Leslie Spira Lopez
Bringing NoMad Home
As president and CEO of Kew Management, Leslie Spira Lopez understands New York real estate. You might, in fact, say that real estate is in her blood. Though she studied math and computer science at the University of Rochester and spent 10 years in the tech industry, in 1987 something shifted for the ambitious young executive. “I was working really hard,” she said. “But I also realized it was time to go work somewhere where I would get equity, or go work where I already had equity.”
Pressing the pause button on a career she had worked hard to establish, she moved into the family business and over the course of the next 35 years, real estate became her life. A formidable player in the branding and growth of NoMad, Spira Lopez was honored on March 28th by the Madison Square Park Conservancy for her leadership role in founding The NoMad Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to building a better community and supporting local businesses. “What can I say? It is an honor to be recognized for the effort and energy I’ve put into the neighborhood,” she told us. “It has truly been a labor of love.”
Born and raised in northern New Jersey, Spira Lopez comes from a long line of successful entrepreneurs. Her grandparents owned Lady, a retail store in Gdansk, Poland, but in 1938, just before the start of the second World War, they left everything behind to start a new life in New York. They opened a millinery shop at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 37th Street, eventually buying out their supplier. Then in 1953, they bought the actual building at 1000 Sixth Avenue, which became the first of many properties held by Kew Management, the entity founded by her maternal grandfather. Her father, Seymour Spira, who was literally a rocket scientist, joined the company in 1965, often joking that “you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to make money in real estate. But I am.”
Spira Lopez spent summers during high school and college making the rounds with her father. She recalled a tour of a building the family owned on 29th Street that housed a furrier who gifted her a muff and a hat with a fluffy pompom when she was about 10 years old. Later, during the 1970s, she remembers the tenants who imported textiles from India, stocking their warehouses with floor to ceiling piles of colorful fabrics. “Those were the hippie years,” she said. “They would give me gifts of Indian bedspreads and Indian clothing.” At the time, she had no inkling of what her own future would hold.
As the family continued to buy and manage properties — focusing primarily on commercial/ non-residential and industrial sites — Spira Lopez was well on her way to becoming a highly successful woman in a field dominated by men. With her degree from Rochester, she landed a job in Washington DC working for Control Data, a mainframe and super-computer pioneering company. She earned accolades in her field and went on to work for Prime Computer, GTE Telenet, and Source Telecomputing (a subsidiary of Reader’s Digest that was at the forefront of electronic publishing and according to Isaac Asimov in 1979 was “now the start of the Information Age”).
Fast forward to 1987 and the move that effectively rebooted her career. “At the time my father was transitioning the business to my brother and the next generation. I knew I needed to learn from my father while he was alive and in good health and I wanted to participate in the direction we were going,” she said. Determined to excel in her new role, she signed up for a Dale Carnegie sales training class and a few years later went on to earn an executive master’s degree in business from Columbia University. “The MBA gives you the tools to make decisions in a faster way. It builds confidence,” Spira Lopez added, noting that she also benefited from the input and guidance of her study group, which consisted of a number of executive peers.
Embracing her new path, she became a founding member of the Family Business Council of Greater New York, a non-profit dedicated to helping small heritage companies. In 1995, she was promoted to president of Kew Management-New York, overseeing its New York holdings. Five years later, the company was divided into two independent entities, with Spira Lopez maintaining control of New York with her sister Ellen, and her brother David taking the reins of Kew Realty, a collection of properties the family owned in Colorado and Florida— places they became familiar with during family travels.
Around this same time, the watchful executive began to notice shifts in the real estate market. In 1998, the world-renowned eateries Eleven Madison and Tabla were opened by Danny Meyer and in 1999, the Madison Square North Historic district was established, leading to the creation of the Madison Square Park Conservancy in 2003 and the restoration of the Park. This opened up the neighborhood to new developments. Within a few years, the opening of the trendy Ace Hotel, restaurants owned by celebrity chefs, and a number of new retail and residential properties began making headlines. “There was an article in the New York Times back in 1999 that called the area ‘NoMad.’ It was the first time I ever heard that term,” Spira Lopez recalled, “but I didn’t know what to do with it.” In 2006, Spira Lopez and her husband Mark, a prominent civil rights attorney, bought an apartment within walking distance of her office at 1123 Broadway and eventually moved in with their 8-year-old son (now 23, her son works with her during the summer and time off from college, much in the way she did with her father).
“Initially it was hard to convince companies to move into that area between 25th and 29th street,” she said. “it felt like there was an invisible line at 23rd that no one wanted to cross.”
Part of the problem, perhaps, was that it was difficult to identify the neighborhood. Before the term NoMad took hold, most thought of the area as part of Chelsea or Flatiron, neither of which was accurate.
In 2008, Spira Lopez and her marketing team sought to make NoMad the official moniker of the neighborhood. The truth is, New York loves a good neighborhood handle, from Soho (south of Houston) to Tribeca (Triangle below Canal) to NoLita (north of Little Italy), the shortened names add charm and definition and boundaries that psychologically cement a sense of belonging among businesses, residents, and visitors; creating a community out of a grid on the map.
While giving Spira Lopez a tour of the soon- to-be-opened Ace Hotel, GM Michael Rawson mentioned that GFI would also be opening the NoMad Hotel. And that’s when it clicked — she knew that she needed to promote calling the neighborhood NoMad. A few years later, buoyed by the success of the hotel and its eponymous restaurant, the nickname for the area — bordered by 31st Street to the north, 23rd Street to the south, Lexington Avenue to the east, and Seventh Avenue to the west — had definitively been established. NoMad it is.
The rest, they might say, is history. Or history in the making. Currently considered one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Manhattan. NoMad is the place to be. Centrally located and anchored by a beautiful park with a lively event calendar, new construction and the renovation and revitalization of landmark buildings has brought new life and a young professional population into the area. “It has always been my goal for the neighborhood to be sustainable as a live, work, and play community,” she said. “The pandemic demonstrated why those communities work, and it was an interesting lesson to learn. Kew’s buildings have been serving the growth of successful small entrepreneurial companies since 1896 — from office to warehouse and back again. It’s always been about business and business growth.”
Spira Lopez sees herself as more than a landlord. Taking a cue from the way her father conducted himself — “he always had strong relationships with his tenants,” she said — she also views herself as an integral part of the community. “I don’t need to be a mega-real estate star,” she told us. “This is about continuing to grow the NoMad neighborhood and the opportunities that are already here. It’s a slow and steady continuation of the business, the way it’s always been. There’s no place like NoMad.”