Jan Burman, president of Engel Burman, has been named "The 2014 Ernst & Young Family Business Industry Entrepreneur of the Year for the New York Region." The award, which celebrates America's most innovative business leaders, is one of the nation's most prestigious business award programs. It recognizes entrepreneurs who have demonstrated excellence and extraordinary success in such areas as innovation, financial performance, risk, and personal commitment to their businesses and communities.
"I am genuinely honored to be presented with this award and I would like to thank the judges for their decision and my father for providing me with the work ethic that has guided me throughout my career. I believe entrepreneurship is about recognizing problems and then creating solutions through consensus that allows you to effectively solve them. It is a philosophy that has been embraced by a new generation as my sons David and Scott assume leadership roles within the company and identify new and emerging opportunities. As a result, our leadership in the assisted living industry, for example, has been based on recognizing markets and then providing a service that becomes the national standard for excellence. Our success has been a collective effort and I share this award with those throughout the Engel Burman family."
Burman was nominated by Desmond Ryan, executive director of the Association for a Better Long Island, who said, "If one were merely judging Jan's accomplishments based on the strategic positioning of his company, his visionary understanding of a changing real estate environment and the creation of a national standard of excellence in senior assisted living, one could quickly celebrate his nomination. However, Jan's 'up by his bootstraps' background and personal integrity have been woven into every business deal that has marked his career. This award is a well-deserved response to an exemplary career."
Nationally, Burman may be best known for his role in creating The Bristal Assisted Living Communities. The Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award selection committee was most impressed with Burman's appreciation that the demographics of New York's tri-state area were shifting and that seniors with significant wealth wanted to leave their homes but not the region. His business acumen allowed him to break ground on the Bristal chain years before his competitors recognized a need, ensuring his dominance in a residential market he refuses to relinquish.
Burman's peers have honored his leadership by presenting him with the Developer of the Year Award from the Commercial Industrial Brokers Society of Long Island and election to multiple terms as President of the Association for a Better Long Island, a business advocacy group which represents over $20 billion of industrial, commercial, retail and residential properties in the Long Island metropolitan area. He was also appointed by New York governor Andrew Cuomo to sit on the board of the United Nations Development Corp. which assists the UN's office and real estate requirements in New York.
The Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award candidates include traditional entrepreneurs who are the founders or leaders of high-growth companies. They also are transformational CEOs who may not have started their company but have been essential to its success. Nominees can be CEOs of public or privately held companies, multi-generational family business leaders or divisional CEOs. The nominee's company must be at least three years old.
Burman, a CPA and MBA, started his career in the tax department of a major accounting firm in the mid-1970s. By the end of that decade he started to purchase corporate surplus properties and bank foreclosures and by the mid-1990s he owned approximately five million s/d of multi-tenanted properties throughout Long Island. In 1997, he sold approximately four million square feet to First Industrial Realty Trust in exchange for cash and shares in First Industrial, becoming their largest OP unit holder.
While originally focusing on industrial projects, Burman shifted the focus to primarily retail and residential projects; a central pillar of his business strategy was to reinvent properties that had become obsolete or ill-used.
As he expanded his holdings off Long Island, including Montreal, Massachusetts and Florida, he also founded the Engel Burman Group with Sydney Engel and Steven Krieger. His two sons, Scott and David, followed after graduating college a few years later. Together, they entitled and built several thousand homes on Long Island, bought several million s/f of industrial buildings in North Carolina and Virginia and founded The Bristal Assisted Living communities. Tags: