THE TRANSFORMATION OF BEDFORD VILLAGE, FOR THE BETTER, IS UNDERWAY… MORE RESTAURANTS, MORE RETAIL, AND MORE PLACES TO GATHER…
MEET: THE VOGELS
Just one night at the Bedford Post led Jordan and Brooke Vogel to rent a weekend place in Bedford in the Fall of 2015…and one weekend as renters was enough to convince the couple to right-away buy their Guard Hill estate. “I woke up the first Saturday morning and had the overwhelming feeling that ‘this is it’! We were living in Manhattan, but found ourselves more and more eager to get up to Bedford whenever we could. When Covid hit, we decided that being in our home up here just felt right. We saw how happy our kids were, and knew it was time for us to leave NYC behind as our permanent residence. After decades of being city kids, it was time for a change. We sold our place at the Beresford and moved to Bedford full-time.”
The Vogel’s 13 year-old daughter Hayden and 7 year-old son Hudson couldn’t have been more elated to leave city life behind, and they both now attend Rippowam Cisqua. Now the whole family says they’re now sold on living in Bedford for the rest of their lives. They even just acquired the house and property next to their own, about which Jordan says, “We’re going to use it as a guest house and a massive gym – and hopefully one day my daughter will move in with her kids!” Brooke adds, “What could be better than having our extended family and good friends come stay with us? And everyone teases us about being home improvement and maintenance junkies, so now, with two houses, we always have something to fix!”
Jordan and Brooke grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in privileged circumstances. Jordan’s dad is a serial entrepreneur like Jordan, and his mother is a world class bridge player. Brooke’s family are avid golfers who spent all their free time in Westchester and played all the time. ”We’ve always joked that my dad’s job is as a golfer, and that he was just a lawyer to fill-in on the off-days during the week. My siblings and I were born with golf clubs in our hands,” Brooke recalls fondly. “My mother was part of the original Saturday Night Live production in the late 70’s and is a classically trained dancer. After I was born, she devoted herself to my siblings and me. She is our biggest cheerleader and encouraged us to find a passion and enjoy it to the fullest. We give credit to each of our families for everything we are today as a family of our own.”
Jordan attended Horace Mann, and Brooke attended Columbia Grammar. They were introduced by Jordan’s dad,
when Jordan was a Junior and Brooke was a Freshman at the University of Pennsylvania. As Jordan retells the story: “I was pretty skeptical about going on a date with anyone my dad suggested, and thought I was doing just fine at Penn without his help. But he wouldn’t stop, and finally convinced me saying ‘trust me, her mom is hot!’. We were actually scheduled to go out on our first date on September 13, 2001, but when 9/11 happened, we got on the phone and decided it might be better to postpone. We went out a couple of weeks later…and we’ve been together ever since. I immediately recognized that she was wildly out of my league and I was thinking all through our first dinner what I could say or do to get her to go out on another date with me. I thought she was really smart, the nicest person, and extremely attractive, and I’m admittedly mildly unattractive and extremely stubborn and opinionated….I found out later – and have verified this with her two roommates – that she went back to her dorm and announced I was the guy she was going to marry! …I still think she’s way out of my league, thank my lucky stars, and work every day to make her happy – and I think that’s a pretty healthy thing in a marriage.”
Jordan recalls that when he graduated from Penn and moved back home in Manhattan, “Investment banking opportunities were scarce – or at least I couldn’t find the kind of opportunity I’d anticipated. Although my parents used to say ‘the fridge will always be full for you’ – I understood that what they really meant was that it was up to me to go do and get whatever else I wanted on my own. So while I knew I would always be welcome at home, I wanted to get my own place and get started with my own life. While most of my friends were getting six-figure financial jobs, I took a job doing multi-family residential property management at the William Moses Company for $40,000 a year. It was mainly just to get to move out from my parents house! And it wasn’t ‘asset management’, it was real hard core property management – collecting rents, fixing boilers, dealing with union contractors, working with the City on code compliance. It seemed demoralizing at the time, but to this day I say it’s the basic building block of my success in the real estate business. I got myself a 250 square foot apartment on 15th and 5th, and fixed it up the best I could so Brooke would even come visit me…and then she asked if she could move in on the first night! I may have grown up with means, but I always know that Brooke loved me when I was just getting started in my 20’s.”
“The retail in Bedford represents about one-quarter- of-one-percent of my portfolio, but to me it’s the most important property I own. I live less than a mile from the Playhouse, and these days I’m in the Playhouse building two or three times a week. I’ve become much more focused on getting done whatever I set my mind to doing than on making money, and I’m obsessed with the idea that I can make a long-lasting impact on life for all of us in Bedford. This is our home, and I want to make it the best it can be for the community and for my children.
I’M NOT GETTING AN ENGLISH PUB OPENED TO BE A PUB OWNER. QUITE FRANKLY, I DON’T EVEN DRINK! I’M DOING IT FOR EVERYONE TO HAVE A PLACE TO MEET AND SOCIALIZE RIGHT HERE IN TOWN. BY CURATING THE RETAIL WE CAN AND WILL CHANGE THE EXPERIENCE.”
Jordan continues, animated by any talk about Bedford Village, “The other thing we need to do is create activities and attractions that bring people into town. I was eager to help the Playhouse use my land for the Summer Concert series. I’ve partnered with Nicola and James Stephenson in establishing their Flying Coffee car shows. We held amazing shows in the parking lot behind the Playhouse and across the street from their store, OHHO, in April and June,
Though Brooke grew up with a love for dance and performance, and at U of P she majored in English and Performance Arts she found, “My real passion was for teaching, and particularly teaching people who are Dyslexic – as I am. I got a double Masters in Learning Disabilities and in Behavior Disorders from Hunter College, and embraced teaching children with learning disabilities at the Stephen Gaynor School in Manhattan and later at Columbia Grammar and Prep. I found working with kids with learning disabilities to be profoundly fulfilling.”
