Chaim Schochet
Chaim Schochet is an American real estate executive, developer, and manager at Optima Ventures, once the largest holder of real estate in Downtown Cleveland.
Early life
Schochet was born to a Jewish family in Miami Beach, Florida, He attended the Rabbinical College of America in Miami, New York City, and Toronto where he graduated with a degree in Judaic studies in 2006.Optima
After spending a year in Singapore traveling and volunteering, he returned to Florida and accepted a job at Optima Ventures, a real estate investment firm 1/3 owned by Optima International of Miami, and 2/3 owned by the principals of the Privat Group, one of Ukraine's largest business and banking groups founded by oligarchs Hennadiy Boholyubov and Ihor Kolomoyskyi. Korf and Laber owned 7% of the shares in PrivatBank Latvia, a majority-owned subsidiary of PrivatBank headquartered in Ukraine.As investment executive of Optima Ventures, Schochet presided over the acquisition of a number of properties in Cleveland, Ohio including One Cleveland Center ; 55 Public Square ; the Huntington Bank Building ; and the Penton Media Building. In September 2011, Optima purchased PNC Plaza in Louisville, Kentucky for $77 million. In October 2011, Optima entered its first joint venture, buying the 472-room Crowne Plaza Cleveland City Centre hotel with Sage Hospitality Resources, a hotel developer and manager based in Colorado. In September 2014, Schochet proposed a $231 million renovation of the Huntington Bank Building, the second largest office building in the city, into a mixed-used facility combining offices, apartments, condominiums and a boutique hotel; the renovation did not come to fruition and Optima sold the building to Hudson Holdings LLC for $22 million in 2015. He has also made acquisitions outside of Cleveland including the 2008 purchase of the 1.5 million square foot former Motorola manufacturing facility in Harvard, Illinois.
As of 2012, Optima Ventures owned more than 5 million square feet of real estate in the United States and was the largest holder of real estate in Downtown Cleveland surpassing Forest City Enterprises. Schochet describes himself as: "a long-term investor interested in any property that produces a healthy income."