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By Daniel Edward Rosen 9/19/12 7:45am

Power Broker

FeminineMys

Leslie Wohlman Himmel: Commercial Real Estate’s Feminine Mystique

Curious onlookers often wonder aloud whom Leslie Wohlman Himmel is married to.

The question has less to do with her romantic life than with her rise as one of New York City’s few female building owners, a position she has navigated with aplomb as one half of Himmel + Meringoff Properties, the real estate ownership group she has overseen with partner Stephen Meringoff for nearly three decades.

To hear it from colleagues, competitors and peers, her gender has caused many to presume, incorrectly, that she either married into the industry or had exchanged vows with her partner in business, Mr. Meringoff.

“She arrived on the scene, not from a New York City family,” said Mary Ann Tighe, chief executive officer of CBRE. “In the early years, when she was acquiring properties, people would say, ‘Who’s she related to?’” Read More

By Carl Gaines 9/13/12 7:30am

Power Broker

Selig and Sableson.

Out With The Old: Coldwell Banker Commercial Alliance Hits New York

The New York office of Coldwell Banker Commercial Alliance—a franchise of Coldwell Banker Commercial—is so new that the sign outside its Midtown offices still bears the name of its previous iteration, Coldwell Banker Commercial Hunter Realty.

For the moment, a simple printout taped over the old plaque lets visitors know they’ve found the right spot. Yes, it’s that new.

Waterfall Asset Management announced in July that it had acquired the location, which was founded as Hunter Realty by industry veterans Richard Selig and Peter Sabesan roughly 14 years ago. When you factor in that Messrs. Selig and Sabesan worked for the Helmsleys, and that Coldwell Banker Commercial is itself a franchise system owned by Realogy Corp.—owner of Sotheby’s International Real Estate, Century 21 Real Estate and the Corcoran Group, among others—you almost need a flow chart to untangle it all. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 9/04/12 7:15am

Power Broker

Chase Welles.

Chasing Manhattan: Westchester’s Own Chase Welles on Big Plans for Big Apple

Chase Welles never needed a Manhattan office address to execute big deals. But now he has one, and a new firm too.

For years, Mr. Welles has been one of the city’s top retail brokers despite being based in White Plains—an unusual headquarters for such a prolific and successful deal-maker in Manhattan, well-known for its clubby retail industry.

Recently, however, Mr. Welles relocated to an office overlooking Columbus Circle. Meanwhile, the firm where he is a principal, Northwest Atlantic, merged with the Shopping Center Group, a national retail services company in Atlanta. Read More

By Daniel Edward Rosen 8/21/12 7:00am

Power Broker

Stephen Palmese. (Photo courtesy Will O'Hare)

The Eight Percenter: In 1H12, Massey Knakal’s Stephen Palmese Closed 8% Of All Brooklyn Sales Deals. How?

The sale of 204 Huntington Street, a 62,404-square-foot asset in south Brooklyn, was 10 years coming.

The investment sales firm Massey Knakal Realty Services had first noticed the property, a warehouse-turned-multifamily development, in 2003-2004. Later, Area Property Partners owned and managed it between 2009 and 2010, before its principals decided to place the asset on the market.

To market such a property, Massey Knakal tapped a Bay Ridge-born broker whose tenacity in the investment sales sector had already earned him a reputation as one of the borough’s most active up-and-coming agents. Read More

By Daniel Edward Rosen 8/21/12 7:00am

Power Broker

The Eight Percenter: In 2012, Massey Knakal’s Stephen Palmese Closed 8% Of All Brooklyn Sales Deals. How?

The sale of 204 Huntington Street, a 62,404-square-foot asset in south Brooklyn, was 10 years coming.

The investment sales firm Massey Knakal Realty Services had first sold the property, a warehouse-turned-multifamily development, in 2003-2004. Later, Area Property Partners owned and managed it between 2009 and 2010, before its principals decided to place the asset on the market.

To market such a property, Massey Knakal tapped a Bay Ridge-born broker whose tenacity in the investment sales sector had already earned him a reputation as one of the borough’s most active up-and-coming agents. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 8/14/12 7:45am

Power Broker

Jeff Rosenblatt.

Phoenix Rising: Newmark Grubb Knight Frank’s Jeff Rosenblatt, Post Kent Swig

It didn’t take long for Jeff Rosenblatt to sense something awry in the house of Kent Swig.

It was 2009 and Mr. Swig, at the time a large landlord in the city, had purchased the real estate services company Helmsley-Spear a year earlier. In the months after his big acquisition of the legendary brokerage firm, Mr. Swig had offered Mr. Rosenblatt a senior position managing its leasing operations. Read More

By Daniel Edward Rosen 7/24/12 7:15am

Power Broker

Kenneth Hochhauser.

A Metric Mind: With Data Analysis the Norm, Winick Realty Looks to Kenneth Hochhauser for the “Secret Sauce”

Years before Chipotle Mexican Grill became a calorie-packed part of Midtown’s daily diet, the burrito maker was mapping a path into the New York City marketplace.

In 2002, after launching in Washington D.C. and other suburban markets, Chipotle turned to Kenneth Hochhauser and Jeffrey Roseman, who subsequently turned to internal data accumulated by the former Newmark Knight Frank to determine an ideal location for Chipotle’s flagship store in New York City.

