Steven Guttman

Steven Guttman is an American real estate developer and art collector. Guttman was chairman and CEO of Federal Realty Investment Trust and led the company as CEO from 1980 until his departure in early 2003. Guttman founded Storage Deluxe when he began investing in self-storage in 1998. He also founded UOVO Fine Art Storage in 2013.

Guttman joined the American Friends of the Centre Pompidou Foundation in 2007, becoming chairman of the organization in 2012. In 2016, Guttman was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour by the French Government for his work with the foundation.

Early life Guttman grew up in Charleroi, Pennsylvania and attended Mercersburg Academy, where he graduated from high school in 1964. He then attended the University of Pittsburgh, graduating in 1968. He went on to pursue a juris doctor degree at George Washington University Law School, graduating with honors in 1972.

Career

Early career After graduating from law school, Guttman accepted a position with Federal Realty Investment Trust. as well as a managing trustee in 1979. In the 1980s, Guttman and Federal Realty also developed Bethesda Row, a shopping district in Bethesda, Maryland with an emphasis on restaurants, In 2001, Guttman was appointed chairman while still CEO of the company. The mixed-use development in San Jose, California represented a significant investment of the company's equity. Despite the problems faced by project, Santana Row was a successful project with high yields for Federal Realty and good revenue for the retail tenants. Storage Deluxe builds and own self storage properties and has developed dozens of properties in the New York city metro area. In 2011 Storage Deluxe sold 22 of its facilities to CubeSmart for $560 million. The facilities ranged in size from 50,000 – 165,000 square feet for a total of 1.6 million square feet. In 2019, Storage Deluxe announced it had acquired a site in East Williamsburg, New York with plans to erect a 220,000 square foot facility in a $100 million development. In October 2020, CubeSmart announced the acquisition of eight additional self-storage properties in New York City from Storage Deluxe for $540 million. Although he acquired a few pieces of artwork and furniture during that time, he only began to grow his art collection in earnest in the latter part of his career as a developer and after retirement from Federal Realty.

In 2006 realizing that his large art collection was in need of a proper storage space and learning that such a space was hard to find, Guttman built a fine art storage facility in Bronx, New York. The storage space was housed on the top two floors of a building owned by the Storage Deluxe Management Corporation, a company he founded.

In January 2013, Guttman founded UOVO Fine Art Storage, because he felt the demand for art storage far exceeded the capacity at the Bronx facility, The company is named after uovo, the Italian word for egg and evokes the fragility of art. UOVO announced that it would build its first purpose-built art storage facility in Long Island City, Queens. The pair of buildings on 22nd Street which make up the 280,000-square-foot facility near Queens Plaza opened in 2014. strict security, as well as advanced cataloging and indexing. The company offers suites customized for individual collections, workspaces for curators and conservators, as well as specialized transportation services for artwork. In February 2017, the company opened its third facility, the second in Rockland County. The renovated 140,000-square-foot facility sits on a 9-acre property located at 100 Bradley Parkway in Blauvelt, a subdivision of Orangetown, New York.

In 2015, Guttman expanded his team, bringing on Steve Novenstein as the chief executive of UOVO. With expansion of space and team, Guttman attracted high-level clients to UOVO, including many notables in the art and fashion world. The Rubin Museum of Art in New York, a notable client, utilizes UOVO’s facilities as an auxiliary storage space for its collections. Although UOVO seldom discloses the items stored in its facilities, the fashion designer Oscar de la Renta has stored his collection with UOVO since 2016. Spanning decades of work, de la Renta's designs are housed, cataloged, and sometimes showcased at UOVO, providing the designer's archivist opportunity to peruse the collection when necessary. UOVO also stores the collections of other notables in the fashion industry, among them PVH Corp.—owners of Calvin Klein Inc.—and the Tommy Hilfiger Group.

In 2019, Guttman and his team at UOVO joined forces with the Brooklyn Museum to create the UOVO Prize, an award recognizing the work of emerging Brooklyn-based artists. In 2019, the inaugural UOVO Prize was awarded to John Edmonds. In 2020, the second annual UOVO prize was awarded to Baseera Khan. In 2022, the third annual UOVO Prize was awarded to Oscar yi Hou.

In March 2022, Guttman and the UOVO team announced its expansion to Palm Beach, Florida, with the assistance of the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County. The new expansion will occupy a facility at 4200 Westgate Avenue. Later that month, UOVO announced its expansion to Dallas, Texas, in partnership with the art collector Howard Rachofsky and art advisor John Runyon. Rachofsky and Runyon renovated an existing Irving building to house the operation. The new acquisition is a 85,000-square-foot facility, located just north of Dallas in Las Colinas.

Beyond his involvement in the art world through UOVO, since late 2011, Guttman has been on the board of the Miami Art Museum, now known as Pérez Art Museum Miami. The museum, which is partly supported by public funds, began construction on a new facility paid in part by a large cash donation from Jorge M. Pérez. In recognition of this contribution, the museum was to be renamed Jorge M. Pérez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County. Guttman and three other board members resigned in protest of the name change.

Guttman also ison the board of the American Friends of the Centre Pompidou Foundation. He first joined the organization in 2007. In July 2012, he was appointed the chairman of the organization after the resignation of Robert Rubin, the previous chairman. In May 2016, Gérard Araud, the French ambassador to the United States, presented to Guttman the honor of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, the civilian Legion of Honour award. In the private award ceremony at the French ambassador's residence in Washington, D.C., Araud stated that they "continue to benefit from Mr. Guttman’s relentless commitment to strengthening the bridge of ideas and talent between the U.S. and France. I applaud his efforts and congratulate him on an honor well deserved." including their primary residence in Miami as well as residences in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City, in Paris, France Their Washington CT home, named the “Rocks”, was the residence of architect Ehrick Rossiter.

In 2017, they donated $2 million to the University of Pittsburgh Football program, the single largest donation to the program's Championship Fund. The donation was specifically earmarked for his alma mater's football program.