CBRE’s Mary Ann Tighe On the Shifts Animating New York’s Office Market

Mary Ann Tighe started 2025 the same way she closed 2024: busy. 

It’s a common state for the veteran commercial real estate executive who has for 23 years been CEO of brokerage giant CBRE (CBRE)’s New York tri-state operations. 

SEE ALSO: Sunday Summary: No Peeking at Your 401K!

Where to start? Tighe (pronounced “Tie”) helped represent auction house Christie’s in its 400,000-square-foot renewal for 25 years at Rockefeller Center in August. Speaking of auction houses, Tighe also repped Sotheby’s in its $100 million purchase of the historic Breuer Building at 945 Madison Avenue, a deal that closed in November. 

There were numerous other deals since midyear 2024. These included helping represent owner Tishman Speyer on a 35-year, 150,000-square-foot lease for a charter high school at Brooklyn’s 422 Fulton Street, and repping the ownership of 295 Fifth Avenue in its 43,000-square-foot lease with credit data firm Octus. Tighe, too, led the tenant-side negotiations for law firm Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe in its 144,312-square-foot, 15-year renewal at 51 West 52nd Street. 

Tighe, who jumped into the commercial real estate industry from the realm of art, has been part of some of the most significant projects in New York City over the last 30 years, including the revitalization of Times Square and the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan after 9/11. 

She connected with Commercial Observer to discuss her career, the evolution of Lower Manhattan in particular, the rebuilding of the World Trade Center and her experience as a highly successful woman in commercial real estate. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Commercial Observer: How did you get your start in real estate?

Mary Ann Tighe: I did not intend to become a real estate broker or a real estate anything. I intended to be an art historian. I had the good fortune in the latter half of my 20s to get a job working in the Carter-Mondale White House. And that job led to my becoming, at age 29, the chief operating officer of the National Endowment for the Arts. I did that job for four years, and one of the issues doing that job is that I had to agree I would not work for any entity that received government funding for three years after I left the endowment. Every arts organization in the United States received government money, and so I knew I had to change careers.

In 1981, I was hired by ABC and I started a cable channel that was originally called Arts and Entertainment — today it is called A&E. One day I am in Venice for A&E buying Italian public television station RAI Television and I end up meeting a retired commercial real estate broker, Joe Bernstein. We ended up sharing a ride to the airport, and at the end of the ride I noticed the driver was bilking him on the exchange. I said, “No, no, no,” and I took the money and gave it back to my very nice co-passenger, and he said to me, “You’d be great in my old business.” 

And so for the nine hours on the flight going home, Joe tells me the story of his career in commercial real estate as a broker. We get home, he introduces me to several people, and I get hired by the Edward S. Gordon Company. I rise to the level of vice chairman at the Edward S. Gordon Company over the next 15 years.

ESG was acquired by a company called Insignia. I was vice chairman of that company, and I had decided that my career peaked. So I cold called the CEO of CBRE, asked him if he had any interest in me. He hired me as CEO of the New York tri-state in 2002, and in 2003 we acquired my old company, Insignia ESG. I put the two of them together, and we have been the dominant commercial real estate firm since then. 

What makes you passionate about commercial real estate?

New York. I grew up in the South Bronx, but the city as a whole, particularly Manhattan, embodied my big ambitions. I had this romantic attachment to the city, and it wasn’t even so much about real estate initially — it was about the city’s ability to fuel ambition. I lived in Washington, D.C., for a number of years, and I think that one of the things that being in the White House in my 20s and then also being COO of a federal agency did for me was it got me to think on a very big scale very young. I didn’t want to come back to just have a corporate job. I wanted to do big things, and you can do big things in New York real estate.

I’ve fulfilled my romantic intentions. I get to look at The New York Times Building and think “I did that.” I get to look at the World Trade Center, and feel like I am a part of that. 

What has the experience with the World Trade Center been like for you?

Everyone experienced Sept. 11 differently. The apartment I was living in at the time, I actually could see the Trade Center towers, so when the first plane hit I was home. I remember the shock of it. 

Later that day, around 5:30 p.m. I was on the Upper East Side and I ran into [World Trade Center leaseholder] Larry Silverstein. I went up to him on the street, I didn’t know him all that well, and I wanted to offer my condolences, but all I could do was cry. He just put his arms around me and said, “Sweetheart, we’re going to rebuild.” 

Years later, I am the head of the CBRE team as the leasing agent for Larry at the World Trade Center. I was able ultimately to bring Conde Nast, whom I represented, as the anchor deal for tower one. I actually brought the first lease that was done at the new Trade Center in tower seven, the New York Academy of Sciences. And I also brought in [media company] GroupM, which anchored tower three.

