Angela Gentry of JLL: 5 Questions

Angela Gentry has carved out her own spot in New York City’s commercial real estate scene.

In 2022, Gentry, who at the time had more than 20 years of experience in the field, joined JLL in a role specifically created for her: executive managing director of sales and platform for the New York tri-state area. She describes the role as being the “ultimate Switzerland” for the brokerage, in that she focused on what was best for both the firm and its clients when it came to leasing and sales.

Then in May, Gentry was promoted to vice chairman of leasing advisory for the New York tri-state region, a position that doesn’t yet exist in a similar way in JLL’s other markets. Gentry’s job is to take what JLL does really well in New York City and scale it nationally.

And what the firm’s been doing well in New York City is deals, deals, deals. In terms of sales, the firm just facilitated the $58 million sale of a development site in Downtown Brooklyn and the $31 million sale of a shopping center in Midwood, Brooklyn.

As for leases, the firm’s certainly riding the artificial intelligence wave, as it’s had a hand in several recent tech deals, including a 98,420-square-foot deal for AI firm Legora at SL Green Realty’s 11 Madison Avenue and a 13,754-square-foot lease for Genius AI at ZG Capital Partners’ 838 Broadway.

Commercial Observer sat down with Gentry on Monday to discuss her work at JLL and what she’s seeing in the city’s office market as AI tenants take more and more space.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Commercial Observer: You joined JLL in 2022 and took a position created specifically for you. What was unique about that role?

Angela Gentry: When I was first hired at JLL, I was the senior director for sales enablement. I was brought in to stand it up for the New York tri-state area. In that role, I built up the team that supports our brokers when they have a pitch or proposal that we’re responding to. It’s the team that leads through that. 

I was originally hired for that, and then after being here for a year and a half, I saw there was so much opportunity to take what we were doing and bringing more of a holistic approach. So being proactive about who we have relationships with on the client side, who we want to be targeting, and how we start to really align around clients and prospects earlier in the sales cycle. 

That role in itself didn’t exist at JLL. That was where I was able to take what I was doing and create that role for myself.

I positioned my original role as the “ultimate Switzerland” for the organization. I really looked at what’s best for the firm and what’s best for the client.

In May, you were promoted to vice chairman of leasing advisory in the tri-state. How did that transition go, and what have you worked on so far?

A lot of that promotion was aligning me in our national network of other office leads.

New York functions at just such an intense pace that is not necessarily matched in a lot of markets. We also have such a high revenue that we’re able to make investments that other markets aren’t, and a lot around recently in our data science and around tech and how we’re bringing together some of the platforms.

So part of my responsibility is now taking the things that we’re doing really well in New York and scaling those, or potentially exposing the rest of the organization so they can figure out what might make sense in their markets, since my role doesn’t exist in the other markets.

We’ve had some really exciting wins recently. It’s a mixture of deals and relationship building. 

One is an account that we’ve won. It’s one we’ve been tracking for since I’ve been here, after really aligning and building relationships to really tee us up for when they would go out to bid.

Then a number of them are transactions here in New York. The financial services industry and AI and tech are still just coming out of the woodwork, and it’s like there’s not enough space for them. Some of our brokers are saying this is the busiest that it’s ever been with activity and momentum.

So I think that’s a sign of strength that we’re seeing that, but then you have the naysayers on the other side that are waiting for the other shoe to drop. They’re saying we’re back in a bad market, and everyone’s subleasing space.

How do you think office leasing trends will evolve as AI’s presence grows?

There’s going to be acquisitions in the AI space, similar to dot.com. Those firms will start to be acquired.

We’re still seeing a lot of activity from San Francisco, and some of the firms that are there are interested in New York and want locations here in New York. That has not slowed down. If anything, I think it’s really picked up. 

But we still get a lot of questions about talent. There’s a lot of questions about whether it’s sustainable for talent to stay and retain people in New York with the cost of living being what it is. 

Every decision takes a long time. You’re committing years and years in advance, and so those types of conversations didn’t come up before. You wouldn’t have a client asking you about what’s happening with the mayor. That wasn’t something that came up in conversation, and now very much so — people are thinking and companies have to think about that and being able to attract talent. Those conversations are far more applicable today than ever before.

Do you think all the new office towers going up will balance out the demand for new office space?

We were on the Deloitte transaction at 70 Hudson Yards, and that really kicked off that building. 

Your pitch has to be a little bit of a crystal ball because you’re saying here’s who you are currently. But, when you’re signing this lease and by the time you move in, you could have a whole different C-suite of leadership. You could have a whole different talent profile.

It’s going to be interesting to see how the next six months go with a lot of these AI companies. What happens with the space that they’re taking? We’ve seen them just take so much space that it’s really a question of: Are they actually occupying the space? Are they anticipating that much growth, or are they doing it defensively? And if they’re doing it defensively, if that space comes back on the market, would it ease the strain that we have right now?

What’s coming up for you at JLL this year?

We were just looking at our revenue numbers last week, and we’re going to have a really amazing year.

We have a large accounts business here. Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan Chase and a lot of accounts run through here, and we’ve had some transactions that weren’t initially in the pipeline, meaning companies that needed to expand that we weren’t tracking acquired another company, so they need more space. This year and the rest of this year, we have some of those. 

We’re definitely expecting the last half of the year to be very busy, and we really don’t anticipate that momentum slowing down.

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