Kevin Duffy.
Kevin Duffy, 27
Vice President at JLL
Kevin Duffy was studying hotel operations at Cornell when he decided after his junior year to take a summer internship at Cushman & Wakefield. It made sense in a way — the hotelier game being a close cousin to the real estate business. As it turned out, he loved it. When he graduated in 2016, he took a job as a real estate adviser at JLL.
Since then, he’s been involved in more than 60 transactions amounting to roughly 2 million square feet of property, including Moda Operandi’s move in 2019 to 84,000 square feet at L&L Holding Company’s 195 Broadway. In July, Duffy facilitated a deal to assign the remaining 12 years of Argo Group’s 46,000-square-foot lease at 413 West 14th Street to Robinhood and closed in September on a relocation of Argo to 30,000 square feet at 501 Seventh Avenue, saving the firm more than $2.8 million per year.
Duffy represents tenants, which has made for interesting and challenging times during the COVID-19 pandemic. “It turned into, ‘How can we either get out of a lease or get abatements,’ and just really restructuring and problem-solving for tenants with their existing obligations,” he said. “It was really thinking outside the box to help existing clients and then reaching out to other [potential] clients at the same time.”
Much of the market paused as tenants “took a step back” to reassess, Duffy said. Over the last few quarters, though, tenants have begun plotting their real estate strategies. “People are looking again,” he said. “The question is, when do all these tours and everything turn into deals?”
“COVID was hard for everybody,” Duffy added. “But it was about being resilient, staying calm, cool, collected and saying, ‘How can I help my clients and how can I keep sharpening my skills at this time.’”—A.B.