Jordan spent four years at the property management job, and earned a Masters in Real Estate from NYU during two of those years as well. He moved on to a four- year stint doing property acquisition for SG2 Properties, during which time he built their portfolio from 250 to 6,000 apartments. But things at SG2 came to a screeching halt with the 2008 financial crisis, and Jordan left, with his partner to this date, Aaron Feldman, to form Benchmark Real Estate Group. Jordan explains, “When we started Benchmark in 2009, Brooke was four months pregnant with our first child and working as a teacher. FOR ME, THERE WAS NO POSSIBILITY OF FAILURE! I worked 18-hour days to build a value-add real estate investment platform. We pride ourselves on doing all our own management. We’re hands-on. Over 13 years, we’ve invested one-and-a-half billion dollars and acquired 65 buildings. We know how to run and improve a building – and that’s meant real success for us.”
At home in Bedford, Jordan has taken to doing the property maintenance, and could spend days with the chainsaw or tending to whatever needs attention. Jordan and Brooke are golfers, skiers and water- skiers. They are also active philanthropists – devoting a tithe to their annual giving. They love to travel, and particularly enjoy getting involved in charitable work involving day-to- day operations within different places they have visited. As an example, they’ve been instrumental in building Kulen Outreach, a not-for-profit all-girl school in Siem Reap in Cambodia. Brooke explains, “I could go back every year! The kids are amazing and such hard workers! What a place. The girls I worked with thought the other Americans and I were characters from a Disney movie, because they had never seen tall women with fair skin and long hair – with professional jobs. It’s been one of our greatest joys to see the smiles when these girls realize they can be more than what lies immediately before them.”
For a fantasy dinner party with only a half-dozen guests – dead or alive – the Vogels would invite: Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Bill Clinton, the Dalai Lama, and, Brooke adds, “Larry David. It wouldn’t be a party for Jordan if Larry wasn’t at the table. Half the time I feel like I am married to Larry David, as even though Jordan is the sweetest guy I know, he can be a real crazy nudge – like Larry!”
In January 2022, Jordan bought 633 Old Bedford Road, the 32,000 square foot red brick building that encompasses the Bedford Playhouse, 25 residential apartments, and about 50% of Bedford Village’s acreage. This summer Jordan closed on another notable building in Bedford Village, at 629 Old Bedford Road, which means HE NOW OWNS ROUGHLY 60% OF THE VILLAGE’S RETAIL.
His stated mission is to remake the experience of coming to Bedford, by providing interesting and useful retail, and offering a panoply of events and activities that draw families in the area ‘to the Green’.
Jordan’s noble goal of remaking the Bedford Village experience hinges on providing a varied and engaging retail offering. In the Bedford Playhouse building, he’s signing long term leases with the tenants that add value to the vibrancy of our town and replacing those who do not. He is working on bringing an old-fashioned proper English pub to the town, stores geared for children, and a pizza parlor. “Why do I have to drive to the City to get a decent slice of pizza?”, Jordan exclaims. He’s even already turned-down a real estate brokerage which offered two- times the rent he was asking, saying about it, “We don’t need more realtors. We need places where we want to stop every day and where our kids want to hang out. And it’s not that I’m anti-broker or anything – they’ll like the result in the long term as houses in the area will sell for more when the Village is more interesting and desirable. Similarly, I won’t rent to anyone who wants to be closed on Mondays or Tuesdays. The Village needs to be open- for-business seven days a week. And who needs more nail salons?” And Jordan is eager to put cellular service on the roof of his building, which would vastly improve reception in one of Bedford’s areas of critical need.
“The retail in Bedford represents about one-quarter- of-one-percent of my portfolio, but to me it’s the most important property I own. I live less than a mile from the Playhouse, and these days I’m in the Playhouse building two or three times a week. I’ve become much more focused on getting done whatever I set my mind to doing than on making money, and I’m obsessed with the idea that I can make a long-lasting impact on life for all of us in Bedford. This is our home, and I want to make it the best it can be for the community and for my children.
I’M NOT GETTING AN ENGLISH PUB OPENED TO BE A PUB OWNER. QUITE FRANKLY, I DON’T EVEN DRINK! I’M DOING IT FOR EVERYONE TO HAVE A PLACE TO MEET AND SOCIALIZE RIGHT HERE IN TOWN. BY CURATING THE RETAIL WE CAN AND WILL CHANGE THE EXPERIENCE.”
Jordan continues, animated by any talk about Bedford Village, “The other thing we need to do is create activities and attractions that bring people into town. I was eager to help the Playhouse use my land for the Summer Concert series. I’ve partnered with Nicola and James Stephenson in establishing their Flying Coffee car shows.
We held amazing shows in the parking lot behind the Playhouse and across the street from their store, OHHO, in April and June, and will continue these exciting cars-by-invitation-only public-welcome events in the Fall. We’re working to establish a Holiday Crafts Fair and will light up the Playhouse building for the Holidays. And I am pleased to get involved and support any events that are organized in and about Bedford Village and the Village Green. I see Bedford Village extending from the Playhouse to DeCicco’s, and would support pedestrian walkways that make it safer and more practical to enjoy the unified areas.
Jordan sums it up saying: “WE FEEL LIKE WE’VE FOUND OUR PERFECT HAPPY PLACE! BEDFORD IS OUR EVERYTHING – KIDS, SCHOOL, COMMUNITY, FRIENDS, AND A VILLAGE THAT WILL BE – I PROMISE – TERRIFIC! “
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