Mounir Badaan
BackManaging Member, CEO
Experienced leadership is key to any successful business. Mr. Badaan has demonstrated successful leadership based on his extensive experience while guiding Badanco to its current position of strength.
The saga of an immigrant coming to America with "a dollar and a dream" is often believed to be exclusive to the early twentieth century; a belief of a bygone era. Mr. Badaan has proven that concept to be alive and well.
Arriving from his native Lebanon in 1969, he had the idea of importing items to sell in the United States. His first sale involved one hundred handbags made by his family in Lebanon. From that modest start, he continued importing items until his American company, Badanco Enterprises Inc, was one of the leading luggage importers in the world with sales exceeding $80 million per year, capturing 60% of the country’s department store sales, and 40% chain stores and the direct market.
Mr. Badaan’s reputation as a successful importer is worldwide, with contacts in China, Thailand, and Korea, as well as throughout Europe and the Middle East. This success gave Mr. Badaan the ability to pursue his lifelong interest of real estate. Applying the knowledge and the instinctive business acumen he used in building a highly successful importing business, he set out to repeat that success in the real estate development arena. His first major purchase was a 45-acre tract for a family homestead. He then began Badanco Realty Development in 1996 with the purchase of 600 acres in northern New Jersey lying in the towns of Riverdale, Kinnelon, and Pequannock. The local newspaper referred to the purchase as "…one of Morris County’s largest land sales in recent history." He worked carefully with the three communities, using his negotiating skills to create the right fit for each municipality.
Under Mr. Badaan’s guidance, the Pequannock tract become a 1300-unit senior campus facility called Cedar Crest, one of the largest and most successful of such facilities in the Northeast. A key element involved in the development of his project was negotiating access to the site through the Riverdale tract. His vision of a high quality, single family residential community on the Kinnelon portion evolved into Badanco Heights, a striking project of forty homes. The project has a lake whose dam, because of state regulations, had to be rebuilt at a cost of $1.5 million. The entire project was self-financed.
In 1998, Mr. Badaan purchased a forty-two acre tract, known as McDonald’s Beach, in Pequannock. This tract has two ponds and was formerly a day use recreational complex. His vision for this site was commercial use, which evolved into a major practice facility for a professional sports team. After approvals for the facility were received, the sports team decided against using the site. Undeterred, Mr. Badaan is in the process of obtaining permit to build an 85,000 sq ft Castle for a major catering facility.
In 2002, he created MNB Realty Company, LLC, a spin-off of Badanco Realty Development, to purchase a 30-acre tract in Kinnelon and adjoining Butler. He has guided that tract through the development of three large residences in Kinnelon and the approval of a 69 unit townhouse project in Butler, for which construction financing is now being sought.
His most current real estate enterprise is MNB Realty, with its office facility in a newly refurbished historic homestead in Wayne, New Jersey. Seeing the target market flow from the Northeast to the Carolinas, Mr. Badaan began this venture to investigate development possibilities in other states. His first project in this arena is a 425 unit, 212 acre multi-family project near Pinehurst, North Carolina. This project is in the influence cone of a major expansion of Fort Bragg, an expansion which will bring over 25,000 people to that geographic area. Planning Board approval has been received and other approvals are in progress.