Realty Collective, the Brooklyn-based brokerage, will be open its third office later this month at 351 Van Brunt Street in Red Hook.
In keeping with its mission of promoting local business and sustainable practices, the residential and commercial real estate brokerage will engage in a shared space model with Gallery Brooklyn, designed to add value to the community, increase street traffic and showcase artists from Brooklyn.
The 351 Van Brunt Street gallery and business space, Gallery Brooklyn and RC Red Hook will open with group exhibition “Lightness, Being,” curated by Trong Nguyen, showcasing three NYC-based artists — painter Jon Elliot, photographer Rebecca Reeve and sculptor Judith Braun — that will run May 19 through June 30.
“We are passionate about Red Hook. I live here, and Realty Collective works with many clients looking to buy, sell and rent homes and business spaces in Red Hook,” said Victoria Hagman, founder of Realty Collective. “We’ve been looking for a storefront location that would meet both our goals of easy accessibility to those in the area, and would fit our business model of community engagement and sustainability.”
The 1,400 s/f ground level storefront, is on a main thoroughfare of Red Hook. A local dog-walking firm uses a portion of the rear office area, while RC Red Hook will have an agent/client work and meeting section in the main, white-walled gallery space, as well as a window display showcasing Realty Collective listings.

NAI Friedland CEO Tony Lembeck (right) of Goldens Bridge, N.Y., is joined by his daughter Sophie, and Steve Madden of New York City, N.Y., at the Family Services of Westchester’s Star Gala in New Rochelle, N.Y.  The Lembeck Family was honored in recognition of their continued commitment to the organization and the Westchester community.

NAI Friedland CEO Tony Lembeck (third from left) of Goldens Bridge, N.Y., and his family were recently honored by Family Services of Westchester (FSW) at the organization’s Star Gala in New Rochelle, N.Y. Tony is joined by his wife, Andrea (center) and  their four children:  (from left to right) Sophie Lembeck, Amelia Lembeck, Averi Seligman, and Jared Seligman. The Lembeck-Seligman family has maintained an active affiliation with FSW for almost 20 years and Tony is a member of its Board of Directors.

NAI Friedland CEO Tony Lembeck (center) of Goldens Bridge, N.Y., is joined by, his proud father, Dick Lembeck (left), of Boca Raton, FL.  and his sister, Liza Diamond (right) of Great Neck, N.Y., at the Family Services of Westchester’s Star Gala in New Rochelle, N.Y.

The Town of Islip has agreed to offer an incentive package to a high tech manufacturer looking to expand into mass-market production.

1860 SMITHTOWN AVENUE

Photonics Corp., a Bohemia-based manufacturer of lasers used in the production of semiconductors and other electronics, anticipates growing its workforce to meet an estimated $30 million in sales next year.

At a meeting today, Islip Town Supervisor Tom Croci said that the Islip Industrial Development Agency has approved an preliminary inducement measure that will allow Photonics Corp. to purchase a 50,000 s/f building in Ronkonkoma.

He said the incentive package could include a property tax-abatement and sales tax and mortgage-recording tax exemptions.

Photonics, which is purchasing 1860 Smithtown Ave., Bohemia, from CVD Equipment Corp. said it intends to expand its operations from its current nearby facilities with only 16,s/f  in a bid to expand into mass production and lower its costs, allowing it to compete more effectively.

The company, which also has a 130,000 s/f  facility in Suzhou, China, also plans to use the new space for research and development.  The company opted to expand in Islip rather than in China.

A graduate of the Stony Brook University High Technology Incubator, Photonics, has indicated in its IDA application that within two years it anticipates increasing its workforce to 85 full-time employees and 15 part timers from their current 50 and 11, respectively, doubling its current annual payroll to $5.8 million also indicated its sales could rise over the two years from  $11.4 million to  $30 million.

“These are high-tech jobs, exactly what the Town Board asked for,” Croci said.

Patrick Breslin

By Al Barbarino

As a child, Studley EVP Patrick Breslin and his mother would often pick up his father, New York City columnist Jimmy Breslin, from work.

The elder Breslin had never bothered to get a license, having grown up too poor to imagine being able to afford a car. For Patrick and his siblings, that meant daily trips to breaking news scenes throughout the city.

The exposure gave the young Breslin a deep-seeded feel for the city, the people, the landscape, the buildings… and the diversity. It’s one of the reasons he knows the city just about as well as anyone else in real estate, he said.

“That’s how I first began to get an interest in real estate — because of the neighborhoods that I went to all over the city,” Breslin said. “I learned about the diversities of New York, and New York to me is a very special place. I thought that it was such a drastic difference in the neighborhoods and the type of people and immigrants that were there, and it just made me like my city more and more.”

It also gave him an early glimpse into the darker side of the city. Crime. Corruption. Shootings. Murders. Mayhem.

“We went to some gory scenes,” Breslin said. “That really kept me wanting to stay away more from the news industry.”

It was his father who publically corresponded with the David Berkowitz, a.k.a. the Son of Sam, when the serial killer terrorized New York City in the late 1970’s. With his dad having an office set up in the family home in Forest Hills, Queens, it was difficult to get away from the reporting.

“The Son of Sam was writing letters to him and shooting and killing people within a rock’s throw of my house,” he said. “For a year, it was a little scary.”

Despite his qualms, it seemed only natural to follow his father’s footsteps into the news industry. Breslin studied English at Fordham University, and by the early 1980’s he was working for ABC Network News, behind-the-scenes on shows like Nightline, Good Morning America, and This Week, hosted by David Brinkley.

