Ed Nelson, 28

What does the world’s largest Chick-fil-A building have in common with a $50 million trophy office building in Charleston, S.C., several wine bars along Brooklyn’s Fifth Avenue, a bike shop, and a Russian mathematics school?

If you have “Ed Nelson” on your bingo card, you win.

Of course, there’s plenty of other deals to recommend Avison Young’s Nelson. (No relation to AY Principal James Nelson, just to get that out of the way.) But one has to be impressed by the sheer eclecticism of his record.

Nelson grew up outside of Washington, D.C., and attended the University of Alabama where he studied economics and psychology.

“My parents were both very much in the real estate development business,” Nelson said. On Kiawah Island, about 25 miles southwest of Charleston, his parents developed and sold residential homes. “I was watching their projects go from Point A to Point B.”

To wit, when Nelson graduated he came to New York and went to CPEX in Brooklyn, where he learned the retail business from Tim King. After being promoted from associate to associate director, he moved across the water and joined James Famularo’s Meridian team before finally winding up at Avison Young.

It was in those early years — when even pre-COVID retail was in a serious slump — that Nelson learned to grind out some of the less-than-glamorous stuff. But it would lead to bigger and better things.

At AY, Nelson worked with James Nelson and Brandon Polakoff and has focused on multifamily, mixed-use, retail and office sales. He recently won the assignment for the third-largest office building in Downtown Charleston — 200 Meeting Street — over competitors from CBRE and JLL, and has it on the market for $50 million, which he expects to close in the next month.

Late last year he sold Manhattan’s 144 Fulton Street — the site of that world’s largest Chick-fil-A — from Crown Acquisitions to Poseidon Services for $38 million. We’ll cluck, er, clink our glasses to that.