My belief in the Trade Center from the get-go was deep. It was the most difficult work of my career at that point. You can’t discuss the Trade Center without discussing Larry Silverstein. None of this would have been possible without him. He was unshakable. He was committed in every conceivable way you could be committed.

What challenges did you face with leasing at the Trade Center?

The first 10 years, it was so bad. I think of the weekly meetings we had that were like seances, because we had kind of nothing to talk about. Nobody would come and nobody believed it was coming back. And at one point I said to Larry, “I don’t know how we’re going to do this.” He said, “I know this psychiatrist at NYU. You should go ask him to give you his thoughts about why no one will come back to the Trade Center site.” So I did.

The psychiatrist said people fear the unknown. And, at the time, many people wouldn’t go back downtown, they wouldn’t visit downtown while the Trade Center site was still Ground Zero. He said, “You need to do things that will make people comfortable with the site.” So I got to work with Larry’s head of communications to come up with a series of events, fashion shows, art exhibits — all manner of things that would actually cause people to come down. 

Still, when I would talk to my fellow brokers and ask them to just have their people come take a look, the vast majority told me no. I had one of my own colleagues tell me it would be 10 years before he would set foot on the site.

Today, we don’t have those problems anymore. The funny thing about success is it begets success. I’m so proud of how happy the tenants are in the Trade Center and how much growth there has been. We have one company at the Trade Center that we’ve moved three times. They keep growing and exercising their expansion options. Companies are all recognizing that their people like working there. I mean, it’s pretty dreamy. 

Aside from the Trade Center, what makes the downtown area a desirable real estate market?

Downtown is one of the great value plays of New York City. People are very neighborhood-specific, so, if you haven’t been there, your vision of it is outdated. Downtown is New York City’s 15-minute city. It is the place where you can walk to wherever you need. Work, live, play — it’s there. The restaurant choices, the shopping choices, the apartment choices and the work environment choices are really rich.

It’s also an area that is taking old office stock and converting it into residential buildings at a rate that is faster than anywhere else. And what I can tell you from my Trade Center experience is many of the tens of thousands of people who work in the Trade Center walk to work. 

I always say there are three things that make you rich in New York, and the first thing is if you can walk to work, because it simplifies life. The second is if you have a silent bedroom, and the third is if you actually have spare space. I think that over the next five to 10 years, you will no longer need to sell downtown to anybody.

In a December 2024 podcast from CBRE you described the next 10 years of the Manhattan office market being transformational. Can you give us an idea of what we might see?

New York City has the world’s oldest office stock, with the average age of a Manhattan office building over 80 years. However, what we have learned in the post-COVID era is that to attract and retain top talent and to entice them into the office, we need light-filled, sustainable, amenitized office design that can only be achieved in either new construction or extensive renovation of an older building. 

And we’ve learned that companies are willing to pay higher rents for these better-quality properties. Along with the mismatch between tenant demand and office inventory, our city also suffers from a chronic shortage of housing — another essential for remaining competitive with other global business centers.  

In recognition of these dynamics, our public officials have begun addressing the limitations in our zoning code and building regulations, long-standing constraints that have stymied efforts to refresh New York’s urban environment. Consequently, we are in the process of seeing radical transformation of our business districts whether it is new office stock in Manhattan’s Midtown East, City of Yes rezoning, renovation of commodity products or residential conversions.

On the podcast you also said the market will need new office space like oxygen. What’s driving that need? Is it the push for return to office?

Manhattan is the largest office market in the world. So, when a cycle is turning, it’s like watching an aircraft carrier turn around — the moves are big but slow. You can see it coming from a long way away. The average office building built on a site that is fully entitled takes five years from excavation to temporary certificate of occupancy. 

If we look at construction currently underway, we can see that only 3.5 million square feet of new office stock will be delivered between now and 2030. That’s less than 1 percent added to our 425 million-square-foot inventory. Of that 3.5 million, 2 million is committed, leaving 1.5 million available for lease between now and 2030.  

Since in a typical year Manhattan leasing activity is in the 20 to 30 million square feet range, the next five years will see a significant undersupply of new product. This is ironic since the return-to-work push is accelerating, and it is precisely the new and improved properties that companies are seeking. In addition, two of the business sectors that dominate New York City — financial services and legal — are in growth and consolidation mode, resulting in a growing demand for big blocks of space.  

Then, too, we are seeing new types of tech companies laying claim to a Manhattan presence, most notably the AI firms that incubate on the West Coast but seek proximity to their customer base by creating outposts in our city.  

So the combination of a challenging construction ecosystem — few available sites, constrained construction conditions, intense regulation and zoning, accelerating costs and stubbornly high interest rates — and demand from industry growth and diversification mean that for our city to flourish we need to build and to renovate. This construction is the oxygen that keeps the heart of our city pumping.

