Amazon Loss Stings, but Long Island City Real Estate Shrugs It Off
By: Keiko Morris and Josh Barbanel
The urgent inquiries for office space from companies aiming to do business with Amazon.com Inc. have long ceased. The near-constant flurry of calls from would-be investors in commercial buildings and condominiums has eased.
But the real-estate market in Long Island City has done just fine in the year since Amazon nearly made it a new home. The Queens neighborhood was suddenly the hottest in New York City after the giant retailer said in November 2018 it would open a headquarters there, bringing 25,000 employees to the area. Long Island City was just as suddenly deflated by Amazon’s abrupt cancellation of those plans.
Even without Amazon as a neighbor, commercial-property owners have attracted new tenants, thanks to the area’s relatively low prices and the abundance of new office space.
They leased more than three times the amount of space in the first nine months of the year than they did in that period during the previous year, according to Cushman & Wakefield PLC. Sales of commercial buildings rose 9%, according to B6 Real Estate Advisors.The Amazon EffectWeekly sales jumped in Long Island City after Amazon announced its move there in November 2018.Source: Smith Report and city finance recordsNote: Sales based on the date a contract was signed and is only for sales that closed. Excludes contracts signed in new buildings that haven’t yet opened.
Condo sellers have shrugged off Amazon’s snub. In the third quarter, median asking condo prices were up 7.5% compared with the same period in 2018. Median condo sales prices climbed 7.7%, while asking rents were up 5.5%, according to figures compiled by StreetEasy.com. Long Island City outperformed the rest of the city on most measures, with gains in median rent being slightly higher in Manhattan.
Amazon’s brief commitment to the neighborhood “put Long Island City on the world stage,” said Thomas A. Donovan, a partner at B6 Real Estate Advisors. “Long Island City was already on the trajectory toward being a good downtown.”
The real-estate firm Savanna may have had the most dramatic reversal of fortune with the pullout of Amazon. The retailer had planned to take a million square feet that was soon to become vacant at Savanna’s One Court Square. Savanna worked quickly and signed a 332,000-square-foot lease with the health-care company Centene Corp.
The property owner also managed to woo back Altice USA, the cable company that had been squeezed out by Amazon’s commitment. Altice signed a deal for about 103,000 square feet at One Court Square.
Overall, owners of Long Island City office properties signed 1.2 million square feet of leases in the first three quarters of the year, far exceeding the 331,538 square feet recorded for the same period in 2018, according to Cushman. The vacancy rate, though still significant, dropped to 14.7% in the third quarter from 18.4% a year earlier, also indicating strong demand.
But asking rents for office space dipped 7.5% to $40.65 a square foot in the third quarter, the third straight quarter of decreases, according to Cushman.
“Prices have come down because there is a lot of space on the market,” said Neil Dolgin, co-president at the real-estate firm Kalmon Dolgin Affiliates Inc. “There is more supply than demand.”
As with the office market, Amazon’s announcement sparked a surge of activity in the residential market. At the time, groups of investors went from sales office to sales office by bus, and some brokers said they clinched deals by cellphone.
In February, when Amazon backed out and the music stopped, sales continued although at a slower pace in the midst of a broader slowdown in condominium sales in the city. The number of investor-buyers looking for studio and one-bedroom apartments is down, brokers said, but purchases by people from Manhattan looking for larger apartments are up.
Amazon said it had planned to develop a new office campus along the East River, in an area known as Anable Basin. Now developer MaryAnne Gilmartin, chief executive of L&L MAG, and two other firms that control property in the area said they are talking to local residents and businesses about developing there.
L&L MAG is still “bullish on the location with or without Amazon,” Ms. Gilmartin said.
Unions at bay, but hostility for real estate worse than ever
By: Sylvia Varnham O'Regan
Inside an elegant dining room at the Pierre hotel Thursday, panel moderator Robert Blumenthal scanned the floor — packed with real estate’s biggest names — for signs of unrest.
It was a decidedly calmer scene than at the same Schack Institute of Real Estate capital markets conference a year ago, when protesters interrupted the panel discussion to blast Stephen Ross, the Related Companies chairman, whose firm was in a dispute with unionized construction workers.
“I’m glad we’re all here again,” Blumenthal quipped. “We also have more security this year.”
Ross, who shared the stage with fellow industry titans Marty Burger, MaryAnne Gilmartin, Scott Rechler and William Rudin, noted that the dispute between the Building Construction Trades Council and Related Companies was settled this year and the labor group has stopped protesting Related’s use of nonunion labor at Hudson Yards.
Rudin said the deal had paved the way for an agreement between the Real Estate Board of New York and the Building and Construction Trades Council, which was announced last week.
But the conversation took on a more serious tone as the panelists discussed the recent shift in the state legislature.