“They understood their business model, in that the bulk of their business came during lunch, so we focused on where the heaviest lunch concentration would have been,” recalled Mr. Hochhauser.

Now an executive vice president with the Winick Realty Group, Mr. Hochhauser, 45, recalled his days at Newmark Knight Frank pairing data with Chipotle’s own statistical analysis to determine where best to expand the brand. And considering his knowledge of Geographic Information Systems—a complicated theory used to better understand patterns and trends—Mr. Hochhauser found what he was looking for. Read More

By Daniel Edward Rosen 7/17/12 7:00am

Power Broker

IMG_1293

Little Pink Hardhats: PBC’s Alicia Popper Repositioned HSBC’s Headquarters

The pink construction helmets, three of which are proudly displayed in Alicia Popper’s office, collectively serve as touching reminder to the PBC USA Real Estate broker that construction workers and tenants alike appreciate her for her work.

“I’m accepted, I’m embraced,” said Ms. Popper, a senior vice president of leasing and construction. Standing inside her temporary office at 452 Fifth Avenue, a building she helped transform from the former HSBC headquarters into a multi-tenant building, Ms. Popper showed off a bright-pink helmet that bears the logo of the Otis Elevator Company. The helmet was, like Ms. Popper, attractive yet tough. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 7/10/12 7:00am

Power Broker

Marty Burger.

Can Larry Silverstein’s Heir Apparent, Marty Burger, Rise to the Occasion?

During a ski trip to Colorado several months ago, Michael May, an executive at Cantor Fitzgerald, remembers his eagerness to hit the slopes. He rose at the crack of dawn and found his friend Marty Burger, who had organized the trip, waiting in the lodge with the same idea in mind.

Traveling with a large group of executives, they skied all day. Mr. May remembers being exhausted, but Mr. Burger convinced him to join him and few others for some indoor tennis back at the hotel. A couple of games, at Mr. Burger’s urging, turned into a couple of sets. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 6/19/12 10:30am

Power Broker

Paul Amrich. (Photo courtesy Katie Khouri)

Paul Amrich: Young Gun

With his clean-cut suits and boyish good looks, it’s hard to imagine Paul Amrich laboring under the summer sun like a grunt, lugging around materials on a construction site.

But when he was a high school and college student years ago, that’s just what he spent his breaks doing, courtesy of his father, a construction engineer who was able to get Mr. Amrich work on sites he was consulting on.

“You name it, I carted brick and concrete to the bricklayers, lugged sheetrock,” said Mr. Amrich. “It kind of teaches you the value of education. It makes you appreciate the opportunity to be in a city like New York and to be able to walk in and work at a good company. I’m psyched every day.” Read More

By Daniel Edward Rosen 6/12/12 10:30am

Power Broker

Steven Kamali.

Steven Kamali: Broker to the Chefs

Nightlife and hotel impresario Steven Kamali had barely settled into a booth inside the Soho House last week when he was asked about his involvement with the well-known art gallerist Larry Gagosian’s rumored café at 980 Madison Avenue.

The question drew a nervous laugh from the 31-year-old Roslyn native, who for the past 10 years has left his distinctive mark on both the Manhattan and Hamptons hospitality scene. The question also caused a friend of his who had joined the interview to abruptly leave the booth, perhaps to let Mr. Kamali face the music alone.

“I can tell you we are consulting with the Gagosian Gallery, and we’re helping him curate a restaurant concept for their venue at 980 Madison Avenue,” said Mr. Kamali, in a tone so casual and cool it made us forget the uncomfortable moment minutes earlier. Read More

By Daniel Edward Rosen 6/05/12 10:00am

Power Broker

Suri Kasirer.

Suri Kasirer, the Lobbyist Behind Cornell’s Roosevelt Island Win

It was near the end of 2011, and what most New Yorkers knew of the city’s plan to create an ambitious tech campus on Roosevelt Island was that Stanford University had the project in the bag.

For Suri Kasirer, the founder and president of Kasirer Consulting, the notion could not have been farther from the truth. Indeed, the New York native had been working behind the scenes for months on behalf of her darkhorse client, Cornell University, to whittle down the number of candidates vying to oversee the project, and it was all finally beginning to pay off.

“We’re in a service business, so we do whatever we have to do to make sure that our clients can achieve their goals … within a framework of ethics and principle,” said Ms. Kasirer, whose offices are decorated with photographs of herself next to a litany of the country’s most powerful public figures, Bill and Hillary Clinton as well as Bette Midler not least among them.

“Sometimes it means doing the dirty work.” Read More

By Daniel Geiger 5/29/12 10:00am

Power Broker

Michael Lehrman.

The New Math: Michael Lehrman on his plan to introduce derivatives into New York City’s otherwise staid rental market.

Michael Lehrman thinks the commercial real estate services business is completely staid, calcified, old-fashioned.

He doesn’t use those words specifically. He’s a little more eloquent. He’s a Wall Street man now, and to him it’s practically laughable when major real estate services firms claim to be cutting edge when the heart of their analytical capacity is still rooted in the decades-old practice of collecting troves of market data and organizing them into endless charts in order to divine tomorrow’s market conditions. Read More