You also talked about TikTok not wanting to move into 4 Times Square until the name of the building was changed because four is the “death number” in much of Chinese culture. TikTok is obviously a huge tenant, but is this a sign that tenants have the power at the moment?

Is this a landlord’s market or a tenant’s market? In truth, there is no universal answer to this question. Where power resides in New York real estate is dependent on the submarket, the building age and quality, the financial strength of the property’s ownership, and the tenant’s balance sheet, to name just a few of the factors that impact a negotiation.  

For example, if a large tenant is looking for a block of space on Park Avenue right now, the power rests with the landlord. If that same tenant was willing to move downtown to a non-renovated building, the tenant will dominate the negotiation.  

With a market of Manhattan’s size it’s always dangerous to generalize.   

Earlier, you mentioned that the World Trade Center was a challenging part of your career. What other challenges have you faced, particularly as a woman in CRE?

I had a very lucky break in that my mentor when I started in the business was a woman named Carol Nelson. So, had I not had Carol, I think it would have been really a bumpy ride.

I came from the government and the media industry, and in government I had never felt the sexist vibe. I’m sure it was there, but back in the day people were careful not to do things that were politically disruptive. Clearly, that’s not the case today, but it used to be the case. The first time I watched the real estate brokerage boys club in action, I was kind of shocked by how little filter they had on what they said out loud — again, this is the 1980s.

But I had things working to my benefit. One was I was in my late 30s by then, and I had testified before Congress. I had met the president of the United States. I worked in the office of the vice president. It was very hard to intimidate me. For me, it was more like, “What’s wrong with these people?” versus, “Oh my God, I feel fragile.” I didn’t.

But then the second thing was the woman who I was working for initially, she had really experienced the slings and arrows of being a woman, a very successful woman, in our industry. I watched her, I would say, clear the path for me. And, because of Carol, I didn’t get the full impact. By the time I was on my own by the late `90s, when Carol was retiring, I was so well established professionally that nobody was going to do anything untoward, and nobody was going to use their power to diminish my power. 

In that regard, there is a group of women I have been mentoring for the last 17 or 18 years. We started with maybe a dozen and it’s grown to a group of 20 today, and I do believe that having the support of other women in the industry helps you see through any noise.

What is your perspective on the situation for women in CRE today?

It is definitely a more friendly environment for women today than it was 30 years ago. It’s definitely better, but not perfect. The trade of information in a world where someone’s your buddy is a very different trade than if it’s just a formal exchange. So one would think that in the world of social media, in the world of the internet, all things are known. But, in fact, the scale of our New York market is so vast, and the ability to know something when it hasn’t happened yet or it’s on the cusp of happening, or what the details of the trade were as a result, is powerful.

You need to have a network of trust out there, and, until there are enough women in that network, there won’t be anything that is actual gender equality. But we’re certainly on the path to that. 

I might add, I take pride in this. I think New York City is well ahead of any major market in the United States that I know of in terms of integrating women at every level of the business. 

Do you have any concerns that things might go backward, considering the attack on DEI that’s happening right now?

Here is a question: How did DEI impact the real estate industry? The way that I experienced that impact was watching people have the conscious thought that every team they create should have a mix of gender. Certainly within my own firm, I would tell you that that thought was there.

I also think it impacted us when we were assembling for a particular assignment — an outside team that had to incorporate into the larger effort. We went further afield, not the usual suspects only, but, again, trying to build a more diverse body. And I think we made progress. I’d like to think that that’s now in our head permanently. Let’s put it this way: I know it is at CBRE. I mean, what do we teach ourselves? We taught ourselves this works. I feel confident at my own firm that we don’t need a mandate from the government to do what actually creates a more successful working environment.

Do you have a proudest moment in your career?

I think my proudest moment will be when we finish the Trade Center. I’m not there yet.

What do you feel you still need to accomplish in your career?

The beauty of being a real estate broker is that you get to live other companies’ lives for limited periods of time. You get to step into the life of The New York Times, you get to step into the life of Christie’s or Sotheby’s. You get to actually understand their business and, for a period, become part of their business environment, and that is so much fun. I think of it in some ways like what an actor or actress must feel when they get to play a part. 

New York is so fortunate in that we don’t have a single dominant business. New York has a lot of different types of businesses — for profit, not for profit, etc. So I get to work on St Patrick’s Cathedral and PJT Investment Bank. These are different organizations, and that’s the nature of the city, and as long as the industry accepts me I’ll keep at it.

Amanda Schiavo can be reached at aschiavo@commercialobserver.com.