“I’m anxious of what’s happening in Albany,” said Rechler, chairman and CEO of RXR Realty. “I don’t think we’ve ever operated in such an anti-business, anti-real estate environment.”
He added, “We’re talked about by the activists as the enemy. You think about Occupy Wall Street after the banks collapsed — we’re that today; real estate’s that today. And that’s a tough place to be.”
Said Ross: “Those forces that kept Amazon out are still very active.”
When asked about WeWork, the panelists had mixed views about what is next for the struggling co-working company.
“I’m not worried,” said Rudin, CEO and co-chairman of Rudin Management Company, which has a new building at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Dock 72, anchored by WeWork. Co-working is an important part of the real estate ecosystem, he said, and “here to stay.”
Ross noted it was still uncertain what would happen to shared office space companies if the economy retrenches. “We’re going to have a recession at some point,” he said. “And seeing if these companies that are in those short-term spaces that are not really highly capitalized are able to survive, and what will happen with that short-term space.”
Still, Related’s new lease with Facebook was seen as a positive sign for New York’s tech industry.
In Long Island City, Gilmartin said her team had been working for the last year on a district-wide innovation plan for the waterfront, which was to house Amazon’s new headquarters before the company withdrew nine months ago.
“While the political calculus around Amazon was off and wrong in so many ways, the economic and location analysis was spot on,” said Gilmartin. “Last year, were in negotiations to partner with a large landowner in Long Island City and shook hands on that site on Valentine’s Day … a few hours after Amazon pulled out.”
She continued, “I think the lessons learned have helped us go back to Long Island City and say, ‘What has to be different?’”
‘She Build’: Creating an All-Women Real Estate Development Team
By: Lisa Prevost
Taya Cook of Urban Capital, left, and Sherry Larjani of Spotlight Development are leading an all-women team to develop a 200-unit condominium building in Toronto. Credit…Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New York Times
As a highly successful woman in New York’s male-dominated development arena, MaryAnne Gilmartin has a “mini-obsession”: She wants to oversee a commercial real estate project in which every part of the process is headed by a woman.
Ms. Gilmartin, the founder of L&L MAG, a real estate development company, knows from experience how to run a real estate project. As the chief executive of Forest City Ratner Companies, she oversaw such prominent projects as the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and the Renzo Piano-designed New York Times building in Manhattan.
Now, she has set her sights on doing the same with an all-women team. Ms. Gilmartin calls it a “she build,” and she knows “exactly where to go to find the right woman for every single part of the deal,” she said.
Her biggest challenge is securing the capital — the idea does not get a lot of traction in a room full of male investors, she said. But she is working at it, believing that if she can make such a project happen in New York, it will serve as a beacon to other aspiring developers who are women.
“We outliers have to keep at it,” Ms. Gilmartin, 55, said.
That’s because, despite progress in many other professional realms, women remain severely underrepresented in real estate development and investment, particularly in senior roles
Women held just 4 percent of senior investment roles at major real estate firms, according to a widely circulated 2011 study, and their numbers have improved only “marginally” since, said the study’s author, Nori Gerardo Lietz, who is a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and a longtime real estate investor.
Ms. Lietz reviewed the senior ranks of 82 major real estate investment firms for the study, as well as many more private equity and venture capital firms, and found that women were noticeably absent from the most highly paid, “touch the money” jobs.
Her study attributed the gap to a combination of factors, including institutional sexism and more mentoring attention being paid to men than to women.
Eight years later, “the larger firms are trying to open up the funnel and get women in,” she said. “But they’ve not done a good job at retaining them.”
Firms should try harder to keep female employees on track, Ms. Lietz said, perhaps with policies for new mothers that allow them to balance the 80-hour workweeks required during transactions with time off.
Ms. Larjani and Ms. Cook in a design meeting at Spotlight Development in Toronto.Credit…Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New York Times
One of the firms in Ms. Lietz’s study was Stockbridge, a real estate investment management firm in San Francisco with nearly $15 billion in assets. At the time, women held 17 percent of the firm’s senior finance positions. Today, the percentage is closer to 30 across all of Stockbridge’s senior positions, including finance, according to Kristin Renaudin, the firm’s chief financial officer.
Ms. Renaudin, 42, said she saw a growing number of women involved in real estate investment — all of the main players working with her on a major real estate portfolio purchase earlier this year were women. But the pipeline of candidates for the deal-making jobs is still heavily male, she said.THE MORNING: Make sense of the day’s news and ideas. David Leonhardt and Times journalists guide you through what’s happening — and why it matters.Sign Up
“The transactional, investment side is the last to come around,” Ms. Renaudin said. That was partly because many women did not pursue those jobs, she said, either because they are put off by a difficult-to-shake stigma that deal-making is a male-oriented culture or, if they have families, because they are discouraged by the significant travel and often-unpredictable work schedule.
