Ian Zimmerman.
Ian Zimmerman, 28
Manager of leasing at Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield
Few real estate buckets present as great of a challenge in 2020 as retail, and few companies have more on the line than Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield. But, when your main project is the World Trade Center and its retail brands, any real estate broker worth their salt has to feel exhilaration at the assignment — that’s why Ian Zimmerman, a leasing manager at URW, is a broker to watch.
Real estate wasn’t necessarily what Zimmerman, who grew up in East Hampton, thought he would do when he was a student at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “All my internships were in sports marketing, but, in my senior year, I realized you can’t make a lot of money in sports.”
Zimmerman’s cousin was in acquisitions at mall giant GGP, and talked him into considering real estate. He ended up at then-Massey Knakal as it was being bought by Cushman & Wakefield, and he found himself drawn to retail. “You can get creative deal-wise,” Zimmerman said.
He was working in a Brooklyn office and wanted to make the jump to Manhattan, so he started working on Josh Siegelman’s team at Winick Realty Group in 2015, doing landlord and tenant representation work, which is where he stayed until 2019, when URW called.
“It’s a powerhouse of a mall landlord,” Zimmerman said. “Great flagship, super coastal-based, focused on best-in-class assets; it’s a forward-thinking company. I’m working on a flagship at [World Trade Center] … from my job perspective is how to operate, as opposed to being a broker. It’s a little closer to business decisions.”
Zimmerman came to URW only a year before the retail roof caved. Prior to the pandemic, he was flying high, having completed the Market at Westfield, a collection of direct-to-consumer brands at the WTC, including Wild One, a petcare company, and Food52. “It really allowed emerging brands to test brick-and-mortar retail.”
Since the pandemic struck, Zimmerman has kept a close eye on the tenants in URW’s collection. “Obviously, tenant outreach is the day-to-day, helping keep our tenants happy, engaged and activated, [given that] the World Trade Center was closed for six months.”
But, the moment for action is ripening. “Now is really the time for searching for deals from a tenant’s perspective,” Zimmerman said. “I think it’s an interesting time within retail real estate.”
