Colleen Wenke, Paul Pariser, Charles Bendit, and Chris Balestra
President and Chief Operating Officer; Co-Founder and Co-CEO; Co-Founder and Co-CEO; and President and Chief Investment Officer at Taconic Partners
Last year's rank: 25
Despite market pressures, Taconic Partners pressed ahead with an active pipeline in 2022 and early 2023.
The developer, along with Nuveen Real Estate, sealed a $79 million debt package in April 2022 from Ares Management to refinance the joint venture’s newly acquired Upper East Side property at 309 East 94th Street. In March 2023, Taconic’s life sciences subsidiary, Elevate Research Properties, announced plans to build a 200,000-square-foot research lab with Nuveen Real Estate and Flatiron Equities at the site.
Taconic also teamed with Nuveen and North American Properties to acquire the 74-acre Ridge Hill shopping center in Yonkers, N.Y., in May 2022 with plans to transform the site into a mixed-use development with retail, entertainment and office offerings.
While deal flow dried up in the second half of 2022 as interest rates rose dramatically, Taconic stayed active on the development front, topping out a planned 33-story, 330-unit multifamily property in Hell’s Kitchen. It also advanced construction on an eight-story life sciences development at 125 West End Avenue on the Upper West Side.
Taconic’s life sciences focus received a further boost last August when New York Mayor Eric Adams announced a new partnership with the developer and DivcoWest as well as New York University for a research project at 455 First Avenue. While there has been a slowdown in demand for life sciences in other markets, Taconic remains very bullish on the sector in New York.
Another growth area Taconic is targeting is its development advisory business, which it launched a few years ago. It has worked with a few select clients in the past, advising on various stages of the real estate process.
“That business line was basically formed because past partners had asked us to step in and help them strategically think through their business plans on their own-to-assets,” Wenke said. “We see that as a potential growth on our Taconic platform side as there is some distress in the market with both institutions and owners thinking about what the next step is within their portfolios.”