Family life is definitely a factor, said Melissa Burch, 43, the executive general manager for New York development at Lendlease, a multinational property and infrastructure firm.
“These roles are all consuming when the deal is hot,” she said. “You have to be ready to sprint when the opening is there, and that unpredictability can be unappealing.”
Ms. Renaudin said she had been fortunate to have had “no shortage of opportunities” at Stockbridge, but recognized that she was a rarity in the industry. In fact, throughout her 21-year career, she has not had one female mentor or role model, she said.
That lack of role models could also hinder women’s rise up the ladder, said Taya Cook, the director of development at Urban Capital, a condominium development firm in Toronto.
“There are women I look up to in the industry, but they haven’t acted as mentors or role models,” she said. “I’d like to provide that for the younger generation.”
Ms. Cook hopes to do that with her own version of a “she build.” She and Sherry Larjani, the managing partner at Spotlight Development, also in Toronto, are leading a handpicked, all-women team to develop a 200-unit condominium building called Reina (the Spanish word for queen) in the Etobicoke district of Toronto.
The Reina project has garnered considerable publicity, said Ms. Larjani, who hopes it will draw more young women into development.Credit…Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New York Times
The idea came last year after Ms. Cook, 38, read a Toronto Life magazine article that highlighted the city’s leading condo developers. All 20 were men.
“Honestly, it’s insane,” she said. “When you step back and have a look, it’s probably one of the last industries that’s really just so unbalanced.”
Ms. Cook noted that the backing of Urban Capital, which is run by two men, had eased the path to financing. Without their successful history behind her, “I would expect the experience to be much more difficult,” she said. “Finance is definitely on par with construction and development as a boys’ club.”
The Reina project has garnered considerable publicity in the Toronto area, said Ms. Larjani, also 38. Like Ms. Cook, she hopes the publicity will draw more young women into development.
“The point is to show that these women are working in all these roles, and they are roles you can take on,” Ms. Larjani said.
Ms. Gilmartin said that she never felt intimidated or thwarted at the table by men, but that young women coming out of top business schools “looking at a landscape of males” could have trouble seeing a way to break through.
“There are just not enough examples for these women,” she said.
Ms. Burch said that women should feel confident that if they can just “get into the room,” even if it is filled with men, they will figure out how to use their talents to rise.
She spent the first 13 years of her career at Forest City Ratner, where, she said, she started out as a “human clicker,” running the digital portion of presentations that the company co-founder Bruce Ratner made to investors. Just sitting in on dozens of those presentations was instructive.
“I soaked in every one of those conversations,” Ms. Burch said. “How do you convince investors? How do you lay forth a vision and bring others along?”
Eventually, she jumped in and made some of those presentations herself, and later worked closely with Ms. Gilmartin. Now, she’s hiring women for her own team at Lendlease, including one who’s in charge of acquisitions.
“She’d been in development for 10 years and never had a female boss,” Ms. Burch said of the woman she hired. “She told me one of the big reasons she came here was to have that. It was important to her.”
Owners Magazine 2019: Talking With the Top Developers and Owners of NYC
By: The Editors
MaryAnne Gilmartin CEO, L&L MAG
Do you think we’re heading into a downturn? Why or why not? New York’s fundamentals are strong, but I do see a correction, if not a modest downturn, which creates big opportunities for folks like us.
What do you think the future looks like for WeWork and other coworking operators if the economy slows down? While there’s plenty of culpability to go around, WeWork’s troubles are largely its own doing. I think it will course correct, right-size itself, and adjust the market’s expectations.
Is New York City losing its shine? Are property investors starting to look elsewhere? Political headwinds and the cost of doing business make it ever more challenging to build and operate here. New York remains the global capital of the world, but the barriers to entry keep getting higher and higher. Again, we will create opportunities due to this.
How have you adjusted your business plan since the new rent laws were passed? We will concentrate our building in neighborhoods where the majority of the market rents are already over $2,000 per month. With this strategy, we still have a multifamily business in new construction. That said, we are borough builders too and the new rent laws are foreboding for areas outside of the urban core — hopefully time will produce a political awakening up in Albany.
Do the new rent laws present any opportunities for savvy owners? Other than producing a less cluttered field of developers, the new laws present more of a workaround than an opportunity for savvy developers.
Is REBNY in need of a revamp? A lot.
What’s the biggest headache in your job that no one knows about? This job is full of headaches for all of us in this business. That’s what keeps it fun and real. Telling you how I cope with them would be revealing my secret sauce.
What’s more important: having the best lawyer or having the best accountant? Having the best lawyer with an accounting background.
Most underrated neighborhood in the city? Bushwick.
