Jeff Sutton (born 1960) is an American billionaire real estate developer and the founder of Wharton Properties.
[2] Jeff Sutton was born into a Syrian Jewish family,[3][4] in Gravesend, Brooklyn.
[6] Wanting to get into New York real estate and lacking the funding to compete with established real estate families (e.g. Dursts, Roses, Fishers, Rudins, Tishmans, and the Lefraks), Sutton took a different tack: he would first find a potential tenant, determine where they wanted a store, and then seek to buy out the lease from the tenant at the location.
[5][7] In the early 1990s, his strategy worked with Payless Shoes in upper Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens.
In the late 1990s, he applied the same approach with CVS Pharmacy in lower Manhattan partnering with New York City's largest landlord, SL Green Realty.