Abercrombie and Fitch has finally issued a formal apology for CEO Mike Jeffries's face.

Just kidding. They apologized for his ridiculous comments about "cool" kids.

"We sincerely regret and apologize for any offense caused by the comments we have made in the past which are contrary to (the values of diversity and inclusion)" a statement released read. “We look forward to continuing this dialogue and taking concrete steps to demonstrate our commitment to anti-bullying in addition to our ongoing support of diversity and inclusion.”

The suspiciously blond 68-year-old incited an online riot with his comments about the company's clientele earlier this month.

"In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids," the oh-so-attractive executive said. "We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don't belong (in our clothes), and they can't belong."

The company finally balked after a Change.org petition that garnered 68,000 signatures.

Around 12:30 this morning, Hollister was burglarized by a crowd of Black Friday shoppers that had grown impatient while waiting in line outside the surf shop-inspired superstore, according to a clique of teenage eyewitnesses assembled outside the American Eagle Outfitters across the street.

NYPD on scene confirmed that the store had been robbed and would not be opening for predawn business, but had no further details about the suspects.

Hollister sales staff and lifeguards were nowhere to be found. The 5th Avenue Abercrombie & Fitch was also closed despite publicizing a midnight opening.

1552 Broadway.

If you’ve ever gone shopping in New York City, you’ve likely been an unwitting guest of Jeff Sutton. He is a discreet host, but an expansive one.

Among other properties, he controls: the 33,000-square-foot American Eagle at the corner of Broadway and Houston Street; the 40,000-square-foot Armani flagship in 717 Fifth, soon to house an 18,400-square-foot Dolce & Gabbana; the 20,000-square-foot Abercrombie & Fitch store up the street at 720 Fifth; the 46,000-square-foot American Girl Place down the street at 609 Fifth; 1551 Broadway in Times Square, which includes the four-floor American Eagle Outfitters flagship; the Aeropostale lease at 1515 Broadway; 141 Fifth in the Flatiron, where Cole Haan supplanted a Bath & Body Works; the Polo Ralph Lauren space at 379 West Broadway in Soho; several spots in and around Herald Square, including the Foot Locker House of Hoops, Aeropostale, Aldo, Geox, American Eagle and Esprit; and 747 Madison Avenue, the location of the Valentino flagship. Just last week, he teamed with SL Green, the city’s biggest commercial landlord, on the $136 million purchase of 1552 Broadway, which contains the Times Square TGI Friday’s.

That is just a sampling. He owns much more in Manhattan, the boroughs and surrounding areas—an empire of 115 buildings carefully, yet aggressively, amassed since the early 1990s. At times he has worked with partners like SL Green, but often Mr. Sutton relies entirely on his own capital, which he built up from early hustling in the scrappier, crappier New York of Dinkins and Koch. It is an empire that helped change the cityscape, particularly Herald and Times squares, and has redefined the way deals for high-end retail can be done. Today, from his home in the tight-knit Syrian-Jewish community in the Gravesend neighborhood of Brooklyn, he maintains his holdings with a canny reticence.

You would think the man would want to brag. Or to put it in journalistic parlance: You would think Jeff Sutton would be an easy quote. The Observer discovered otherwise. We found him to be among the most elusive titans in New York real estate, certainly so in its retail sector.

In point of fact, he first reached out to us. It was the late winter, and The Observer was putting together our annual Power 100 list of the most significant people in New York real estate. Mr. Sutton, 51, called out of the blue—unlike every other entrant who called, there was no publicist nor executive assistant acting as a buffer—to gently remind us of his domains should we be considering putting him on the list (we were, and he ended up ranked No. 58, higher than the 72nd spot he earned the year before). We made arrangements to get together for coffee one day soon. That day never came.

Months later, as we began calling around, talking to people who have either worked with him or know him through his work, a theme emerged.

“He’s a very tenacious guy; he’s very charming; and I think the best attribute is that he knows his business better than anybody,” said Andrew Mathias, the president of SL Green, which first partnered with Mr. Sutton in the early part of the last decade on a financing deal at 609 Fifth. “Ultimately, his retail intelligence sets him apart from everyone else in the real estate business who’s just leasing space; Jeff understands the mentality of his customer.”

Aaron Birnbaum, a top executive with financing concern Meridian Capital, has worked extensively with Mr. Sutton over the past 15 years. “He’s got a very keen understanding of risk,” Mr. Birnbaum said. “He’s a very hands-on guy, especially as the deals got bigger. He reads all of the long documents very carefully. He reads the important pieces 100 percent.”

Faith Hope Consolo, of Douglas Elliman, is one of the city’s top retail brokers. “The thing about Jeff is that he will do whatever he has to do to do a deal. What does that mean? Client needs a rendering; they need to be flown somewhere; he’s got to go to the other side of the world for a meeting? He’s going to do it.”

