MAG Partners’ MaryAnne Gilmartin On Recent Launches, Future Plans

MaryAnne Gilmartin has built a new brand for New York City’s buildings — and it’s all about the people.

During her 24 years at the old Forest City Ratner, Gilmartin had a hand in building some of the city’s most famed properties, including Manhattan’s New York Times Building and Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. And, while she credits Forest City for some of her most rewarding work, Gilmartin left her role as CEO of the firm in January 2018 and never looked back, blazing a women-led path of ingenuity and diversity.

SEE ALSO: PwC Downsizing, Moving to 23K-SF Office at MAG Partners’ Baltimore Peninsula

Gilmartin founded MAG Partners seven years ago with the goal of “building beauty” and “creating value” in its developments, all while forming lasting relationships with partners and giving residents top amenities.

Her newest projects showcase those goals.

This week, in what Gilmartin calls a “tale of two buildings,” MAG simultaneously launched leasing at two new residential developments in Manhattan: the 188-unit Mabel at Chelsea’s 335 Eighth Avenue, and the 194-unit Anagram Turtle Bay at its eponymous neighborhood’s 300 East 50th Street. Thirty percent of units in both buildings are designated as affordable.

Mabel is the little sister of the 480-unit Ruby just two blocks away at 243 West 28th Street, which was built during the pandemic as MAG’s inaugural project and began leasing in 2023.

In an effort to highlight the human aspect of what goes into creating a building, Gilmartin named Mabel and Ruby after two historic influential women — American writer and conservationist Mabel Osgood Wright and pioneering fashion designer Ruby Bailey — as part of the company’s larger new portfolio of residential buildings named after women.

Mabel, which will open to tenants later this summer, has secured Germany-based grocery store Lidl as its anchor tenant in 23,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space, while Serafina Mare — a spinoff from Italian restaurant Serafina — will move into 5,000 square feet on the ground floor of Anagram Turtle Bay.

Commercial Observer caught up with Gilmartin last week to discuss her new building portfolio, the developer’s current work in Baltimore, and her future plans.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Commercial Observer: So MAG Partners has started a portfolio of residential buildings named after historic influential women. How did you come up with that idea?

MaryAnne Gilmartin: I think it very much aligns with what we’re trying to do as a company, which is really to give the industry a bit of a makeover, to look at the building of cities as building for people, and recognizing that in New York City, with tall towers, skyscrapers and homes in the sky, you can really lose touch with the human aspect of it. So we always come back to the people.

We believe you can build beauty and create value at the same time, and then you can deliver not just for the partners and the money investors, but for the communities in which you build. So, in starting the company and believing that beauty pays off and that beauty delivers, we didn’t want to do the ordinary. We have an ability to do things refreshingly different in an industry that really has not experienced disruption or change at the pace that other industries did.

Naming the building is probably one of the most enjoyable parts of the process of putting the building together. We thought, “If we think about ourselves as community builders and placemakers, there are people that live in these communities historically that have made contributions.” And then we thought, “Why don’t we start by researching women historically in these neighborhoods?” In doing that, we had tons of options and incredible names.

Mabel was designed by Cookfox Architects. How does the architecture and design fit into Mabel Osgood Wright’s legacy?

First and foremost, we love Cookfox because they know how to build in context. So you have to know where you are. We weren’t putting up a glass tower on this site, because we’re in West Chelsea. So it starts with the fabric of the materials, like the brick and the richness of the color, and then their commitment to biophilia and connecting with nature. And, hopefully, when you walk through the front door, you feel like, “Wow, I live here. I can come to a place that is calming to me and makes me feel connected to the outside.” The architecture is seamless with the environment.

This building has the highest elective standard of building sustainably that exists in the entire world, which is Passive House. In New York City today, there are only 75 Passive House buildings. There are a million buildings in Manhattan.

When the pricing started coming back, there was some concern that we couldn’t afford it. When you do Passive House, you have to design it to certain standards — the window wall, the triple pane — so you don’t hear anything outside. Even the appliances, they have to be the most energy-efficient appliances available in the marketplace today. So that’s a cost, right? Because you can’t just go to the lowest supplier.

All along the way, we had to recommit to our Passive House design, because when we had budget woes — and you always do when you’re designing a building — the lowest-hanging fruit was to just get rid of Passive House because nobody was going to call us out on it. … But the great part about it is that the people living in this building are the beneficiaries — not just of the design features and the comfort, but the fact that it will be cheaper. You may pay your rent, but when you pay your utilities, you’re going to be paying less because this building is so efficient.

With the higher costs of financing these amenities, how does that make it worthwhile for your buildings? Is it worth it to pay to go the extra mile, so to speak?

