As seen in The Commercial Observer:

David Greene’s Opinion Piece in The Commercial Observer

One of the defining moments in every young broker’s career is when you can walk away from a successful transaction feeling that you received your fair share of the brokerage commission.
Almost every broker, however, has endured that moment when you feel you have been taken advantage of by a more senior broker. The senior broker may feel that his or her contribution was more important, while the junior broker may feel that he or she did nearly everything.

One of the most important things that a team of brokers can do is define their brokerage splits, in an open discussion, when they get an assignment. Brokers who wait until the last minute to decide who gets what often leave someone feeling as if they were taken advantage of.

A senior broker recently described a defining moment early in her career. On transaction after transaction, she felt that she was getting the short end of the stick. There was nothing left to do but try to go independent or leave the firm. After a week of feuding, she was summoned to the owner’s office, where she was told that “there was no such thing as indentured servitude” in this business and that she was free to go independent. As the story goes, the other broker saw her shortly thereafter and inquired about the two of them continuing to work together, but on different splits.

She said quite defiantly to me, “it was an easy ‘No thanks.’”

She described how her life changed dramatically from that moment forward. She became more motivated and eventually quite successful.

The two brokers had been a good team, but because the splits were not defined until the end of each transaction, she often felt that she did not get what she deserved or that she had spent too much time on a transaction to merit the small percentage that she received—and apparently that negative feeling stayed with her. If the splits had been agreed to in advance, she would have known how much time to put into each transaction and perhaps they would still be working together.

Our business is one that requires confidence and a positive outlook. After all, who knows better than a broker who tries to make something out of nothing every day?

Treating people the way you would like to be treated goes a long way toward increasing successful collaboration within a company. It is a defining principle at our firm.

As seen in The Commercial Observer:

Abe Labaton representing 145 West 57th Street featured in The Commercial Observer

Originally on the hunt for an office space between 2,200 and 2,500 square feet, real estate investment firm Malone looked at available space at 145 West 57th Street. Not satisfied with the original 2,271-square-foot portion of the ninth floor it was shown, Malone instead opted to take the entire 4,368-square-foot floor plate, combining two separate spaces that, once reconfigured, will include two conference rooms, two pantries and a number of perimeter offices, including and executive corner suite. Abe Labaton, managing director at Murray Hill Properties, who represented the tenant, spoke with The Commercial Observer last week about the layout and the process of combining spaces.

As seen in the Commercial Observer:

   Over the course of five days last week, thousands of you voted in our first annual Power 100 .  In the end, however, the balance of power swung like a pendulum with every new tweet and social media update posted by real estate professionals committed to seeing their colleagues reach the top.

As it turns out, no company or individual has mastered the ability of self-promotion and branding quite like The Trump Organization, which snagged 8 percent of the vote in part through a dedicated social media campaign and an old-fashioned word-of-mouth strategy. Mr. Trump, the father-in-law of Jared Kushner, the owner of The Commercial Observer, has proven once again that the medium is the message.

As seen in Sokol Media, Inc :

From left to right: Audrey Novoa, Esther Zar, David Greene and Roxana Girand

Please click to download PDF of Full Article

As seen in The Commercial Observer:

From left to right: Barrett Friedman, Mael Mitterrand, Christine Emery (sitting), Yair H. Staav

After a 16-month courtship, Murray Hill Properties is launching its first retail division in four years. In a Commercial Observer exclusive, meet the award-winning brokers of the newly christened Emery-Staav Retail at MHP, who introduced Uniqlo to the Big Apple.

David Greene had retail brokerage on his mind, and he didn’t want a lone wolf.

Mr. Greene, the president of brokerage services at Murray Hill Properties, was assembling a retail team at the firm, which had gone without one for nearly four years.

He was drawn to Christine Emery and Yair Staav, who had formed a partnership at The Lansco Corporation in 1999 and proceeded to build the New York presences of tenants including Uniqlo, Hermès and La Maison du Chocolat. A long courtship followed and has now culminated in Emery-Staav Retail at MHP.

“We spoke about this for 16 months,” Mr. Greene said. “I had never waited this long or had longer ongoing talks with people about deals at or positions within MHP. There was a mutual respect and they had a collaborative view. I mean, look at how they finish each other’s sentences.”

