The Landlord Rep

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“To take a building and market it-just to do the standard-a lot of people can do that, and then it’s just a question of who has better information,” said Mr. Turchin of the agency group’s strong suit. “But the right thing that occurs in a building is when you reposition it correctly. If you get it positioned correctly, the rest of the leasing work gets much easier.”

 

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DESPITE MR. TURCHIN’S formidable real estate lineage-he’s the youngest son of retired ESG vice chairman Martin Turchin, an industry legend known for having an expertise in everything from building systems to financial structuring-the senior Turchin’s Great Neck-raised spawn began his career as the manager of a T-shirt factory in Worcester, Mass., where he was attending law school at Clark University.

“It drives me nuts because I can’t buy a T-shirt anywhere without instantly noticing if it’s off by a little bit or somebody messed up on the silk screening,” laughed Mr. Turchin, who cops to a sizable T-shirt collection.

His fashion career, however, veered wildly but briefly into a legal profession that began at the law firm Robinson Silverman. It ended there, too, after he decided to enter his father’s world of real estate only several months after being hired. “I figured it out quickly,” Mr. Turchin said of his career realignment.

His brief legal run wasn’t a complete bust, however. It was while working at the firm that he met future wife Judy, who was also a young lawyer there. They have two boys-Grant, 6, and Clark, 3-and are approaching their 10-year anniversary, Mr. Turchin said.

Now living on the Upper East Side, Mr. Turchin said that his professional life has occasionally tangled with that of his wife, who, unlike her husband, remains fully entrenched in the legal industry, where she serves as general counsel of Lehman Private Equity.

That harmless entanglement was never more evident than in early 2009, when Mr. Turchin was tapped to lease a 400,000-square-feet block of 399 Park Avenue that had just been vacated by Lehman Brothers following the investment behemoth’s well-documented collapse.

“Believe it or not, not only did my wife work at Lehman, but I was actually touring space that my wife was in, post-bankruptcy,” Mr. Turchin recalled, laughing. “So I was doing space tours, and I was actually touring the space with potential tenants, and my wife was in the space. So, like, I’d walk by, say hello or make a joke. … Yeah.”

Awkward moments aside, Mr. Turchin successfully leased space to three midsize financial services tenants and one real estate competitor-Moelis, CV Star, Avenue Capital and brokerage Studley-over the course of just four months between June and October of last year.

“Our campaign was focused much more on smaller, single-floor tenants,” Mr. Turchin said of the whirlwind leasing bonanza. “We were actually able to build a lot of momentum. You’ll find that buildings either have momentum or they don’t have momentum. This one did, and, obviously, that’s what we look for in all of the buildings we represent.”

Spoken like a true landlord rep.

jsederstrom@observer.com