It has to be about conviction. And, of course, it’s about math. But getting back to what I said about good design paying off: If in New York you want to build commoditized product, you could build schlock and still make money. If you build quality, I believe you’re going to still be able to be profitable. And, over time, I would argue that the investments in this building will be de minimis, because the quality of the construction is so high out of the gate.

For the commercial space downstairs, how did you choose Lidl as a tenant?

It’s both good news and bad news. So this is a food desert. This area has been without a supermarket that everybody could afford to shop in for a very long time. There was a Gristedes here, and it was in substandard condition, but it was affordable, and we committed to replace the supermarket with a modern version of a well-priced grocery store. So, for example, we said we wouldn’t put Whole Foods in because not everybody can shop at Whole Foods.

Before we even put a shovel in the ground — and this is very rare for retail in New York — we had the Lidl deal signed. And to their credit, Lidl is in a massive expansion campaign in the United States. They’re German-based, they recognize the dearth of supermarkets, and they really made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. … We worked really hard to get that lease done, but to have a forward commitment for a supermarket before the shovel was even in the ground is both an indication of the absence of high-quality, affordable supermarkets in Manhattan and a reflection of the site and the economics that we were able to deliver for Lidl.

So we’re not too far from Ruby. Can you explain why it was named after fashion designer Ruby Bailey and how her legacy fits into the design of that building?

Ruby around the corner is the inaugural MAG Partners project. There’s a lot of emotion, a lot of legacy tied up in that site, because that building was the first for us. It was built during the pandemic. It was the ultimate validation of New York City’s comeback story.

We had to fight to get financing. Our capital partners needed to believe that New York City was going to be OK. People had to come back to New York to live at a time when people were running away from the city. And, then, lo and behold, upon opening, New York was alive again. People came back, and the rents of that building surpassed pre-pandemic rents.

It’s a powerful and emotional story for us, and the naming of it again is one of the most joyous moments. It was that building where we decided this is what we wanted to do with the company, was to name it after women. We did the research, we knew it had to have a connection to fashion. We came up with Ruby Bailey. What we hope is that people know what Ruby means, because she was uncelebrated and unrecognized. She was a master beader, and she deserves the recognition that hopefully that building brings.

Anagram Turtle Bay has also launched leasing. Is that one going to be named after a woman?

If we’re anything at all, we’re really good partners. Our partners in that project are Global Holdings and Safanad, and they have built a few extraordinary buildings recently, including Anagram Columbus Circle.

We’re building a company, we’re building a business, and we’re building a partnership, and we made the decision that we have to do what’s best for the building and the partnership. So, it seemed to us that we had the great fortune of drafting in behind Anagram Columbus Circle, and we thought the bar and prestige of the Anagram brand would serve the building well.

The Anagram is in some ways positioned a bit differently, but it has the same dedication to sustainability, to quality, to nature. If you take the time to really study the neighborhood and the community, and you treat your architect as a contributor, not a vendor, you can produce greatness.

How do you choose which neighborhoods to develop in, and how do you prioritize affordability?

We’re highly opportunistic, because you need to be. New York City doesn’t have a lot of land or building opportunities, so you need to say, “What are the neighborhoods you really want to build in? Where can you add value? Where does your capital want to see investment?”

We love Brooklyn. It’s been our front yard, our backyard and our side yard for most of our careers, and it’s where I live. So we’re looking at some stuff in Brooklyn. We’re fortunate to have built three buildings in Manhattan, where the barriers to entry are even higher. The new [485x] tax program, just getting to the issue of affordability, is critical for anything you build that is multifamily. In New York City, you cannot afford to build a rental building unless you have the tax program, which just got revamped.

This tax program, if it exists for the next 10 years, is going to define the scale, the size, the quantity of rental housing that’s built in the city. I think the program is flawed, but we were given lemons, so we’re just making lemonade.

The 421a tax abatement was replaced with the new 485x — how are you going to use 485x going forward?

421a had an exemption for anything under 300 units, and so both Mabel and Anagram, because they’re 200ish units, were under that threshold, so they were built under the old program. But the program was expiring and there was no renewed program, so it got caught in the expiration period where the city came to a grinding halt.

It was a tale of the credit crisis kicking in, it being very hard to get loans on buildings, and our capital being very concerned that we weren’t going to have the runway to finish. As it turns out, the program got extended during our construction, but it didn’t help us, because we had to finance it under the assumption that it wasn’t going to get extended.

This is an example where public policy can have big consequences for delivering housing. Everybody, including every mayoral candidate, has acknowledged the primary issue for New Yorkers is to find high-quality affordable housing. Yet the program’s expiration and the new program that followed 421a has had a material impact on developers and placemakers’ ability to deliver the kind of housing that the city needs. It’s this intersection between policy, politics, real estate and taxes, which all has to come together.