If you could pick the Republican and Democratic nominees for President, who would they be? I’m not foolish enough to answer that question.
Developers Working on Comprehensive Waterfront Plan, A Series of Public Meetings to be Held
By: Shane O’Brien
A number of developers that plan to build on the Long Island City waterfront–including parcels where the Amazon headquarters was slated to go–are working on a comprehensive waterfront plan.
TF Cornerstone, L&L MAG and Simon Baron Development are looking to guide the development of 28 acres of public and privately-owned land by Anable Basin and north of 44th Drive. They are reaching out to the public to help them shape the plan and have established “Your LIC” for local input.
The developers will be working with the community and the City Council to put together a series of public meetings in coming months with the goal of coming up with a comprehensive framework.
The City Council gathered stakeholders with developable property along the waterfront during the summer and called for them to formulate a unified plan. The city wants to make sure that the community’s needs are met through one comprehensive plan, as opposed to each developer acting separately.
The developers announced today that Dr. Gail Mellow, former president of LaGuardia Community College, has joined “Your LIC” to help produce the plan by soliciting input from the public and industry.
Plaxall, which plans to develop about 12 acres by Anable Basin and owns much of the land where Amazon was slated to go, is not part of the Your LIC coalition. However, the company has conducted extensive community outreach in recent times and has a decades-long history in the area.
The City Owned Parcels TF Cornerstone was looking to develop
The three developers that are part of the coalition all have interests in the 28 acres.
TF Cornerstone was in the process of developing two city-owned sites where 44th Drive meets the East River– before the Amazon deal led to those plans being shelved.
L&L owns a five-acre waterfront plot at 44-02 Vernon Blvd., known as Lake Vernon, which is north of 44th Drive.
Meanwhile, Simon Baron owns the Paragon Paint building at 45-40 Vernon Blvd., which backs onto Anable Basin.
The three developers, in a unified statement, said that they are working on a collaborative process to bring jobs, a resilient waterfront, open space, affordable housing, and arts and community space to the waterfront.
Matthew Baron, President of Simon Baron Development, said that the process will provide residents with a real say in terms of the outcome of the area.
“With three developers coming to the table to work with each other, the community, and the City Council, we believe so much can be achieved for the benefit of Long Island City,” Baron said.
Jeremy Shell, Principal of TF Cornerstone, said that the collaboration between developers and the community was a unique approach to development in New York City.
“This is a completely new approach for Long Island City and an unprecedented process in New York. We look forward to working closely with Dr. Mellow and all of the residents, businesses, and stakeholders in Long Island City for the months and years to come,” Shell said in a statement.
Mellow will lead community engagement and workforce development initiatives to ensure that the waterfront sites are developed with community input.
She will work with a number of local groups, including NYCHA Tenants Associations, to form recommendations.
“This is such an exciting and important project for our neighborhood and the city at large, and I am thrilled to be doing what I love most – working with the community – to help turn their vision into a reality,” Mellow said in a statement.
The workforce development initiatives and community benefits engagement will be supported in consultation with Bishop Mitchell Taylor, founder of Urban Upbound.
“The Long Island City waterfront provides so much hope and opportunity for Queens, and its future must be planned carefully by the people who live and work here,” said Bishop Taylor, Founder of Urban Upbound.
“I look forward to collaborating with Gail and the Your LIC team to create an inclusive process that prioritizes strong community benefits and good jobs for all.”
Guests Partied in the Park at Last Night’s Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy Gala
By: Danielle Naer
Last night a throng of Brooklynites and Manhattanites gathered along the East River in black-tie. The occasion? Twenty years of free public activities at Brooklyn Bridge Park, which not too long ago was a neglected plot of waterfront land. The refurbished and transformed green space is now one of the most beloved (and photographed) spots in the city, so there was much to celebrate last night at the Brooklyn Black Tie Ball.
The evening started with a boisterous cocktail party, complete with tasty canapés and beverages ranging from glasses of Gadais Muscadet to cans of (what else) Brooklyn Lager. Guests could hardly stop the chatter as hosts encouraged all to take their seats, which offered primo views of lower Manhattan. From start (a salad of chicories with brie fondue) to finish (sunflower-butter jelly doughnuts), the three-course meal satiated the crowd as the Conservancy reflected on two decades of progress.
Special honorees of the evening were two-megawatt women whose work throughout Brooklyn and the Greater New York City Area has transformed the city into a safer and more prosperous place for all. Mayor Bill de Blasio honored Alicia Glen, former deputy mayor for Housing and Economic Development in New York, and MaryAnne Gilmartin, former CEO of Forest City Ratner and famed developer of the Barclays Center.