The mutual respect and affectionate banter between Ms. Emery and Mr. Staav was forged in part by their divergent backgrounds. She is a born and bred New Yorker who was raised on the Upper West Side and began her retail career in the mid-1970s with a marketplace near what was then the Fulton Fish Market. He was raised in Tel Aviv and came to New York as a representative of his family’s diamond business around the time Ms. Emery opened the market.

“When you’re of a place, you tend to have kind of fixed ideas about things, about neighborhoods, the geography of the city,” Ms. Emery said. “Yair, on the other hand, even though he’s lived here for 40 years, this is not where he grew up. So he has a completely different perception of the town.”

Mr. Staav’s earliest perceptions of New York coalesced around Soho, which he has since transformed from a scrappy artists’ frontier to a luxury retail juggernaut; he and Ms. Emery focus a good deal of their work with landlords and tenants there.

“I got an understanding of the retail business as a manufacturer,” Mr. Staav said. “On the other hand, I love cities and streets. In my spare time, I would walk the Soho streets and look at stores. That’s very European and Mediterranean, to go window-shopping after dinner.”

Ms. Emery and Mr. Staav share a certain worldliness, and they have brought several high-profile European and international retailers (and added locations for others)—Camper, Cotélac, Etro,  H&M, Maison du Chocolat, Uniqlo—to New York, a reflection not only of Mr. Staav’s foreign upbringing but also of economic fundamentals. “We have done a lot of foreign work, but everyone does,” Ms. Emery said. “Because New York is an absolute magnet. People have to be here. They have to spread their risk.”

Is one of the brokers more likely to take risks than the other? “I’ll see a strip—for example, Broadway between 23^rd and 34^th Streets 10 years ago,” Ms. Emery said, “and say, ‘Are you kidding? That’s Little Korea. It’s a bunch of schmattas.’ Yair will say, ‘No, it’s ready to happen.’ And it’s true.”

Barrett Friedman, who with Maël Mitterrand completes the new MHP retail team, agrees that Mr. Staav’s faith in unproven submarkets is critical to the group’s success. But he also lauds Ms. Emery’s grounding pragmatism.

“I think Christine’s more analytical,” Mr. Friedman, a recent Tulane graduate, said. “Yair is very creative with locations and geography. And he can seize an area that probably isn’t there yet. Christine is always the one where, if it’s a little far-fetched, she can bring him back down to earth.”

“I compare it to a world wrestling tag team,” Mr. Staav said. “We jump in and out of situations on the same deal sometimes. It’s almost synchronized by now.”

Their complementary approaches to retail real estate paid off when Joel Isaacs brought the French clothing and accessories line Hermès to Ms. Emery and Mr. Staav at 15 Broad Street in a lease that the Real Estate Board of New York recognized in 2007 as the Deal that Most Significantly Benefits Manhattan. The Financial District was more of a retail backwater then than it is now, and Ms. Emery and Mr. Staav had to fight for the tenancy to happen.

“If it wasn’t for us, it would have been a bank,” Mr. Staav said. “We had to twist the landlord’s arm.” When asked if the trepidation stemmed from geography and a location relatively untested for luxury retail, Ms. Emery offered a more practical explanation.

“No, it was pure money,” she said. “M-O-N-E-Y. And Hermès paid as much as a bank was willing to pay, period.”

After the Hermès deal, Ms. Emery and Mr. Staav came close to another landmark lease in the Financial District when, on the eve of the recession, they showed 23 Wall Street (which, with 15 Broad Street and 35 Wall Street, is known as The Corner) to executives from Ralph Lauren (represented at the time by Peter Ripka). “Ownership killed everything and they sold it” Ms. Emery said, citing the $150 million sale in 2008 of 23 Wall Street to China Sonangol.

(In 2011, a team from Cushman & Wakefield took over the leasing assignment for 23 Wall Street, but attempts to lure a department store or other large-scale retailer have stalled thus far. Entertainment and office tenants are now being considered.)

Although Ralph Lauren fell through, Ms. Emery has high hopes for lower Manhattan. “In two years it will be fabulous,” she said. “Give it time. The dust has to settle.” Mr. Staav agrees. “The infrastructure is there, and you can get to the cool part of Brooklyn very fast.”

Looking north to Soho, where the brokers in 2006 landed the Japanese retailer Uniqlo—a signature and “nerve-racking” account since 1999—its first American store, Mr. Staav sees “the Madison Avenue of Downtown.” Ms. Emery concurs, saying “people will always be drawn to Soho. I think it’s truly about the architecture and the aesthetic experience that people have inside those spaces. But I think it has a more universal draw than Madison Avenue. Madison is a little stodgy.”

