Lucas Blumenfeld, 29
Director in debt and structured finance at Newmark
Lucas Blumenfeld was exposed to the commercial real estate industry early, working at his grandfather’s firm, Blumenfeld Development Group, in his teens.
“I worked more on site, on the general contractor side, and was eventually able to get into the office side of things in college,” said Blumenfeld, a University of Michigan graduate. “At that point, I realized that the investment and finance side of the business was a whole lot more interesting to me.”
Blumenfeld wound up at Eastdil Secured, spending just over six years there and rising to the level of vice president before joining Newmark this past March as a director in the debt and structured finance group. Between his time at both companies, Blumenfeld has worked on more than $31.8 billion of closed debt placement transactions over 66 deals, including $18.8 billion of industrial transaction volume.
Deals he worked on at Eastdil include a $4.175 billion acquisition financing for a 316-asset national logistics portfolio for Global Logistics Partners, a $2.041 billion acquisition financing for a 200-asset portfolio for Mapletree Industrial Trust, and a $589.6 million construction financing for Culver Studios in Culver City, Calif.
Since joining Newmark, Blumenfeld has worked on financing Empire Capital’s $107.5 million acquisition of 529 Fifth Avenue from Silverstein Properties, a $180 million financing for a new hotel project, and a $1 billion-plus loan for construction of a luxury Manhattan condo for the Baupost Group and partners.
Blumenfeld joined Newmark around the same time that Adam Spies and Doug Harmon joined the company, making an impressive opportunity even greater. But despite it also being a time of market turmoil — Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank collapsed just weeks after he came aboard — Blumenfeld hit the ground running and began making his mark from day one.
“The capital markets were fractured. It was a challenging time to start a new role,” said Blumenfeld. “But leveraging my prior experience and relationships with the new team joining, I was able to quickly work on sales for them, and quickly get out in the market with new financings a couple of weeks after I joined.”
