage.
“We discovered that within 3½ miles there were 50,000 homeowners with incomes in excess of $100,000. A city like ours can support 30-square-feet of retail for every person, and Queens was underserved at only 10-square-feet per person.”
“We believe in Queens,” he continued. “What we built we expect will become a destination location, keeping people in the borough rather than going to Long Island or Manhattan to shop.”