“I was talking about the luxury part of Soho,” Mr. Staav said, “the exclusive part of Soho.”

“Ah, he’s talking about money,” Ms. Emery said with a laugh.

I asked them if they argue. “We constantly disagree about food and movies,” Ms. Emery said. “But I don’t think we disagree too often on business deals, except that Yair has been known to kick me under the table, which he is forbidden to do ever again. If he does, I will humiliate him publicly.”

“We have terrible, terrible disagreements, like in a good marriage,” Mr. Staav said. “But we always know the bottom line: we can rely on each other and we care about each other. It’s like working with family. I think we have a friendship, don’t we?”

“Yes.”

Their affection and nurturing extends to the junior half of their team. “I think they are not here to teach us or to give us a how-to,” said Mr. Mitterrand who, with Mr. Friedman, is also making the jump from Lansco to MHP. “They are trying to reveal who we are and what we are doing. They’re giving us the confidence, strength and knowledge to speak for ourselves and reveal ourselves.”

Ms. Emery and Mr. Staav have both seen whole swaths of New York, from Soho to NoMad, reveal themselves and, against all odds, become fashionable. Does Mr. Staav, the constant flaneur, have a neighborhood in mind as the next big thing?

“Nothing is under-the-radar anymore …” he said.

“ …. in the entire town,” Ms. Emery added, finishing his sentence.

“It’s more surgical now …”

“… there are pockets.”

Ms. Emery and Mr. Staav will continue to dig deeply into those pockets as they bring their extensive tenant and landlord relationships with them from Lansco to MHP. Mr. Greene sought the brokers for their proven track records and compatibility. Why did they want to make the leap?

“We were looking for a home,” Mr. Staav said. “We didn’t want another desk and another telephone in another real estate company. That’s why it took so long. We wanted to build a home together.”

Mr. Greene said that Ms. Emery and Mr. Staav are “building a brand” at MHP. And the family, fresh off a move, may be looking to expand.

“I want a girl,” Ms. Emery said. “I already have two boys and I want a girl. And I’ve got my eye on one.”

As seen on the NTDTV website:

Norman Sturner interviewed by NTDTV

English Translation of NTDTV website:

[NTDTV, April 8, 2013] Murray Hill Properties is a 42 year old real estate firm that owns, leases and manages 7 million square feet in midtown Manhattan. Founding Partner Norman Sturner has accepted the reporter’s interview of this station. The following is the interview:

As seen on the Commercial Observer website:

Midtown East Rezoning Faces Challenges

Capital requirements and the debate over building preservation are just two of the roadblocks the Midtown East rezoning plan faces on the path to approval, real estate professionals say.

Market participants anticipate a significant review process before any ground is broken, despite the plan’s potential benefits.

“I think it’s a work in progress,” David Greene, principal and president of brokerage services atMurray Hill Properties, told The Commercial Observer. “I think it will, eventually, after lots of public review, have a substantial meaning for the Grand Central area and north.”

The Department of Planning is proposing a zoning strategy for 78 blocks in Midtown East aimed at revitalizing the area’s office buildings, which, on average, are more than 70 years old.

Despite the focus on office space, the potential benefits to pedestrians should not be overlooked, according to Mr. Greene. “People come out of Grand Central and they walk on Vanderbilt and Lexington, and it’s a different experience from what it could be,” he said.

The cost of any potential development needs to be monitored, however. “I think the capital requirements are a real concern,” Mr. Greene said.

The trading of air rights and additional taxation could generate up to $700 million of funding for the plan, according to Mr. Greene. “That may not be enough,” he said. “It’s a big number, but if you’re talking about significant improvements, that money goes pretty quickly.”

Trading air rights will be the most effective way to reach funding goals, added Matt Kasindorf, partner at Meister, Selig & Fein. “The ability to freely transfer air rights has always been a creator of great opportunity,” he said. “The more broad those rights are under the new proposals, the better chance for them to be exploited in a successful way.”

Another issue facing the Midtown East proposal is the push from preservationist groups to landmark many of the market’s buildings. As reported by The Commercial Observer, the Municipal Art Society and others have earmarked a total of 80 buildings for landmark status.

“My clients are very concerned about the types of specific designations that would create roadblocks to utilizing the proposed new development rights,” said Mr. Kasindorf.

