2024 Spring Issue of Urban Land - 60

Stefan Soloviev
inherited 9 West
57th Street, a 1.6
million square-foot
(148,645 sq m)
office tower that
overlooks Central
Park, upon the death
of his father, Sheldon
Solow, in 2020.
Soloviev raised
occupancy there to
96 percent.
and Weskan Grain-to get the grain you
need?
Soloviev: First I bought a 120-mile-long condemned
[railway] line, the Colorado Pacific
Railroad. That gave me my siding that can
hold an entire unit train of 110 cars. [All the
cars in a unit train carry the same product.]
We also bought the 150-mile Colorado Pacific
Rio Grande in the San Luis Valley.
We've accumulated a lot of land, and now I
can give it back to the farmers.
UL: What do you mean you can give it
back to the farmers?
Soloviev: I could, alone, fill up maybe six unit
trains a year, these 110-car trains, myself. But
I built Weskan Grain, and it will soon hold 7
million bushels-plus we have satellite facilities,
and now I want everyone else's grain.
If I give them 1,000 acres [to lease], I'm
UL: But you amassed hundreds of
thousands of acres.
Soloviev: I bought a lot of land. I opened that
market when it was at the right time, and
Farm Credit backed me.
Most of my loans are federally subsidized,
and that's what helped me expand. Every cent
I had went into farmland-nothing else. I mean
everything.
UL: Why did you buy land where you
don't get enough rain?
Soloviev: In years when it rains, our soils are
as good as [soil] anywhere else. We just don't
get the rain other people do. The area that we
picked in the United States has droughts. Corn
wasn't in our area 20 years ago, and now
it's everywhere-because of drought-tolerant
seeds.
UL: You now harvest 3 million bushels
of wheat, 3 million bushels of milo, and
another 1 million bushels of corn for
domestic and international sales. But
you're also competing with big conglomerates.
What are you doing to differentiate
your companies-Crossroads Agriculture
hoping to get 10,000 acres of production
[from their other land], and by giving them
the 1,000 acres now, they get it, they have to
take a risk. You are renting the farms back to
the farmers at a good rate.
This year is going to be my last harvest,
because everything is now leased out to the
area farmers.
Then, when I have ships, I will be able to
cut deals and transport both the grains and
beef cattle from our Quintin City Ranch in
New Mexico directly to Asia.
UL: As a New Yorker, how have you been
overcoming their natural prejudices?
Soloviev: I'm on the ground there every other
week if they want me. They know I farm, but
there's a lot of people that don't like me. To a
lot of people, I'm an outsider-I get it, I have a
Russian last name, and they call me " The Russian "
or " The New Yorker " -there's kind of like
a stigma.
Everyone's heard of me, so when I go to
their living room, there's a little bit of hesitation.
Sometimes,
it's someone I've never met
before, but within five minutes, I'm talking
about things in the grain industry that are
wrong, and they are agreeing with that.
60
URBAN LAND SPRING 202 4
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