Tommy Craig

The pandemic has prompted a lot of real estate people to add an asterisk to nearly every single business activity: this was an impressive deal … considering we were all dealing with COVID.

Asterisks do not apply to Hines. They were doing great things in New York real estate in 2020 — full stop.

The company suffered a severe loss last year when the eponymous Gerald Hines passed away at age 95. But the company that Hines built has definitely endured.

In 2017, Hines and the National Pension Service of Korea formed a joint venture to take a stake in SL Green’s One Vanderbilt, which cut its ribbon last September. And any skittishness about opening a spanking new office tower during COVID has largely been dispelled, at least in this case. The building is more than 80 percent rented and SL Green recently predicted it would get up to 90 perent by the end of the year. (Just last week, Kyndryl, a spinoff of IBM’s IT services division, chose the building as its global headquarters.)

And, last May, Hines and National Pension Service of Korea cut another deal with SL Green, taking a 49.5 percent stake in the $2.3 billion, 1.4 million-square-foot One Madison, which Hines will co-develop.

Hines was selected as the asset and property manager for Ivanhoé Cambridge’s U.S. office portfolio, too, which includes 1211 Avenue of the Americas, 1411 Broadway, 85 Broad Street and 3 Bryant Park — a total of 5.5 million square feet of space.

In October, Hines took on another nearly 4.5 million square feet of space, when JPMorgan Chase selected them to manage their Midtown real estate portfolio.

And, did we mention that Hines completed construction at their 750,000-square-foot luxury condo, 53 West 53rd Street, and their luxury assisted-living complex, Sunrise at East 56th, which they partnered with Welltower on? Well, they did.

“It’s been the busiest 12 months we’ve ever had,” said Tommy Craig, who runs Hines’ New York City office. “It was not only high volume but meaningful diversification.”

The diversification has gone beyond the island of Manhattan or even the five boroughs; in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., Hines broke ground on NorthLight at Edge-on-Hudson, a development consisting of some 246 luxury apartments. They began construction on another 230 rentals in New Haven, Conn., at Whit Wooster Square. And, for good measure, they’ve thrown industrial into the mix with a 3 million-square-foot industrial park in Hazleton, Penn.

No asterisks. Just good real estate.—M.G.