Charles Ben Dayan (born 1941) is an American real estate developer, the founder of Bonjour Capital and co-founder of Bonjour Jeans.

Biography

Born to a

Syrian Jewish Syrian Jews ( he, יהודי סוריה ''Yehudey Surya'', ar, الْيَهُود السُّورِيُّون ''al-Yahūd as-Sūriyyūn'', colloquially called SYs in the United States) are Jews who lived in the region of the modern state of Syr ...

family, who had emigrated from Mandatory SyriaNew York Magazine: "Genes in the Jeans - Why the S.Y.'s are Sportswear's Chosen People" by Phil Patton
May 22, 1989 to Mandatory Palestine (the immediate predecessor of modern Israel). Dayan emigrated to the United States in 1967, and in 1972, with his brothers Eli and Avi, founded Bonjour International, a company that was the first to import low-cut French-style jeans into the United States using the ''Bonjour'' name. He served as president of Bonjour International.
March 25, 1990 By 1982, Bonjour had $150 million in annual sales. After leaving Bonjour International, Dayan founded the real estate development firm Bonjour Capital. Larger investments are made with partners and include the renovation of

5 Beekman Street 5 Beekman Street, also known as the Beekman Hotel and Residences, is a building in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. It is composed of the interconnected 10-story, Temple Court Building and Annex (also known as Temple Court ...

with

Joseph Chetrit Joseph Chetrit is an American real estate investor and developer and founder of the Chetrit Group. Early life Chetrit was born to a Jewish family in Morocco to Simon and Alice Chetrit.Tom Acitelli"Joseph Chetrit, the Most Mysterious Big Shot ...

;Wall Street Journal: "Hopes Rise for Landmark" by Josh Barbanel
June 18, 2010 the $290 million 2005 purchase (together with partners Joseph Chetrit and Yair Levy) of the 800,000 square foot historic 620 5th Avenue and its 2011 sale to

RXR Realty, LLC RXR Realty is a real estate owner, manager, and developer located in New York City and surrounding areas of Westchester County, Long Island, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The company is headquartered in New York, New York and Uniondale, New York. RX ...

for $500 million; and the purchase of the Blake Hotel in Charlotte. When not in a partnership, Dayan focuses on new developments in gentrifying neighborhoods in

Long Island City Long Island City (LIC) is a residential and commercial neighborhood on the extreme western tip of Queens, a borough in New York City. It is bordered by Astoria to the north; the East River to the west; New Calvary Cemetery in Sunnyside to th ...

Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

; Bedford-Stuyvesant and Clinton Hill in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Kings County is the most populous Administrative divisions of New York (state)#County, county in the State of New York, ...

; and

Manhattanville Manhattanville (also known as West Harlem or West Central Harlem) is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan bordered on the north by 135th Street; on the south by 122nd and 125th Streets; on the west by Hudson River; and ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the List of co ...

Personal life

He is married to Ariela Ben-Dayan. Dayan was an early proponent of the

green movement Green politics, or ecopolitics, is a political ideology that aims to foster an ecologically sustainable society often, but not always, rooted in environmentalism, nonviolence, social justice and grassroots democracy. Wall 2010. p. 12-13. It be ...

in the textile industry. His brother Eli Dayan, founded the disco

Tunnel A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

in 1986. Dayan serves on the executive committee of the Israel Cancer Research Fund.Jewish Voice New York: "ICRF Holds Annual Evening of Inspiration in Oakhurst, New Jersey"
August 7, 2013

References

External links

Bonjour Capital website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dayan, Charles American real estate businesspeople American Sephardic Jews 1941 births Living people Place of birth missing (living people) Israeli emigrants to the United States Sephardi Jews in Mandatory Palestine Israeli people of Syrian-Jewish descent