“It’s so New York to have a place that is open late at night; a place where you can go and play basketball, or do whatever activity you like, right along the Manhattan skyline,” shared Girls star and Red Hook resident Jemima Kirke. “It’s so beautiful. It’s a real part of the city; it’s that idea of having a place that’s our hub.”
Keri Russell shared a similar sentiment: “I have to say, this is the only gala I always come to because it’s the most true to my life. I use this park multiple times a day, my kids use it multiple times a day—it’s an amazing park, it’s an amazing use of space, and it’s a part of everyday life.”
Photo: Alexa Hoyer/Sylvana Durrett in a Caroline Constas dress and Stella McCartney blazer; Keri Russell in Saint Laurent
Photo: Alexa Hoyer/Honoree Alicia Glen, Senator Chuck Schumer, and honoree MaryAnne Gilmartin
Photo: Alexa Hoyer/Henry Hager and Jenna Bush Hager
Photo: Alexa Hoyer/The interior ambiance as guests took their seats
Photo: Alexa Hoyer/Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany
Photo: Alexa Hoyer/New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio
Photo: Alexa Hoyer/Jemima Kirke
Photo: Alexa Hoyer/Like any great gala, the evening ended with dancing.
You Are What You Build: MaryAnne Gilmartin on Knowing Your Wheelhouse and Seeing What Others Don’t
By: Julia Gamolina
By Julia Gamolina
MaryAnne Gilmartin is Chief Executive Officer of L&L MAG, a New York-based real estate development company she founded with David Levinson and Robert Lapidus. Prior to founding L&L MAG, MaryAnne served as President & CEO of Forest City Ratner Companies, where she oversaw a period of game-changing ground-up development, including Barclays Center, New York by Gehry, and the Tata Innovation Center at Cornell Tech. MaryAnne has made multiple appearances on Crain’s New York Business’s annual list of New York’s 50 Most Powerful Women.
MaryAnne started her career as a New York City Urban Fellow and at the Public Development Corporation (now the NYCEDC). She speaks to Julia Gamolina about taking risks and excelling in a meritocracy, advising those who are just starting their career to be confident that their voice and their place at the table matters.
JG: How did your interest in real estate first develop?
MAG: Through pure serendipity. I had no inkling of what I wanted to be when I “grew up”, but coming out of university, I was first to be an Urban Fellow in a program for young people to try out public service. I ended up at the Public Development Agency, which is now the Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC). It was quasi-public and had nothing to do with real estate, but I was attracted to the idea of what they were about. My plan was to spend a summer with them, and then go off to law school in September and fight for the rights of juveniles in the justice system.
I’m guessing that’s not quite how it went.
[Laughs] No, it did not. At the Public Development Agency, I discovered that I had real estate development in my veins – it just seemed more interesting, exciting, and somehow comfortable. At the time, Public Development was the agency where if you said you wanted to go into real estate, they would say to you, “Alright, let’s look at the West Side, what should we do with it?” It was an incredible place to start a career and I spent seven years there.
What were your main takeaways from working in the public sector?
My time there helped me understand the role that public policy and government play in the built environment for things of a certain scale. I learned to think big and to not be intimidated by complexity. You also think in different metrics on the public side, like job creation and tax dollars – not profit and bottom line, so as a private developer, my take-aways from that time allow me to now effectively partner with the government and marry the goals of public and private to make it a win-win all the way around.
When and why did you transition into the private sector, into real estate?
At some point I realized that I could be on the private side, and still be partners to the government, helping to solve those issues. I segued into a private development with Bruce Ratner, meeting him when he was building the Bear Stearns building in Brooklyn. I was representing the city, negotiating tax incentives and the job retention program. The public side was all about public purpose, and I saw that I could parlay all that into a really meaningful job in ground up development while also paying back some college loans and having some fun.
“I never had my eye on the corner office, but it turns out, in a meritocracy, if you work hard, you eat what you kill – meaning you are what you build.”
Tell me about your start at Forest City Ratner.
I started with building new buildings in Brooklyn, Metro Tech being one of them. These were the days in the 90s when banks would take bullet proof limousines to look at potential office space Brooklyn [laughs]. A very different time.
Developing in Brooklyn was high risk, but the economics were very compelling. Brooklyn was a place to sharpen your tools because nothing was easy there – that’s always good though because when you work harder, you have a leg up on your competition and you know how to be more convincing. The work in Brooklyn ended up being super gratifying and we were eventually able to put a ground up building there every 12-18 months.
How were you able to break through like that there?
This is something that’s not possible without pervasive commitment. Mary Ann Tighe and I have a very deep connection and it started with my responsibility on Forest City’s Brooklyn leasing portfolio. We had all these buildings we were building and all this space that we needed to lease, and yet nobody wanted to come to Brooklyn. I said, “We need to know all the major brokers,” and I cold-called five of them, including Mary Ann Tighe. Cold-calling doesn’t usually work, but within 24 hours, Mary Ann called me back! She became my hero and my mentor.
