Mohamed Hadid

Mohamed Anwar Hadid (born November 6, 1948) is a Palestine-born American real estate developer. He is recognized for developing high-end hotels and extravagant homes, particularly in Los Angeles' Bel Air area and in Beverly Hills, California.

He was born in Nazareth of Mandatory Palestine. His family later moved to Syria, Lebanon, and Tunisia before settling in Washington, D.C.. He studied at North Carolina State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before entering real estate, he was involved in exporting equipment to the Middle East. He became known for his luxury developments and has been part of several legal disputes over zoning and construction in Los Angeles.

He was married to television personality Yolanda Hadid from 1994 until their divorce in 2000. They have two daughters, celebrity models Gigi and Bella Hadid.

Mohamed Anwar Hadid was born on November 6, 1948^[1] in Nazareth (now Israel), Palestine^[2] to a Palestinian Muslim family.^[3][4][5] His parents were Anwar Mohamed Hadid and Khairiah Daher. He has two brothers and five sisters. Through his mother, he is descended from Dahir al-Umar, a leader in northern Palestine in the 1700s.^[6][7]

Because of the 1948 Palestine war, Hadid and his family had to leave their home and moved to Lebanon, then later to Syria. In 1989, Hadid said his father left because he did not want the family to live under Israeli control.^[8] In 2015, Hadid wrote on Instagram that they became refugees in Syria and lost their home in Safad to a Jewish family they had once helped when that family was also refugees. They lived with them for two years, but then Hadid’s family was forced to leave their home.^[9]

Hadid’s father studied teaching in Jerusalem and later studied law in Syria. He worked with the British authorities on land issues and also taught English. After the family moved to Syria in 1948, his father joined the United States Information Agency and Voice of America. The family lived in several countries, including Syria, Tunisia, and Greece, before moving to Washington, D.C. when Hadid was 14. His father worked there as a writer, editor, and translator until he retired.^[6][8][10] While living in Damascus, the family got Jordanian citizenship after Hadid’s father won a backgammon game against the Jordanian ambassador. Before that, they had been without citizenship for seven years.^[11]

Hadid graduated from Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia, where he was the only Arab student. He then went on to study at North Carolina State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).^[2][8]

One of Hadid’s first businesses was exporting equipment to the Middle East.^[1][8] He began his career by fixing and selling classic cars in Washington, D.C. Later, he moved to Greece and opened a nightclub on an island. He used the money he earned there to start developing real estate in the United States.^[12]

In the 1980s, Hadid got much of his funding from the SAAR Foundation, a group based in Virginia with Saudi connections. The foundation was an equal partner in many of his projects.^[8] By the late 1980s, he was facing about 30 lawsuits from banks and creditors who said he didn’t meet his financial obligations.^[13] He bought the Ritz-Carlton hotels in Washington, D.C., and New York for $150 million. He also turned a hotel in Houston into a Ritz-Carlton and built a Ritz-Carlton resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. In Aspen, he outbid Donald Trump by paying $42.9 million for land where he planned a 292-room Ritz-Carlton resort.^[8][13]

In 1992, Hadid was involved in a lawsuit after he failed to repay a loan for a construction project in Washington, D.C. The case was settled, but afterward, he closed his local office, lost his home in McLean to foreclosure, and left the Washington area.^[14]

Hadid built Le Belvedere, a mansion in Bel Air, Los Angeles, which sold for $50 million in 2010. In 2012, he built another large home called The Crescent Palace, next to the Beverly Hills Hotel. It was 48,000 square feet and listed for $58 million.^[15][16]

Soon after Hadid got approval to build a mansion in Bel Air, a group called the Bel Air Homeowners Alliance, led by Fred Rosen, was formed to fight the project.^[15] In January 2015, Walmart heiress Nancy Walton Laurie, who lived nearby, sued Hadid through her company. She claimed that a retaining wall he built next to her home damaged the roots of her eucalyptus tree.^[17]

In December 2015, the Los Angeles city council decided to press criminal charges against Hadid, saying he broke zoning laws by building his house against city rules and making it twice as big as allowed.^[18][19] In May 2017, Hadid pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges for building without city approval. That July, he was sentenced to pay fines and do community service.^[20][21]

In July 2017, Hadid was sentenced to 200 hours of community service, ordered to pay $14,191 to the City of Los Angeles for damages, and fined $3,000.^[22] He was also put on three years of probation and warned that if his property didn’t meet regulations, he could spend 180 days in jail.^[23]

In 2018, several neighbors sued Hadid, and he was ordered to pay $3 million. In 2019, a judge ruled that his 30,000-square-foot mansion had to be torn down because it posed a real danger to nearby homes. Hadid later sold the property at auction for $5 million.^[24]

Hadid took part in speed skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympics for Jordan when he was 43 years old. His friend, Austrian skier Franz Weber, encouraged him to join. Hadid was the only athlete from Jordan and is still the only person to have represented Jordan at the Winter Olympics.^[2][25][26]