Peter Kerans.
Peter Holden Kerans, 27
Senior Associate at Cushman & Wakefield
Peter Holden Kerans always knew he wanted to find a way to make his mark on the skyscrapers of New York City when he was growing up in nearby Bedford, N.Y.
“My father always worked in New York City, and I have always seen it as the city of the world,” he said.
He toyed with the idea of going into architecture. But while studying at the College of Charleston he fell in love with the historic buildings around the school’s namesake South Carolina city, and decided a career in real estate was the best fit.
Kerans worked for a residential brokerage and development firm in Charleston while in college and then landed a job at Cushman & Wakefield.
“Residential wasn’t something I wanted to do full time,” he said. “I loved the fact that [commercial] gets to interact with companies. A lot of them are well-known companies I use.”
Since joining C&W in 2017 — first as part of the agency consulting group, then with the global brokerage team since July — Kerans has been involved with the leasing and management of more than 4.5 million square feet of office space throughout the city, 3.5 million square feet of that obtained during the pandemic. He was also part of the team that helped The Trump Organization nail down an 11-year, 45,863-square-foot lease for flexible office space provider Jay Suites at 40 Wall Street in December.
“That was peak pandemic,” Kerans said. “Like many landlords, we found ourselves in a scenario where we were getting back a rather large space in the building.”
Within four months of finding out the tenant (which Kerans couldn’t name) was leaving, he was able to find Jay Suites to take over the entire space.
“It’s not necessarily these big, big leases that make the news,” Kerans said about his work during the pandemic. “It’s staying after it and chasing every opportunity in that environment.”
When not chasing opportunities, the East Village resident fly fishes all over the Northeast, snowboards in the winter, and surfs in the summer.—N.R.
