Patrick O’Rourke, 29

A retail leasing specialist who works for both tenants and landlords, Patrick O’Rourke has racked up an impressive resume of new clients — and new businesses — while seeing retail flourish post-pandemic. It’s been an impressive run for someone who started soon after graduating in December 2018 — he was on the Babson College soccer team that made the NCAA playoffs twice — but had been to New York City only once before.

For years, he’s been part of a Cushman & Wakefield team representing Blank Street Coffee, helping Gen Z’s favorite coffee chain blanket the city as it aggressively expands to take on more established rivals, including a lease last year at One Boerum Hill for the chain’s new Brooklyn flagship.

Last year, O’Rourke also worked on a deal to bring Lidl, the German low-cost grocery chain that also owns the Aldi brand, to Manhattan. The chain struck a 15-year lease for 23,000 square feet at 225 Eighth Avenue with developer MAG Partners to help fulfill a requirement for the development to find an affordable grocer. That meant O’Rourke helped usher in a European brand to the city that now has extensive expansion plans across the five boroughs. 

“There were really a lot of intricacies that, collectively as a team, we were able to navigate,” O’Rourke said about the deal, which saw him help land the grocer on behalf of his client, M. “This was a tenant that hadn’t really been in New York, and we were selling a building that hadn’t been built. That takes a unique skill set to pull something like that off.” 

He also works on behalf of landlords such as Related Companies, the Olnick Organization, Mount Sinai, MetLife Investment Management and Clarion Partners.

“Each day in retail is different,” he said. “You might be out on the street for four hours, or you’re picking up on new trends that somebody who wasn’t here in the city wouldn’t know about.”