David Firestein, Chase Welles and Jacqueline Klinger

It has been a busy year for David Firestein, Chase Welles and Jacqueline Klinger. The SCG Retail partners have been closing deals and opening stores for a whole host of high-profile tenants.

Firestein has been scoring leases for Starbucks, many of which are pickup stores. While it was a direction the coffee giant was headed before COVID-19, Starbucks doubled down on it during the pandemic with 10 pickups in Manhattan in addition to four or five traditional cafes. Regarding the pickup model, Starbucks went “full tilt on that during COVID because it was a good concept to begin with,” Firestein said. “And then it was a better concept during COVID.”

Welles and Klinger work on behalf of Whole Foods and parent company Amazon in the New York area. This year will see the opening of two Whole Foods that Welles and Klinger negotiated for the specialty supermarket chain — on Wall Street and in NoMad.

Klinger said that prior to COVID-19 her New York metro client, salad chain Sweetgreen, kicked it up several notches. It was “very, very active in Manhattan,” and when COVID hit “we were starting to look at the suburbs.” That only took off during the pandemic with deals in Westchester, Connecticut, Long Island and New Jersey.

Beyond food, Welles scored deals for Porsche (40,000 square feet) and Volvo (10,000 square feet) dealerships, owned by the same person, at Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. For Porsche, the company was looking to rebrand as “cool and hip and Brooklyn-ish,” Welles said, adding that, for Volvo, the owner wanted to be near “the mommies in Park Slope.”

From a firm perspective, SCG Retail has made two key hires as of late — Joel Dabu to lead landlord leasing efforts for the New York and New Jersey offices, and Craig Gambardella as a health care-focused broker. Medical real estate is an area that SCG Retail plans to “grow” in the future, according to Firestein.