What grew out of that mentorship, other than your success in Brooklyn?
When the New York Times was looking for developers, she put us on the list. We were very much an outlier – we were very qualified to do the work, as we had just built Madame Tussauds in Times Square and knew everything about the 42nd street project development area, but we were not in the milieu with the New York Times.
Mary Ann Tighe put us on that list though, and with a lot of determination, we put together a proposal to be their developer. In 2000 we were selected. That was a career defining moment for me – there is never one person within an organization that does a project, but there is often one person that is identified with the project as being the champion, the deal maker, the one behind the whole idea, and that was what it was for me. I met extraordinary people and I learned how to build beautiful user buildings with great architects.
MaryAnne as a mentor herself.
Why did this moment and this building define your career?
All of it really started with the architecture. The NYT was dedicated to building a beautiful building, and then 9/11 happened.
The day after 9/11, we stood up and proclaimed that nobody would want to work in a building that was a fortress to withstand those kinds of attacks. The Times was committed to transparency and exceptional architecture, so other than changing the type of glass and reinforcing the core, we did not change this object of beauty that Renzo Piano designed. I remember thinking, “Wow, what a fellowship we have created.” We had a world-class architect and an amazing partner and user in the New York Times, and they both vowed to follow through with the extraordinary building – they wanted to show the world that we needed to continue to be who we were before 9/11.
This project was clearly your beginning to an amazing tenure at Forest City. How and when did you become CEO?
I felt like I kept growing and learning and rising, and one day, Bruce came and said, “You’re going to run this company.” I remember panicking, thinking, “Everything is going so well, why would we screw it up!” I did what a lot of women do – I overthought and overmanaged the transition [laughs]. I wanted to show that I could really run this – I felt like it would be a terrible disservice to women in the industry if I was a proxy for a male-dominated industry and just a vessel for Bruce’s voice.
Becoming CEO of Forest City might have been the hardest thing I’ve ever done – to stand in the shoes of a man who was known as Bruce C. Ratner. If you’ve ever read anything about our company, the article would start by saying “Bruce C. Ratner” and then only somewhere in the body would it say Forest City. Imagine taking a job from somebody who had never shared that job with anybody before. Intellectually, he was ready for it, but emotionally, it’s a different thing. We got through it though, and we’re as thick as thieves.
What did it take to achieve such tenure at Forest City?
When it comes to careers, people think, “If there’s a magic elixir, give it to me.” We all want to know what the secret is. I think what might have gone my way is that I was raised in a meritocracy in the professional world. Bruce always chose the best man or the best woman for the job – he has two daughters. I never had my eye on the corner office, but it turns out, in a meritocracy, if you work hard, you eat what you kill – meaning you are what you build. Also, luck! The truth is, real estate is a business of cycles, and the cycles went my way. I was able to get a great selection of projects.
I’m glad you mentioned luck – when people say that luck doesn’t play a part in where they are today, I am always in disbelief. Yes, you need talent, and drive, and a work ethic, but timing and factors beyond our control also play into it, for better or worse.
I read an article recently that said that luck finds people. I think you first need a lot of positivity, creativity, and seeing things that others may not, and then luck comes your way. I was at a company that was willing to let me grow and take risks and bet on things. If you could dream it, believe in it, and defend it, you had a great shot at building it and that was an amazing reality inside that organization.
Tell me about starting L&L MAG after such a tenure.
At some point, Forest City became a REIT, a real-estate investment trust. I am first and foremost a hopeless developer, and I knew that building complex ground-up projects wasn’t going to be easy in a REIT. I didn’t want to be an operator with development as a twist; I wanted to develop, and I saw that Forest City would never do a New York Times building in the foreseeable future.
That reckoning for me was a moment of truth. I spent a fair amount of time thinking about what the next step would look like, and it became clear to me that it needed to be in the private markets – that’s where the ingenuity, the entrepreneurial spirit, and the creativity that goes into building ground up in places like New York lives. With a lot of thought, and the support of the company, I told them that I was planning on moving on and that we could possibly do something together, where I stuck with some of the things that they needed me for, but would build this new platform. I ended up forming L&L MAG with David Levinson and Robert Lapidus for all the right reasons, and I was able to handpick a group of people to bring with me to build an incredible organization. That was almost a year and a half ago.
How has the past year-and-a-half been?
It’s been amazing to be nimble, hunting for new projects again. We’re essentially a twenty-five year old start up because of our relationship with Forest City, but we’re also exploring a lot of new types of projects. We’re committed to building beautiful buildings and building them with people who look like the city we live in.Let’s be honest – in our industry, it’s been a long overdue mandate, and I’m super proud of my team and the fact that the organization itself looks like the people we build for.