Is there a candidate you’re supporting in New York City’s mayoral race?

I’ve been saying for a long time that sometimes you have to get outside your box to understand what’s going on inside your box.

Politicians, community leaders and citizens of Baltimore are so pro-change because they love their city so much and want to see better things for their city. That’s compared to what’s started to happen in New York, where the answer was always no. Just resistance to change — period, end, stop.

Did the built environment and the real estate community bring it on itself because developers would roll into communities, build what they want, never come back again, and leave communities with negative impacts? Probably, but the new developer, the modern developer, has a profound appreciation for the impact that owning and operating a building has on a community.

So I would say that I’m very pleased that in this election everyone that’s running agrees that we have a housing crisis. All the candidates are recognizing it, and they all have a different approach to how to build housing.

I think this city needs a functioning CEO who knows how to get things done. I’m not going to pick a candidate, but I am going to say of the field of prospects, some of them rate higher in their ability to deliver results. This is a consequential election for this city, because of our need to build housing, create safety for our citizens, and to be forward-thinking about how technology can make our city better. We need to be bold, we need to be fierce, and we need to be unapologetic in pursuit of that. So I would lean toward the candidates that are not afraid to take positions and deliver results.

You worked for Forest City Ratner for 24 years and started this company seven years ago. What kind of image do you want to build for MAG?

I have been so blessed to have touched so many amazing projects and worked with incredible people. I had something to do with building three of the most important buildings of their times in New York City: the New York Times Building, New York by Gehry, and Barclays Center. You are what you build if you’re a developer, and so to have a small part in building those icons, I consider myself to be so lucky.

We were really taught to build many things at Forest City. A lot of developers build office buildings, they build residential buildings, or they build hotels. Forest City’s reach was so wide that if you were young and eager and fortunate like I was, I was able to learn how to build many different things. So that’s what gave me the audacity to think that I could start my own company. And I have to confess, I don’t know why I wasn’t petrified by the idea that a woman could start a real estate development company in a city like New York, where you could not find a woman that has done that.

I focused much more on the possibilities as opposed to the challenges. I believed in the team, I believed in the mission, and I believed that there was room for a company like MAG Partners. 

My work now is to help the industry become more inclusive, make the buildings more beautiful, and take more risks in how we build and lead a team that really represents the future of the industry. I’m really into the rookie perspective. I may have done this for 30 to 35 years, but the superpower is to know that you might not know, and the answer may lie with somebody who’s been doing this a lot less time, who just has a lens and a view of the future that’s very different. So my dent in the universe, if there is one, is to leave in my buildings a concrete manifestation of possibility, of what conviction, competency and collaboration can do.

MAG has also doubled its employee roster in recent months to boast 10 employees that make the company 50 percent female. How does that set MAG apart from other developers in the city?

By leading by example and actually doing the things we say we’re going to do. Talking to young people and trying to inspire the next generation actually works. Because I’m in the C-suite, I have more ability to influence outcomes than ever before, and my job is to find ways in which I can do that. 

The way that I’ll know that it’s happened is that it’ll be no longer lonely to be a woman founder and real estate developer in New York City. It’ll be not such an interesting story that I did what I did because other people would be inspired to do the kinds of things that we’re trying to do at MAG Partners.

MAG also has a project in Baltimore, part of Sagamore Ventures and Goldman Sachs’ Baltimore Peninsula development. Can you give a little more detail on that and its timeline?

The team and I fell in love with Baltimore. We were invited down there by Kevin Plank [Under Armour’s founder and CEO whose family office is Sagamore Ventures] to give him some guidance. It was a massive project — 14 million square feet of total entitlement he controls with Goldman Sachs, about 235 acres of land. It was big, it was bold, and it has the potential to transform the city and lift it up. 

We’re 1,000,001 square feet in, and we’ve had great wins notwithstanding all the headwinds in the economy and the difficulty of cities like Baltimore in terms of crime and budget deficits. So we’re very proud of the work, and, as long as we’re welcome, we want to continue to help build a better Baltimore.

So what’s next for MAG? Are you looking at anything on the office side? Or any other asset classes?

We are building a pipeline of projects on the residential side that are right-sized for the 485x program, so we have a lot of interest in continuing this campaign to build housing. We will build 25 to 30 percent affordable. And we love conversions. We’d love to do a conversion of an appropriate office building to residential.

And we are big believers in the flight to quality on the office front. We think that the return-to-work movement is here to stay. I also think that hybrid work is here to stay. Unlike a lot of my industry peers, I believe that flexibility and hybrid working is a great recruitment tool. In the culture of MAG Partners, we run hard, but we do it in creative ways that support people’s lifestyles and their desire to create families and be present at home, as well as in the office. So we would love to do an office building. 

Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com.