Clockwise from top left: Stanley Chera, Sheldon Solow, Peter Hauspurg, Gerald Hines, Jerry Wolkoff, and Bianca Yankov
In a year when so many lives were lost, real estate was not spared. The industry mourned both legendary figures and those who died too soon.
But it was the death of Stanley Chera, the 77-year-old patriarch of Crown Acquisitions, that epitomized the year. The real estate titan had decamped New York City for Deal, New Jersey, early in the pandemic at the behest of his longtime friend, President Donald Trump. But on April 11, Chera died of complications from Covid-19. When Trump contracted Covid later in the year, he reportedly asked an aide, “Am I going to go out like Stan Chera?”