The founders of L&L MAG – David Levinson, MaryAnne Gilmartin, and Robert Lapidus.
What advice do you have for those who’d like to start something of their own?
When you’re running something, as CEO you’re really the Chief Talent Officer – you have to resist the temptation to do, and instead, build the great people that will build and design the great buildings. Running a firm is all about the talent you find, and cultivating a culture of excellence and possibilities for the people around you.
How does motherhood play into your career?
It’s very important to me. I have three children and I was lucky to be working for a man that was willing to accept that if I wasn’t the kind of mother I wanted to be, I’d be no use as an executive. One lesson learned is that for a long time, I didn’t live close to where I worked while raising my kids – now they’re in Brooklyn and real little city slickers, but when they were little I commuted to and from Westchester and worked from home on Fridays. I read that Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s secret was that she never lived more than two miles from where she worked, and now I know why.
If moving to Brooklyn was a liberating aspect of motherhood, technology was another one – I did my best work after 11pm, though that probably wasn’t great for my marriage. I haven’t spoken too much about this publicly, but I should say that I’m now divorced – it happened gradually and then suddenly. My ex-husband stayed home with the kids, and that probably wasn’t the best model for us. If we’re really honest, as a woman who is the primary in the office and also tends to have primary tendencies as a mother, it’s hard to create equity and balance in the relationship. It’s been two years, and it’s taken us some time to recover, but I would say that everyone needs to do whatever works for them to make the best for their family. The moral of the story on motherhood is we have to do what works for us.
One thing I will say is that I was able to truly bring my children into my work. In a society where we push a lot of paper and buttons, if you’re working in the built environment, you have a physical manifestation of what you do every day. When your kids want to know where you are and what you do, you can bring them in a hoist and walk them around floors, or roll out blueprints and walk them through a plan of an arena. There’s nothing more magical. My children know that I love my work, and that it’s important to love what you do, and the more it can become part of the family’s fabric, the more life-giving it is.
MaryAnne with her children.MaryAnne and Olive.
Jumping off of your approaches to motherhood, what has been your general approach to your career?
I have a lot of gratitude for the people that steered me – having Mary Ann Tighe as a mentor is like winning the career lottery – so staying connected to the human element of what we do, valuing relationships, and investing in those relationships in a really meaningful and authentic way, is important.
Valuing the rookie factor is important too! Some of the best things come from the people that are not in the box – the reason that I love internships and having young people in the room, is that we don’t often see things that they do. Creating an environment where everyone’s voice matters is really important.
“Let’s be honest – in our industry, [equal representation] has been a long overdue mandate, and I’m super proud of my team and the fact that the organization itself looks like the people we build for.”
Finally, how do you develop the courage to use that voice?
You know, I never got the memo about feeling intimidated – I always had the feeling that if I knew what I was doing, and I had a job to do, I had a place at the table. If I didn’t have a place at the table, I shouldn’t even be in the rom. I was by age and by gender, a minority for many many years, but I was never intimidated. In general, my view of the workplace and of women is that these conversations have to happen together with men. I will no longer do a panel that’s all women – men need to be involved in the conversation and need to be participating, if we want to see change.
One of my hopes is the “she-building” – I want to put together a building in New York where every part of the process is done with a woman in command. Just like the New York Times project did for me, who knows what that kind of building and process will launch for women starting their tenures today.
MaryAnne Gilmartin’s L&L MAG to develop large site in Long Island City; Current zoning allows for project spanning over 1M sf
Amazon may not be coming to Long Island City, but that hasn’t halted new development in the area.
MaryAnne Gilmartin’s L&L MAG is planning a large, mixed-use project on the waterfront at 44-02 Vernon Boulevard, adjacent to Amazon’s abandoned site, according to Commercial Observer.
The site’s current zoning allows 1 million square feet of residential development and 60,000 square feet of commercial space.
Bruce Teitelbaum, once a chief of staff to former mayor Rudy Giuliani, is one of the investors who own the site. In 2015, Teitelbaum pitched a mixed-use development at the site that included a pedestrian bridge connecting Long Island City to Roosevelt Island, but the project stalled.
The site, formerly an oil refinery, has been in foreclosure since 2012. The current owners are negotiating with an affiliate of the Durst Organization, which owns a $32 million note on the property, Gilmartin told CO.
In December 2018, L&L MAG — a partnership between Gilmartin and the principals of L&L Holding, Robert Lapidus and David Levinson — announced its first development, a 22-story, 460 unit residential building in Chelsea. [CO]
March 14, 2019
Commercial Observer
L&L MAG Tapped to Develop LIC Waterfront Site
By: Rebecca Baird-Remba
MaryAnne Gilmartin’s one-year-old development firm is coming to Long Island City, Queens.