Indeed, Mr. Sutton flew to California to wrest American Girl into 609 Fifth at a time when executives there were considering Tishman Speyer’s Rockefeller Center. He also jetted to Milan to see Domenico Dolce to convince him and Stefano Gabbana to take the 717 Fifth space. And he went to Columbus, Ohio, to pitch the chairman of Abercrombie & Fitch. In every case, he showed up with video presentations, imagining for the retailer the would-be foot traffic and physical surroundings.

Mr. Sutton himself eventually called us after someone we had called, called him. He wanted to know more about this profile of ours, and why he had not been contacted first. We made plans to sit down for an interview once he was back from vacation, but Mr. Sutton ultimately declined to comment for this story.

We called some more people, and dug into clips, our own and those of Lois Weiss, the longtime New York Post columnist who has broken some of Mr. Sutton’s biggest deals in New York with SL Green.

MR. SUTTON’S MARCH TO masterminding the highest-end retail in New York begins with a humble—dare we say, Al Bundy-like—avocation: discount shoes. It was the late 1980s, and Mr. Sutton, the son of a retail importer, had graduated from the Wharton School (in 1981) and was trying to break into New York real estate with no money and no reputation to speak of.

Looking back, it seems he picked a fortuitous time. Not only was there a recession on, but the industry was a different animal: less formal, more bare-knuckled, button cuffs rather than French. The old first- and second-generation guard, who still commanded the industry, held court more often at construction sites than in corner offices. With the right idea, an unconnected parvenu could score a stake. 

Mr. Sutton’s was simple enough, if risky: he would get the lease first and the space second, using the money from the lease to buy the space. (Normally, in retail, a broker shows vacant space and the tenant takes what’s available, the equivalent of your last apartment hunt. Mr. Sutton created a universe where retailers could take spaces whether they were vacant or not.) He tried the idea out first on Payless Shoes in the early 1990s, when the retailer wanted to break into the New York market.

He would drive Payless executives around Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Upper Manhattan, and he would ask them where they wanted stores. They would point to a storefront; and Mr. Sutton would then go to the storefront’s tenant and offer to buy him out. If that didn’t work, he would offer to buy out the landlord, and in some cases made the tenant he was representing his own subtenant. It worked.

Mr. Sutton took his idea to choicer Manhattan in the late 1990s, starting with CVS, and grew from there, eventually connecting with Mr. Mathias at SL Green. For a time he partnered with other Syrian Jews from his neighborhood, but that seems to have tappered off (perhaps the dollar amounts got too large to be comfortably transacted with the neighbors?). On the other hand, SL Green, which today owns roughly 5 percent of New York City’s commercial space, had phenomenal capital at its disposable, as did Mr. Sutton’s Wharton Properties. The spree was on, though it would take some time for the rest of the industry to notice. “What can you say?,” Ms. Consolo said. “He went from Queens Boulevard to Fifth Avenue.”

His countenance changed as the deals got bigger (the American Girl acquisition at 609 Fifth in 2002 really put him on the map). According to those who know him well, Mr. Sutton went from rather brash and somewhat bombastic, a bit tactless even—the classic New York comer—to more refined and quiet, a confidence in his abilities calming him a bit, as one person put it. People universally say he’s a nice guy, a genuine article in an industry that can seem oleaginous to the extreme.

There was not a need to hustle so much. He was scoring over and over, commanding some of the highest retail rents in the nation, even through the Great Recession. The rent of the American Eagle store at 1551 Broadway averages $20 million for the life of the lease; for Aeropostale, it’s north of $11 million; for American Girl, it’s about $7 million; for the new Dolce & Gabbana, it will be $16 million for the first year alone, according to a source with knowledge of that and other deals.

ALL THE WHILE, Mr. Sutton has lived a quiet, private life in Gravesend, where he grew up (his grandparents were all immigrants). The neighborhood, at least an hour’s commute from midtown, is perhaps best known as the boyhood home of playwright Arthur Miller and as the site of the bank robbery that inspired the Pacino classic Dog Day Afternoon (“Attica! Attica! Attica!”).

And while it may be quiet, it is far from quaint—the borough’s reigning record home sale was $11 million in 2003 for a 3,600-square-foot spread that was immediately torn down to build a mansion nearly three times the size. The neighborhood also claimed 2009’s biggest deal: $10.26 million for an 8,206-square-foot house. The Observer noted this past spring that the Sephardic Jewish community to which Mr. Sutton belongs fuels much of the demand for this top-end real estate. They want to raise large-for-New York City families in a neighborhood centered around Shabbat. (“If your mandate is be fruitful and multiply, and you’ve got eight or 10 kids, you run into a supply-and-demand issue very quickly,” one top Brooklyn real estate executive said, speaking anonymously for fear of running afoul of fair-housing laws.)

