Feed

Power Broker

By Gus Delaporte 6/18 11:00am

Power Broker

Photo by Amanda Cohen

Jack Terzi of JTRE on Growing, Organically

Shortly after launching his eponymously named real estate business, Jack Terzi was approached by Apogee, a thrift store chain that operated 18 branches in Minnesota and Maryland, about opening in New York and New Jersey, which, compared with the chain’s traditional markets, were a “totally different animal.”

To facilitate the process, JTRE conducted traffic reports and demographic studies to identify the right markets to pinpoint across the region.

“We explained to them, go to Fulton Street in Brooklyn and pay the big rent,” said Mr. Terzi, chief executive officer of Jack Terzi Real Estate. “Pay over $1 million in rent, because you’re going to make three times as much as you did outside [New York].” Read More

By Gus Delaporte 6/11 8:30am

Power Broker

Howard Grufferman_Fernando Pereira Gomes_2

The Negotiator: Colliers International’s Howard Grufferman

In the late 1990s, international law firm Weil Gotshal & Manges was eyeing a reconfiguration of its office space at the General Motors Building. With a significant portion of the lease remaining, the building’s then-landlord, Corporate Property Investors, was not compelled to negotiate a new deal.

With the landlord’s unwillingness to negotiate in mind, Howard Grufferman—then with Studley, now vice chairman at Colliers International—took his client to the market. Weil Gotshal, which at the time did not have a primary reception floor, was looking for something different, and the firm looked “everywhere,” according to Mr. Grufferman. Read More

By Gus Delaporte 5/28 10:00am

Power Broker

David Cooper

Engineering Success: David Cooper on the Future of the WSP Group

When the U.S. branch of London-based engineering consultancy WSP Group was charged by Forest City Ratner Companies and the New York Times with the task of designing the core and shell, as well as the interior, of the Grey Lady’s new headquarters on Eighth Avenue, the team faced a coterie of challenges presented by the advanced technologies required to meet the developers’ sustainability and efficiency demands.

The WSP team, led by president David Cooper, was ready for the task. Read More

By Billy Gray 5/07 11:01am

Power Broker

Lipa Lieberman (Photo: Darcy Rogers)

The Rabbi of Realty: Lipa Lieberman of Eastern Consolidated on Balancing Religion with Real Estate

Growing up in the Hasidic community of Midwood, Brooklyn, Lipa Lieberman noticed early on that his most successful neighbors owned real estate.

“Real estate was always in the back of my mind,” said Mr. Lieberman, 33, a senior director at Eastern Consolidated. But before he entered the industry, Mr. Lieberman earned a bachelor’s degree in Jewish studies at Rabbinical College of America and attended the Central Tomchei Temimim Lubavitch, where he was ordained as a rabbi.

“You’re ordained because you study Jewish law in college and then take the rabbinical equivalent of the bar exam,” Mr. Lieberman said. “You don’t necessarily do it to practice in a synagogue.” Although he never led a congregation, Mr. Lieberman’s religious background—he’s a member of the Chabad sect and spent time abroad at a Chabad center in Venice, Italy—did inform his secular career choice. Read More

By Billy Gray 4/16 9:00am

Power Broker

Barrett Friedman, Mael Mitterrand, Christine Emery, Yair Staav

Retail Comes to Murray Hill Properties

David Greene had retail brokerage on his mind, and he didn’t want a lone wolf.

Mr. Greene, the president of brokerage services at Murray Hill Properties, was assembling a retail team at the firm, which had gone without one for nearly four years.

He was drawn to Christine Emery and Yair Staav, who had formed a partnership at The Lansco Corporation in 1999 and proceeded to build the New York presences of tenants including Uniqlo, Hermès and La Maison du Chocolat. A long courtship followed and has now culminated in Emery-Staav Retail at MHP. Read More

By Billy Gray 3/12 5:00am

Power Broker

Lori Shabtai (Credit: Sophie Mathewson)

The Grocer’s Daughter: Winick Realty’s Lori Shabtai on Manhattan’s Evolving Retail Landscape

What a difference five years makes. When Winick Realty Group Executive Vice President Lori Shabtai marketed a 13,000-square-foot retail space at 459 Broadway in 2008, she hinged part of the sell on the cachet of the intersection of Broadway and Grand Street.

“I called it the heart of Soho,” Ms. Shabtai, 52, said during an interview in her well-appointed (and well-heated) office. “I remember a broker calling me and saying, ‘That’s more like the colon of Soho.’”

That any doubts persisted so recently about the viability of that block attests to the dizzyingly fast rate of change in New York real estate. The interaction also attests to Ms. Shabtai’s prescience and her quick mastery of the steep learning curve in commercial real estate, a field she entered just eight years ago. Read More

By Al Barbarino 2/26 10:00am

Power Broker

DSCF2283-2

Each One Teach One: Massey Knakal Broker James Nelson

James Nelson recently ushered a dozen Colgate University undergraduate students on a tour through The Abingdon, a West Village nursing home-turned-luxury condo where some units, which sold out this month, ran for more than $10 million.

