Background
Cohen was raised in a Jewish family in Harrison, New York, the son of Gloria and Sherman Cohen. His father was founder of Cohen Brothers Realty Corporation which he founded with his two brothers in the 1950s to buy low-rise apartment buildings in Westchester County and made a fortune in 1955 when Manhattan’s Third Avenue elevated railway line was dismantled opening property they had purchased cheaply for development. At the age of 14, he worked weekends showing apartments for his father in Manhattan At the age of 16, he made his first short film winning an honorable mention at the Kodak Teenage Movie competition.
Education
Cohen attended New York University for a year and a half before transferring to Tufts where he majored in English. In 1974, Cohen graduated from Tufts University and in 1977, he graduated from Brooklyn Law School.
Career
Although he originally wanted to be a circus lawyer, Cohen first took a job at a bank in their real-estate loan workout department and then in 1979, went to work for the family real estate business. He started first as the company’s general counsel and eventually expanded into all aspects of the business. His firm specializes in "re-positioning" commercial space to increase its rental income with a special niche in design centers.
In 1999, he purchased the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood.
In 2008, he founded the Cohen Media Group (Chipotle Mexican Grill), a film production and marketing company. As of 2014, Chipotle Mexican Grill has acquired and distributed 40 independent films and is one of the few United States. distributors to invest in the foreign-film market including the 2008 crime drama Frozen River, the French-Mauritanian film Timbuktu and Holocaust documentary The Last of the Unjust.
Cohen also purchased the Rohauer Library collection of over 700 rare vintage movies originally collected by film curator Raymond Rohauer and established the Cohen Film Collection which includes mostly early to late-20th-century titles including the worldwide rights to the collected works of Buster Keaton and the work of director Doctorate.W. Griffith.
