Meghan Allen.
Meghan Allen, 29
Senior associate at CBRE
Sure, this deal was in the works long before the coronavirus hit. But when a building is repositioned, re-leased and the sale crosses the finish line in the middle of a global pandemic for $125 million more than its price tag five years earlier (as CO reported in July), we must tip our hat to the efforts of Meghan Allen and her colleagues at CBRE (CBRE).
Allen had been working on the 500,000-square-foot building at 1375 Broadway since it was acquired by Westbrook Partners in June 2015 as a member of the leasing and marketing team. She stayed with the Ely Jacques Kahn-designed building until it sold to Savanna for $435 million in July, as CO reported at the time.
The assignment was perhaps the biggest of Allen’s still-burgeoning career. Within four months, Allen and her team leased the only vacant floors, negotiated a buyout with one of the building’s largest tenants to take back 80,000 square feet of space that was leased long-term and under market, then re-leased the floors at much higher rents — all of which made the building much more attractive to Savanna when it agreed to purchase the property.
But 1375 Broadway is only one address in the six million square feet of real estate that Allen currently services for landlords like Nuveen Real Estate, Rockwood Capital and Savanna.
While in college, “I thought I would go more to financial services,” the Long Island native told CO. “Villanova has a real estate program [and I went to] networking events junior year, reaching out to family friends, and I would say that’s primarily what sparked my interest. I knew I wanted to come back to New York and I loved how tangible the business is. I’m sure you hear that from everybody, but I love how many industries it touches.”
Allen began in CBRE’s Wheel Program, a 14-month rubric for learning the full real estate gamut. When she started in the field, she went to 444 Madison Avenue, the first agency building where she was on-boarded.
The past year has seen Allen leasing up 335 Madison Avenue, a 1.1 million-square-foot office with 150,000 square feet of SHOP-designed tenant amenities, and helping to reposition a 500,000-square-foot property at 780 Third Avenue.
“It’s definitely been a wild year. I’m trying to see the positive,” Allen said about what life has been like since the pandemic struck. “It was an adjustment working from home, but we’ve done a great job keeping in touch and I’m able to keep productive.”