Despite the intensive process, the voices of preservationist groups deserve to be heard, according to Mr. Greene. “There has to be a balance, and that may mean added fees, but you can’t just say: ‘Sorry, we are not going to landmark any buildings and your voice doesn’t count,’” he said. “Everyone should be entitled to speak.”

There is no disputing, however, that Midtown East is in need of improvement.

“This part of town needs a good shot in the arm to be revitalized,” Mr. Kasindorf said.

“The whole Grand Central Terminal district is in need of an upgrade,” Mr. Greene agreed. “The whole idea is to attract better tenants and to create jobs.”

As seen on Real Estate Weekly’s website:

Audrey Novoa featured in Real Estate Weekly

The stage can be a wonderful yet frightening place. For those who have never experienced the bright lights, the area behind the line where the curtain opens is a space where years of toil, sweat and tears will all be left, in the space of two minutes.

But as much as the applause can be satisfying, addicting even, audience cheers many times do not pay the rent.

This was the dilemma that faced Audrey Novoa, today the Executive Managing Director at Murray Hill Properties, but throughout the 1960’s, a professional ballet dancer.

“When you are on the stage and the people applaud, it’s a fabulous sensation,” she said. “But in the arts the applause might be phenomenal, but most of the time you can’t eat. The arts still in this country are not paid as they should and they are always struggling. As a real estate broker people do their applause in another way. You’re completing a transaction and you’re finding a solution.”

After leaving the stage, Novoa was still connected to the arts, traveling with her husband, an opera singer. To help pay the bills in lulls from the stage, she worked for a short time in Carnegie Hall before taking an administrative job with Williams Real Estate.
After taking two hiatuses to give birth to her children, Novoa, who had become a liaison between brokers and attorneys, returned with a mission to join the long standing boys club of commercial real estate sales.

“This time that I went back and we were very broke,” she said. “I said to myself ‘look at all these brokers that make so much money and they don’t do anything, I’m going to do that.’ Little did I know that they do a whole lot.”
After going to one of the principals, Robert Carmel, and asking if she had the “right stuff” to be a broker, Novoa started as a sales person right after Thanksgiving in 1979; a pioneering moment.

“There were hardly any women in the business,” she said. “It was very limited.”

As a woman Novoa was treated differently than her male counterparts, but not in ways that you might expect.

Years after establishing her clientele, she discovered that while she had to work purely on a commission basis, while her male counterparts had been receiving allowances to keep them afloat while searching for deals.

“Later on in life I found out, that all of the young guys in the office were making a draw,” she said. “They gave people $250 a week up front on commissions. The guys all made a draw, but I who had two children and a husband wasn’t getting anything. My parents had to give me $100 a week for 6 months to keep us going.”

“Later I asked Bob Carmel and he said ‘you bust your butt right? – That’s what I wanted.’”

That experience she says helped her to become more than just a gender pioneer.

In the 1980’s after the breakup of the Bell telephone system, she said she created the first telecom hotel in the United States, at 60 Hudson Street, running it for 20 years.

“When I became the agent there was about 500,000 s/f vacant,” she said. “It was a unique in that it is sat on the New York City vault which allowed fiber to run through the building’s clay ducts and out through the entire city.”

With smaller telecom businesses like MCI and Sprint coming into the market for the first time ever, Novoa figured that the former Western Union building on Hudson Street could be the center for the newly emerging telecom industry infrastructure.

“I said to the owners, ‘give me one of the floors and let me cut it up like a wedding cake,’ it was 56,000 square feet,” she said.

“Tenants would rent the narrow, chopped up spaces and put their racks where all the cable was. The building, allowed them to interconnect to each other and then through the entire city, it was much easier than starting from scratch. Every international call at a period of time went through this building and that’s how the Telecom Hotel was born.”

Today, adorning the walls of her office are photos of what she calls her “babies,” buildings that she says she has given part of her life to. When she passes them on the street, she said, they mean more than just brick and mortar to her.

After more than 30 years in the business, 21 of them at Williams Real Estate, with the last 12 at Murray Hill Properties, Novoa has represented clients on both sides. From tenants like CBS Inc. to The Lowes Corporation, and landlords from the owners of 810 Seventh Avenue to 1 Park Avenue.

“I’ve always felt very strongly that in order to be a good agent for an owner, you must be a tenant representative as well. I believe you must do that so you truly know the market. If you’re not in the market yourself representing tenants, how are going to really know the market when somebody brings you a proposal?” she said.

