NEW YORK CITY-When Stephen L. Green started his career in the early 1980s, he openly admitted that he “knew nothing about real estate.” But today, SL Green Realty Corp. owns interests in 57 Manhattan properties totaling more than 33.6 million square feet, making it the first and largest publicly-traded REIT solely focused on New York City.

However, Green’s foray into the commercial real estate space had humble beginnings. “I took old buildings that very few people buy, took capital and rented them for much less than the trophy buildings in Midtown Manhattan,” Green said during “Inside the Real Estate Mind,” a one-on-one conversation with ALM Real Estate Media Group’s vice president and group publisher Michael Desiato at the 10^th Annual RealShare New York conference at the Marriott Marquis Hotel on Wednesday morning. "It was a story the rest of the country liked," he added.

After turning around underperforming loft buildings throughout the city, Green formed the REIT in 1997 to continue the commercial real estate business of SL Green Properties Inc., a company that was founded in 1980 by Green. “I needed the capital, and I wanted to control my own destiny,” he said, noting that he never had an interest in going private. “In those years, going public meant raising an enormous amount of capital and still controlling your own business.”