Chaim Schochet

Biography

Schochet was born to a Jewish family in Miami Beach, Florida, He attended the Rabbinical College of America in Miami, New York, and Toronto where he graduated with a degree in Judaic studies in 2006. After spending a year in Singapore traveling and volunteering, he returned to Florida and accepted a job at Optima Ventures, a real estate investment firm 1/3rd owned by Optima International of Miami (which was co-founded by Schochet's brother-in-law Mordechai "Motti" Korf and Uri Laber) and 2/3rd owned by the principals of the Privat Group, one of Ukraine's largest business and banking groups. Optima Ventures was created to diversify Privat's investments into U.S. real estate and invests under its name as well as Optima International and Optima Fund Management with all real estate activities the responsibility of Schochet.

As investment executive of Optima Ventures, Schochet has presided over the acquisition of a number of properties in Cleveland, Ohio including One Cleveland Center (purchased for $86.3 million in 2008); 55 Public Square (purchased for $34 million); the Huntington Bank Building (purchased for $18.5 million in 2010); and the Penton Media Building. In October 2011, Optima entered its first joint venture, buying the 472-room Crowne Plaza Cleveland City Centre hotel with Sage Hospitality Resources, a hotel developer and manager based in Colorado. In September 2014, Schochet and Chip Marous proposed a $231 million renovation of the Huntington Bank Building, the second largest office building in the city, into a mixed-used facility combining offices, apartments, condominiums and a boutique hotel. In June 2015, Terry Coyne, a commercial real estate broker with Newmark, negotiated and coordinated the sale of the building to Andrew “Avi” Greenbaum, principal of Hudson Holdings, for $22.5 million. Hudson began a $280 million renovation of the building which will feature 550 apartments, a 300-room, high-end hotel, 200,000 square feet of retail, a banquet hall, conference space, and a lobby open to the public.

He has also made acquisitions outside of Cleveland prominently the 2008 purchase of the 1.5 million square foot former Motorola manufacturing facility in Harvard, Illinois. As of 2012, Optima Ventures owns more than 5 million square feet of real estate in the United States and is the largest holder of real estate in Downtown Cleveland surpassing Forest City Enterprises. Schochet describes himself as: "a long-term investor interested in any property that produces a healthy income." In March 2015, Optima's lender for the purchase of 55 Public Square sold the remaining balance of $20 million for $7 million, a $12 million loss due to concerns about the ability to find tenants as the 424,000-square-foot building has 160,000 square feet of unoccupied office space.

Personal life

Schochet is a practitioner of Chabad Judaism. He is married to Rachel Schechter; they have two children: Eliyahu and Yehuda; and live in Miami.