In reflection, Novoa says while the stage and the applause may be different, some of the techniques she had to employ as a dancer so long ago, have remained the same. To work in the real estate business like dancing on the stage, requires a supreme amount of concentration in order to succeed, she said.

“I think the dancing really helped me out. Ballet dancing is an art form that you have to have a tremendously strong core dancing with your reflection in the mirror, so you are really dancing with yourself. It gives you such a tremendous ability to focus. As real estate broker you need an ability to channel in on what you are doing and not let extraneous things come in and interrupt that. I really feel there is a correlation between what I did so many years ago and what I have been doing the last 30 years of my life.”

As seen on the Commercial Observer website:

Brokers Jesse Rubens, James Tamborlane and Mark Toubin’s efforts yield results.

Special event venue and production company Metropolitan Pavilion has signed a lease for 639 West 46^th Street, the former H&H Bagel Factory, it was announced yesterday. Asking rent was approximately $45 per square foot.

The building, owned by MKF Group, includes 25,000 square feet over two floors, with 14-foot high ceilings throughout, according to a statement. Metropolitan Pavilion requires spaces with large footprints and high-ceilings, which in current market conditions are not readily available, according to Alan Boss, president.

The property is currently undergoing renovations which are scheduled for completion by November 2013. The renovation of the building is being done in cooperation with architect David Feldman and will include a renovated façade, new elevator, new stairs and new mechanicals, according to Adam Smith, director of real estate at MKF.

“Given Metropolitan Pavilion is an event venue, we have been looking to further our brand to be a first class operation,” Mr. Boss said. Currently, Metropolitan Pavilion operates an event space at 125 West 18^th Street.

MKF acquired the building in a state of disrepair in February 2012 and evicted holdover tenants over the course of that year. Metropolitan Pavilion met with MKF about the building beginning in January 2013 and signed a lease after just two weeks.

“We acquired the property to serve as a forerunner of change in the rapidly impending West Side redevelopment. Metropolitan Pavilion is the perfect tenant for this space,” Mr. Smith said in a statement. “They innovated their concept in the Ladies’ Mile Historic District in Chelsea when the area was still up and coming, and are eager to contribute to reinvigorating this new Manhattan neighborhood.”

Mr. Smith, director of real estate at MKF, conducted the transaction. The landlord was represented by Jesse Rubens of Murray Hill Properties. John Belitsky and Michael Duncan of Abraham and Martin represented the tenant.

As seen in Real Estate Weekly:

Roxana Girand (MHP Executive Managing Director) above with microphone

In the course of one day, speakers at the second annual Real Estate Weekly Women’s Forum covered the breadth and depth of the
most pressing issues and important trends in New York City real estate.

On the “Women who Govern” panel, Edith Hsu-Chen from the New York City Department of City Planning, made a strong case for
rezoning Midtown East to allow the construction of large, new office buildings.

The building stock in the world’s most respected central business district has not been replenished in decades, she said.

“It’s going to fall behind,” she said. “We need to have the amazing Class A office space that tenants are looking for.”

Rosemary Scanlon, dean of NYU’s Schack Institute, answered a question from panel moderator Elise Wagner, partner at the law firm
Kramer Levin, about the shifting demographics of New York’s office tenants.

In 2008, she said, the finance industry made up only 11 percent of • the city’s jobs, but because those jobs were so highly paid they made
up 33 percent of wages. •

This disporportionate influence that Wall Street had on the economy is being challenged today by the Bloomberg administration’s new
focus on promoting technology jobs, Scanlon said, which will mean exciting changes for the city.

“What we’re looking forward to is a vibrancy … that we haven’t seen probably since the 19th century,” she said.

The “Women who Shop” panel was lighter in tone but was no less pertinent to the landscape of New York City real estate.

Executves from two of the city’s major landlords Laura Yablon Rapaport, SVP at L&L holdings, and Brittany Bragg, COO of Crown Acquisitions – discussed their different approaches to retail leasing.

Crown has properties on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan as well as Junction Boulovard in Queens.

“Those feel like the same fundamentals to us,” she said. From foot traffic to transportation, “they’re places where retailers do phenomenally well.”

L&L, in contrast, is more interested in using their retail space as an amenity for their office tenants, according to Rapaport.

“Getting the right tenant is more important than filling the space, because the right retail tenant can raise office rents five dollars,” she said.