Peter Ripka, Stephen Preuss Sr. and Mark Kaplan

“The last half of last year there was a big shift.”

So said Stephen Preuss, the vice chair of investment sales at Ripco. “There were also 21 or 22 closings in the first quarter of this year.”

Over the last couple of years, Preuss’s capital markets team at Ripco has grown to 37 brokers, who have negotiated deals on some 200 properties for about $1.5 billion in transaction volume.

Not bad for a firm that for a very long time was known primarily as a retail shop.

But expansion has been the name of the game for Ripco under Mark Kaplan and other executives. In addition to an investment sales team, and a debt team, Ripco made big inroads into Florida. In 2022, it bought the restaurant brokerage Branded Concept Development and last year acquired the retail firm Acre, which counted clients such as Nike, Lucid Motors and Lululemon, and, on the landlord side, Related Ross’ CityPlace in West Palm Beach. Ripco is currently at 149 brokers firm-wide.

And one shouldn’t think that the retail bread-and-butter leasing in Gotham has been ignored at the expense of all this expansion. The firm served as landlord broker for Edward Minskoff in the whopping 77,000-square-foot Hobby Lobby lease at 270 Greenwich Street last summer. Ripco also represented landlord RXR in disposing of Bed Bath & Beyond’s 90,000-square-foot space at 620 Avenue of the Americas to Burlington and Ultra. At the same address, it extended leases for Marshall’s and T.J. Maxx, which was good for another 110,000 square feet.

Speaking of Bed Bath & Beyond, following the chain’s bankruptcy in 2023, Ripco has leased five out of six of their former spaces in Manhattan, including 1932 Broadway to Wegmans and 410 East 60th Street to Home Depot. (The Hobby Lobby space was also a former BB&B.)

“There’s nothing like a job well done,” said co-founder Peter Ripka. “When we deliver is, for me, first and foremost the most enduring part of the job.”

Keep delivering, Ripco.