Nevertheless, Mr. Sutton could afford Central Park—less of a commute to his 54th-floor office at 500 Fifth Avenue, which, according to a source who has been there, features baronial views and a wet bar stocked with 30-year-old scotch (which is probably more ceremonial than anything as Mr. Sutton, by all accounts, is nearly a teetotaler). It’s his second office. He had the first, at 46th Street and Madison Avenue, for about 15 years; it was much smaller and more cramped, while the current one unfolds graciously for Wharton’s 10 or so employees. But, according to people who know him, he wants to raise his five kids in the Gravesend community.

We tried to ask him about that in another phone call this week—about the big deals (particularly about the Dolce & Gabbana one, which closed in July) and the million-dollar rents, the commutes from bellicose midtown to far-flung Brooklyn, the early days in the boroughs with the discount shoes.

But Jeff Sutton, again, would not comment.
tacitelli@observer.com

It’s reassuring, isn’t it, the persistence of the line outside Abercrombie & Fitch? Whatever else happens, New Yorkers can rest assured that at any business hour, during any season, one can saunter past the corner of 56th and Fifth and think, “What the hell is wrong with those people?”

For a long time, I thought that perhaps tourists had been tricked into thinking the store was a nightclub. Sometimes, walking by—I do this a lot—I’d mutter “It’s not a nightclub!” under my breath. “Nightclubs aren’t open at 2:00 in the afternoon. Not in America.”

Actually, I kind of wish there were a super-secret tourists-only pop-up discotheque, accessible through a hidden door behind the sales racks. Better that than the alternative—that the endless line of people waiting patiently behind the velvet rope are merely there to pick up up a hoodie. It’s a bit like seeing the best minds of your generation destroyed by madness. Or it would be, if the best minds of your generation happened to be spray-tanned orange and live-blogging the experience frantically on a Hello Kitty stamped iPhone.

I approached the Belgians. “Why are you here?” I asked, hoping to sound simply convivial and inquisitive rather than baffled and ornery.

“The guys,” one exclaimed. “We like!”

“All-American men!” a tank-top clad girl cooed in agreement.

The shirtless door hunks are a staple of Abercrombie & Fitch —the corn-fed equivalent of the large-bosomed waitresses at Hooters, the slutty little tramps at American Apparel, and the unusually large mice at Walt Disney World. They stand at the entrance, greeting customers and posing for pictures. And they do look American, or at least they look like what an alien might imagine Americans look like if he was partial to reruns of Dawson’s Creek.

The sweater-folders and and cashiers inside aren’t too shabby either.

A&F has put a lot of effort into building its brand over the years. The infamous A&F Quarterly, which featured Bruce Weber’s photos of strapping young men and women—and the odd golden retriever—frolicking in the nude and nearly nude, was a reliably controversial piece of beefcake samizdat in the late-90s and early aughts. (At press time, a set of 28 issues in “pristine condition” could be had on Ebay for $840, with a mere 31 hours to go.)

Back in 2005, the conservative Christian Bob Jones University prohibited students from even sporting the A&F logo, due to the company’s “unusual display of wickedness.”

And then, of course, there was that $40 million settlement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over the company’s hiring practices. And the $20,000 payout last week to a Muslim woman who claimed job discrimination.

None of which seemed to trouble the Belgians. The door hunks aren’t menacing. They’re wholesome looking. They’re pleasant. They ask the women entering how they’re doing today. They are to women what Britney Spears circa 2000 might have been to men. Meanwhile, the interior of the store, with its low lighting and pulsating music, does look a little like a nightclub, but one where all the men seem desirable, courteous and attentive. The company has come a long way since they sold Hemingway the gun he used to shoot himself.

I approached Elijah, who said he had been working as one of the door hunks for a little less than a year.

“Do women ask you out all the time?” I inquired.

“Every day!” He replied.

“Really?” Elijah looked surprised that I was surprised that women ask him out all the time.

Of course, I wasn’t asking him out. I was reporting a story. A few details from my research: Elijah was almost comically good looking. He had the name of an angel, as well as the face and sturdy calves.

“Does it ever make you feel like a piece of meat?” I asked.

“Nah,” Elijah said, shrugging good-naturedly. “I kinda like it.”

So, I wondered, these women ... does he actually, you know, date them?

“Date? Or, like ...” he trailed off and raised his eyebrows. The door hunks may not be as innocent as their plaid shirts would have us believe.

Suddenly, a skinny white-haired man wearing a Statue of Liberty hat rode up on a tricycle. Pausing at the front of the line, he wordlessly presented me with a stack of Polaroids taken of himself and women inside the Abercrombie store. In some he was flexing his skinny arms in a muscle man pose. He grinned as he shifted back and forth in his flowered galoshes and wrinkled sweatpants, proudly displaying his picture-book. The women seemed to enjoy his company—he might have been a bit eccentric and had a physique closer to a preadolescent than a muscleman, but he had the Abercrombie pose down. Maybe that’s all anyone was looking for.

I asked if he planned to wait in line and do some shopping. He shook his head no. Too hot. Only a crazy person would do that.

editorial@observer.com