Moinian’s Main Man: Gregg Weisser on Columbus Circle and Young & Rubicam
By Daniel Edward Rosen February 21, 2012 12:30 pm
reprintsGregg Weisser knows how to handle a hot house. The newly anointed executive managing director of The Moinian Group, and volunteer fireman with the Kismet Fire Department in Fire Island, New York, is no stranger to putting out fires, be it a burning beach house or as a director of leasing across some of the city’s most notable addresses. As the real estate director of JPMorgan Chase (JPM), where he had worked for over 20 years, Mr. Weisser closed a million and a half feet of empty space in 1 New York Plaza.
It took him two years, and he appears to have enjoyed every moment of it. “Those are the things that you kind of live for; that’s what I love,” he told The Commercial Observer. Now happily ensconced with the Moinian Group, where since October he has been charged with overseeing the commercial and retail leasing of the firm’s 20-building portfolio in New York, Dallas, Los Angeles and Chicago, Mr. Weisser spoke with The Commercial Observer about the challenges that lie ahead, and the promise of 3 Columbus Circle.
The Commercial Observer: How does the Moinian Group differ from working with a large financial institution like JPMorgan Chase?
Gregg Weisser: Everything to this point has enhanced my abilities to be here. I started as a broker at Cross & Brown, and I did that for a period of years and then joined what was then the Chase Manhattan Bank. At Chase, I was responsible for a lot of the owned assets and also third-party tenants during part of my tenure there over 20 years. The other part I spent doing tenant strategies on the tenant side, working as a tenant.
I would tell you that to be an owner, to have had a brokerage background—and I have my broker’s license, my New York State broker’s license—to be a broker, to be a tenant, and to be a landlord all brings me to being here, and everything that I did was very useful in getting me to this place. And I think it’s a unique set of qualities that allows me to understand the shoes of everybody that walks in this door. I know where they’re coming from, and I think it makes it easy for us to talk to each other and make deals.
