Leffel and George Kaufman formed Kaufman New Ventures in 2009 with the express purpose of identifying and taking advantage of niche real estate opportunities that emerged from the market meltdown that followed the 2008-09 Great Recession. Over the next decade, following a disciplined business plan of acquiring and repositioning under-performing New York City commercial properties, Leffel invested $350 Million in equity in acquiring over 2 Million square feet of under-managed, neglected Class B and C commercial properties and redeveloping them into state-of-the-art boutique office buildings, in the process attracting as tenants both premier investment-grade multinational corporations as well as entrepreneurial firms in the information technology, investment management and media industries.

In particular, Leffel was a pioneer in redeveloping properties in the Union Square, Flatiron and Madison Square submarkets, introducing institutional capital to those markets for the first time, and helping transform them into one of the most desirable and tightest office corridors in the US.

Following George Kaufman’s death, and in the face of a market once again convulsed by the combined effects of a pandemic, inflation and rising interest rates, Leffel formed Flatiron with a similar strategic business plan: adapting the repositioning and adaptive re-use techniques that served him so well in the prior decade, to identify and take advantage of the niche opportunities appearing in the post-pandemic world.