A group of investors who own a long-vacant waterfront parcel next to the now-defunct Amazon site in Long Island City have hired the Forest City alum’s new company, L&L MAG, to develop their property, Commercial Observer has learned.
While details of the development haven’t been finalized yet, Gilmartin told CO that she hopes to build a large, mixed-use project on the wedge-shaped plot at 44-02 Vernon Boulevard. Bruce Teitelbaum, a onetime chief of staff to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, has a stake in the property and is the managing partner of the entity that owns it, Vernon Holding Realty LLC, sources familiar with the deal said. Gilmartin declined to discuss the structure of her deal with Teitelbaum, except to say that she was the development partner in the project.
Teitelbaum has been pitching a plan to develop a residential project of at least a million square feet on the site since 2015, Politico New York reported at the time. The vision for the old version of the project included a pedestrian bridge to Roosevelt Island, but neither Gilmartin nor Teitelbaum would discuss what they were planning now.
“MaryAnne is a proven winner who has tackled some of the most complex projects in the city with excellence, creativity and integrity,” Teitelbaum said in a statement. “She knows how to take a project from conception to completion, and now with her newly founded company, L&L MAG, she is perfectly positioned to develop this vital site on the LIC waterfront.”
The property has been in foreclosure since 2012, as the New York Daily News reported at the time. Durst Fetner Residential, an affiliate of The Durst Organization, owns a $32 million note on the property, and the owners are negotiating with Durst to settle the foreclosure case, Gilmartin said. A Durst spokesman didn’t immediately return a request for comment. The site was formerly home to an oil refinery, but all the contaminated material has been removed.
SHoP Architects, which was involved in the original development proposal, will oversee the design of the new complex built by L&L MAG. The current zoning allows a million square feet of residential development and 60,000 square feet of commercial space, but it’s not clear whether the owners of the 212,670-square-foot property intend to apply for a rezoning.
Gregg Pasquarelli, one of the firm’s principals, said he was “thrilled to be working on the project and with MaryAnne Gilmartin again. We are both committed to making dynamic urban projects centered around beautiful open public space.”
Gilmartin said that she would discuss her plan with the community and with local politicians.
“It’s the very early part of a process that is going to involve a lot of thinking and collaboration with the stakeholders locally and in the community,” she said. “One wants to be deliberate and thoughtful. There’s an as-of-right development opportunity here that’s pretty straightforward, but we’re so early in the process. We’re going to work with the ownership team, the architects and the consultants that have already been put in place.”
This is the second development deal for L&L MAG, which inked a 99-year ground lease for 241 West 28th Street in Chelsea with plans to build a 460-unit residential building, The Real Deal reported last December.
L&L MAG’s First Project Will Be An Apartment Building In Chelsea
By: Miriam Hall
MaryAnne Gilmartin kicked off 2018 by leaving Forest City to found her own firm, backed by the owners of L&L Holding Co. To close it out, the company has announced its first project, a large apartment building in Chelsea, which it plans to start constructing next year.
The project will be a 460-unit rental building at 241 West 28th St. in Chelsea, L&L MAG announced Monday. The building will be developed under the Affordable New York program, with 30% of the apartments set aside for low- and middle-income renters. COOKFOX will design the building.
“We founded L&L MAG to pursue projects that provide value to the community we are building in, to enhance the fabric of our city architecturally and to deliver value to our partners, and I am thrilled that our first development delivers on all of those principles,” L&L MAG CEO MaryAnne Gilmartin said in a statement.
The site of the new building, a block-through parking lot, is owned by Edison Properties. L&L MAG has signed a 99-year ground lease with Edison and will build a public parking garage with the building as part of the arrangement.
Atalaya Capital Management and Qualitas, an Australian asset manager, are partnering with L&L MAG on the project. It is Qualitas’ first investment in the U.S.
“We brought together the perfect team for this project — Atalaya and Qualitas — and have shown we can advance the most complex deals in a very short period of time. We are going to pursue a diverse set of projects across sectors and expect this will be the first of many,” Gilmartin said.
Qualitas will use the deal to launch future investment in the U.S., establishing a New York office, co-founder Mark Fischer said. The firm sought gateway city investments in multifamily, and found it needed to partner with a local like Gilmartin to accomplish that goal.
An Edison executive told The Real Deal that L&L MAG’s offer on the site was not the highest the New Jersey-based team received, but they were convinced by the team Gilmartin had assembled and her reputation.
“You can get away with a lot in this town,” Gilmartin said at Bisnow’s New York State of the Market event last month. “You can build forgettable buildings that deliver tremendous returns, and you can make a shit ton of money. I don’t want to do that.”
