Mohamed Anwar Hadid (/həˈdiːd/hə-DEED; Arabic: محمد أنور حديد; born (1948-11-06)November 6, 1948)[3] is an American real estate developer. He is known for building luxury hotels and mansions, mainly in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles and the city of Beverly Hills, California. He is the father of models Gigi and Bella Hadid.
Early life
Hadid was born into a Palestinian Muslim family[4][5][6] in 1948[7] in Nazareth.[2] He is the son of Anwar Mohamed Hadid (1918[8]–1989[9]) and his wife Khairiah Hadid (née Daher; 1925–2008),[10] and has two brothers and five sisters.[9] Through his mother, Hadid claims descent from Dahir al-Umar, an 18th-century Arab ruler of northern Palestine.[11][12]
Due to the 1947–1949 Palestine War, Hadid and his family fled to Lebanon as part of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, ultimately settling in Syria. In 1989, Hadid stated his father left because he "did not want the family to live under the Israeli occupation."[13] In 2015, Hadid stated in a post on Instagram: "...[W]e became refugees to Syria and we lost our home in Safad to a Jewish family that we sheltered when they were refugees from Poland on the ship that was sailing from country to country and no one would take them... they were our guest for 2 years till they made us refugees and they kicked us out of our own home."[14]
His father studied at a teachers' college in Jerusalem and attended a university[which?] in Syria to study law, before working in land settlement for the British authorities and teaching English at a teachers' college in Mandatory Palestine. In 1948, the family moved to Syria, and Hadid's father joined the United States Information Agency (USIA) and Voice of America (VOA). Hadid and his family lived in Damascus, Tunisia and Greece before moving to Washington, D.C. when he was 14 years old, as his father had a job at the VOA headquarters there and spent the rest of his career there with VOA and USIA as a writer, editor and translator.[9][11][15]
Among his early ventures was a company that exported equipment to the Middle East.[7][17] He started his career restoring and reselling classic cars in the Georgetown neighbourhood of Washington, D.C., before moving to Greece, where he opened a nightclub on an island, and with the profits, started developing real estate in the United States.[18]
In the 1980s, much of his financial clout came from the SAAR Foundation, a Herndon-based foundation with Saudi roots. The foundation was a 50–50 partner in many of Hadid's ventures.[17] In the late 1980s, he faced at least 30 lawsuits from creditors and banks claiming he had not fulfilled various financial obligations.[19] He paid $150 million for the Ritz-Carlton hotels in Washington and New York. He also converted a Houston hotel into a Ritz-Carlton Hotel and developed a Ritz-Carlton resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. He outmaneuvered Donald Trump, paying $42.9 million for several choice parcels in Aspen and announcing plans for a 292-room Ritz resort.[17][19]
In 1992, a settlement was reached in a lawsuit by Riggs Bank against Columbia First Bank Chairman Melvin Lenkin, a Hadid partner in a Washington, D.C., construction project that involved a loan on which Hadid defaulted. Following the settlement Hadid closed his local office, lost his McLean home to foreclosure, and left the Washington area.[20]
He developed Le Belvedere, a mansion in Bel Air, Los Angeles,[21] that sold for $50 million in 2010. In 2012, he developed The Crescent Palace, a 48,000-square-foot home on an acre plot next door to the Beverly Hills Hotel, which he listed for sale at $58 million.[22]
Estate on Strada Vecchia Road
Shortly after Hadid received approval for the construction of a mansion in Bel Air, the Bel Air Homeowners Alliance, chaired by Fred Rosen, was formed to oppose it.[21] In January 2015, Nancy Walton Laurie, an heiress to the Walmart fortune and a Bel Air resident, filed a lawsuit through her company, LW Partnership, against Hadid.[23] Laurie accused Hadid of damaging the roots of a eucalyptus tree on her property with a retaining wall he built next to her house.[23]
In December 2015, the Los Angeles city council voted to pursue criminal charges over a claim that Hadid violated local zoning laws. The council alleged he built his house contrary to multiple planning orders and made it twice the permitted size.[24][25] In May 2017, Hadid pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges stemming from mansion-construction issues for which he did not receive city approval, and was sentenced that July to community service and fines.[26][27]
In July 2017, he was sentenced to 200 hours of community service, summoned to return $14,191 to the City of Los Angeles in damages, and fined $3,000.[28] He was also given a three-year probation period to ensure the property would comply with existing regulations, or he would face a 180-day jail sentence.[28]
A 2018 civil lawsuit filed by multiple neighbors resulted in Hadid being made to pay a reward of $3 million. In 2019, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Craig D. Karlan ordered the demolition of the 30,000 sq ft (2,800 m2) structure, declaring that it put neighbors at, "legitimate risk of suffering damage and harm to their home." The property was offloaded by Hadid in an auction, with the winning bidder paying $5 million.[29]
Athletic career
Hadid competed in the demonstration sport of speed skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympics, representing Jordan. He was 43 years old at the time. Hadid was encouraged to participate by his friend, Austrian Olympic skier Franz Weber. Hadid was the only member of the Jordanian delegation,[2] and remains the only person to have represented Jordan in the Winter Olympics.[30][31]
Hadid's first marriage was with Mary Butler, with whom he had two daughters, Alana Hadid and Marielle Hadid. He and Butler ended their marriage in 1992.[33][34]
From 1994 until their divorce in 2000, he was married to the Dutch model Yolanda Hadid, née Van den Herik.[35] They had three children, who all became models: Gigi (born 1995), Bella (born 1996),[34] and Anwar (born 1999).[36]
In 2014, Hadid was engaged to Shiva Safai, a model and businesswoman. She was born in Iran and raised in Norway, and at age 19, moved to Los Angeles with her family.[37] Safai, who is 33 years his junior, began to appear in E! reality show, Second Wives Club in 2017.[38][39] As of December 2019, Hadid and Safai had split.[40]
^ abcdeJanofsky, Michael (December 20, 1991). "Olympics; Construction Was Slow, So ..."The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 1, 2016. Retrieved January 10, 2016. While it would have been ideal to ski for the United States, his adoptive country, he knew that making its Olympic team would be virtually impossible. Instead, taking advantage of his dual citizenship, he petitioned the Jordan Olympic Committee, and Jordanian officials approved.
^Walsh, Sharron; Hilzenrath, David (April 24, 1989). "Who is Mohamed Hadid?". The Washington Post. Retrieved October 30, 2023. Hadid was an infant when his family left Palestine. His father, Anwar Hadid, said he did not want the family 'to live under the Israeli occupation.' The parents walked for two nights to reach the Lebanese border -- with Hadid's mother carrying her oldest son. The family finally settled in Damascus, where Anwar Hadid went to work as a translator for Voice of America and traveled widely.
^ abFarameh, Patrice (July 1, 2008). "Hadid's Modern Masterpiece: Mohamed Hadid". Haute Living. Archived from the original on February 19, 2016. Retrieved December 20, 2015. Even though he has never indulged in alcohol in his life, his 5,000-bottle wine cellar is filled with the best French and Californian wines. Not only does his collection consist of a diverse range of premium wines from local vineyards such as Summerland Winery, but it also includes bottles from his very own winery in Beverly Hills.