With the help of his team, Mr. Nelson, a partner at Massey Knakal, sold the property at 607 Hudson Street for just over $33 million to Flank Architects in 2011 on behalf of nonprofit group VillageCare, which previously ran a nursing home there.

Much like the undergrads, the investment sales heavyweight traveled The Abingdon’s hallways with looks of awe, as Jon Kully, a principal at Flank, led the group into its sprawling condos. The building bore no resemblance to the nursing home Mr. Nelson had first stepped foot into in 2007. “They had 200 beds packed in there, and it wasn’t up to code, and it was in desperate need of renovation,” he said. “This was a complete transformation. It really was amazing what they did, and to know that I had a small part in making that happen was great.” Read More

By Al Barbarino 2/12 8:30am

Power Broker

IMG_3598

On Top of the World: SL Green’s Steve Durels on Last Year’s Viacom Deal and the Projects Reshaping Manhattan

When Viacom pulled the trigger on its 1.6-million-square-foot renewal and expansion at 1515 Broadway last year, SL Green Realty served up a stinging rebuke to swirling rumors that the media giant would relocate.

But company executives with the city’s largest landlord were well aware that the firm’s most coveted tenant had toyed with the idea Read More

By Billy Gray 2/05 11:00am

Power Broker

Geoff Bailey, photographed by Will O'Hare

Heart & Soul: TerraCRG’s Geoff Bailey on Williamsburg’s Next Act

To enter the Pacific Street office of the commercial brokerage firm TerraCRG, visitors must buzz reception and walk a few yards through a parking garage before hanging a right.

There’s Sena, an African hair-braiding salon, next door, and beyond that is a row of brownstones that, with minimal touchups, could be airlifted to Park Slope and go unnoticed.

But TerraCRG also sits practically in the shadow of the Barclays Center, and the eye travels to that rusty bird’s nest as you wait for the welcoming buzz.

This location at the traffic, geographic, demographic, architectural and developmental crossroads of Brooklyn suits TerraCRG, a firm launched by Ofer Cohen in 2008 that keeps a strict focus on the ascendant borough’s commercial real estate market.

Vice President of Retail Services Geoff Bailey joined TerraCRG in June of 2010, with previous experience in Brooklyn from five years in sales at Massey Knakal, where he had worked with Mr. Cohen. Mr. Bailey specialized in southeast Brooklyn back then, but thought there was untapped real estate potential throughout the borough. Read More

By Billy Gray 1/24 7:00am

Power Broker

Photo: Peter Lettre/NY Observer

The Postgraduate: Newmark Grubb Knight Frank’s Brian Waterman

Brian Waterman’s 27 years at Newmark Grubb Knight Frank sprang from a 90-second interview with NGKF Chief Executive Officer Barry Gosin in 1986.

Mr. Waterman, now a vice chairman at NGKF, was fresh out of college and considering a career in law. His mentor, Saul Katz, Sterling Equities’ co-founder and president, shot from the hip and said there were already enough lawyers in the world, and that Mr. Waterman should look into real estate, the field that had minted Mr. Katz’s fortune.

Mr. Katz put Messrs. Waterman and Gosin in touch.

Not quite two minutes into the job interview, Mr. Gosin told Mr. Waterman he was hired, and to immediately start canvassing. “It was my first and only job interview,” Mr. Waterman said. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 7:15am

Power Broker

Paul Massey.

Paul Massey on Massey Knakal’s Growth

Paul Massey began his career at CBRE in 1984 but disembarked on his own within months after becoming disenchanted with the company’s hierarchical atmosphere. Senior brokers there, he found, were unwilling to collaborate with or groom younger talent.

It was the start of what seemed like the career of someone bent on doing things his own way.

Four years later, Mr. Massey would launch the scrappy, eponymously named startup he founded with colleague Robert Knakal, overseeing just a handful of staff. The two developed a system of brokerage that no other firm had then employed, in which employees were assigned to specific territories in the city.

Many observers of the firm thought the plan would be a death knell, limiting its ability to recruit talent. After all, what top broker would want to be assigned to some obscure neighborhood in Queens or Staten Island?

The pair eschewed the real estate establishment in more glaring ways, too. Read More

By Stephen Kleege 11/13/12 7:15am

Power Broker

Alex Chudnoff.

The Storm Chaser: Alexander Chudnoff on Post-Sandy NYC Recovery Efforts

Alexander Chudnoff, a commercial leasing broker who takes pride in strengthening relationships with clients through “impeccable service,” was especially busy in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

The Jones Lang LaSalle executive managing director was dividing his time last week between volunteer efforts in the Rockaways, where he provided hot pizza and coffee to storm victims, and getting on the phone to make sure his Downtown Manhattan clients could stay open. Though it was a difficult time, the activity of making connections was just what attracted Mr. Chudnoff to the business in the first place.

“I love to make calls. I love to canvass,” he said. “I like to develop the relationship.”

In some cases, the storm required short-term arrangements, such as lining up space with other clients or in Jones Lang’s own offices, he said. In others, clients were able to proceed with minimal disruption, as when Dentsu Holdings USA returned to work at 32 Avenue of the Americas when Rudin Management opened the building the Monday after the storm. Read More