Rob Speyer.
Rob Speyer
CEO at Tishman Speyer
Last year's rank: 5
Even though the pandemic has continued to slow some sectors of the real estate business, Tishman Speyer is as busy as it’s ever been. It’s expanding its presence in the proptech space with a new fund, for which it raised $100 million in March from investors like the National Pension Service of Korea and the Investment Management Corporation of Ontario.
The family-owned real estate firm is also busy on the development front, wrapping up its own 65-story office tower at 66 Hudson Boulevard (known as The Spiral) and serving as developer on JPMorgan Chase’s massive new office building at 270 Park Avenue. The 2.8 million-square-foot Spiral just nailed down a major lease with HSBC Bank, which will move its headquarters to 265,000 square feet in the tower. The Bjarke Ingels-designed development, which is set to be completed later this year, will also be home to Pfizer, Turner Construction, Debevoise & Plimpton and AllianceBernstein.
Tishman Speyer also took over as the master developer of a large affordable project, Edgemere Commons in Far Rockaway, Queens, where it will build 10 out of 11 sites in a planned 2,050-unit complex with Arker Companies and Slate Property Group.
At Rockefeller Center, Tishman has added a new roller rink and a public park on top of Radio City Music Hall, as well as a revamped food and beverage program. In August, the company also nailed down a $450 million refinance of its 1.2 million-square-foot JACX office project in Long Island City, Queens, using green bonds earmarked for energy-
efficient developments.
In addition, Tishman has done plenty of recent deals outside of New York. In December, it leased the entirety of a 719,000-square-foot office campus in Sunnyvale, Calif., to Meta (formerly Facebook), and the following month it purchased 3.1 acres in downtown Santa Monica with plans to build 620 apartments. Beyond the coasts, the firm is working on a 561,000-square-foot office-and-residential tower in downtown Austin, Texas, and a massive 178-acre mixed-use development in Pittsburgh known as Hazelwood Green.