But a few years into his venture into news, Breslin’s heart and gut instinct pulled him towards real estate. Though he said his family survived on a modest income, as his parents supported him and his five brothers and sisters, his father’s prominence gave him access to some important figures in the city.

He would ultimately use some of those connections — like Mort Zuckerman, co-founder of Boston Properties and owner of the New York Daily News, and the Rudin family — to help “steer him into the right direction,” but first he took a job with the city, assisting developers who provided affordable housing to low-income families throughout the boroughs.

The next logical step was retail, he said, so he jumped ship from the city job into the brokerage business, taking a job with a small retail brokerage firm.

“Let me get this straight, you took a job with no health insurance and no salary? That’s beautiful,” Breslin recalled his father saying when he called to relay the good news.

But a quarter century later, Breslin, 50, is doing okay, even in his father’s eyes. He gets periodic calls from him, jokingly asking for a cut of the money.

In September of last year, Breslin joined Studley to give the firm’s New York retail operations a boost. Prior to that he was president of retail at Grubb & Ellis, where he said he “saw sooner than other people that the Titanic was going down.”

He brings more than 25 years of commercial real estate experience, with more than 8.5 million square feet of retail transactions under his belt.

“We’re all cohesively trying to build a Studley retail brand that will compare to the other Studley brands,” Breslin said.

Breslin joined Studley at a time of particular prosperity. Last year was the firm’s best year ever, he said, calling the feat something that’s “very well-respected in this business, and it looks like 2012 is looking the same way.”

“I’m looking forward to the good times again,” he added.

During a tenure at CBRE prior to his work at Grubb & Ellis, Breslin developed and implemented a strategic expansion plan for AT&T’s wireless stores, increasing its retail portfolio from 40 to 266 locations in the northeast during a two-year period, later taking charge of the company’s national rollout of 1,500 additional stores throughout the United States.

“They were expanding all over the country, but they were doing it in New York fast and furiously and they were taking down some of the best real estate that they could find,” Breslin said. “Then it just kept rolling and rolling and rolling.”

Among a range of diverse clients, he has represented banking giants like Bank of New York and JPMorgan Chase. While Bank of America was never a client of Breslin’s, he took their recent announcement of 30,000 layoffs as a reflection of continued economic uncertainty.

“To lose 30,000 jobs anywhere is a horrific thing for the laid off employees, existing employees’ morale and for consumers who hear the news,” he said.
“I remember listening to my grandparents talk about when they banks failed in the 20 and 30s.”

“I never thought that the United States or Russia or Spain or Italy or Greece or any of these countries could be in the distress that they’re in… you lose the job or you get laid off, it’s double or triple the time to find a new job these days, even for the most well-qualified and educated people. It’s daunting,” he added.

But the current boom in high-end clothing and jewelry, like Prada, Ferragamo, Gucci, – you name it – brought by a weakened dollar and soaring exchange rates is showing little sign of receding.

“I’ve got friends that come from Paris, London and Italy and the only vacationing they do is shopping because they can buy Gucci cheaper here than they can buy it in Italy,” he said. “It’s been a pretty good bonus to the retailers here and they continue to do strongly.”

He cited the success of lower-end retail clothing companies, like Japanese retailer Uniqlo and Sweden’s H&M, as a bi-product of that boom, predicting that the “next retailer to come here and explode is going to be from China.”

But it isn’t booms or busts that keep Breslin bustling. It’s the people.

“I’ve met some of the most fascinating and dynamic people in the real estate business and I enjoy it,” he said. “I’m a people person. I like people and the real estate business gives me the opportunity to meet and go to places where I wouldn’t have been able to go so freely.”

Much like that first brokerage job his father quipped about, a commission-based platform keeps Breslin motivated, he said – relishing every client referral like it was his first.

“Once I got in the door with retailers to do business, there was never a retailer I did just one deal with,” he said. “I always got repeat business… one of my happiest moments was the very first referral I got, which came from one of my existing retailers. To me that was always a big pat on the back.”

It’s a pat on the back Breslin wanted to give back to New York City after the attacks of September 11, 2001, during which he found himself tucked away in a London hotel room on business, felling “helpless and useless.” The events of September 11 shaped his favorite deal, which is ironically not a retail deal. It’s a rooftop antenna deal.

Shortly after 9/11 Breslin received a call from a broker who leased rooftops for antennas. CNN needed a replacement for an antenna that once stood atop One World Trade Center. At the time Breslin was representing Chase Manhattan Bank, and within a week he had arranged for the antenna to be placed atop One Chase Manhattan Plaza.

“To me that was just my little way of trying to put my city back together,” he said.

Formula One signed a 10-year franchise agreement to hold annual 3-day races in neighboring Weehawken, on a stretch of Boulevard East and River Road along the Hudson River’s west bank

By Al Barbarino

New Jersey retailers are set to get a turbocharged boost heading into Super Bowl 2014.

Back in May of 2010, the $1.6 billion new MetLife Stadium was selected to host the 2014 Super Bowl.

Earlier this year, Formula One signed a 10-year franchise agreement to hold annual 3-day races in neighboring Weehawken, on a stretch of Boulevard East and River Road along the Hudson River’s west bank.

And in a $100 million deal, New York real estate big Jeff Gural, took over the Meadowlands Race Track with a promise to rejuvenate one of horse racing’s biggest stages.

The big-time sporting events, and the masses that follow them, will give a big boost to existing retailers, attract pop-up retailers and have a long-lasting impact, some local real estate officials said.

CHUCK LANYARDD

“This is going to create a great buzz, interest and exposure,” said Chuck Lanyard, president of The Goldstein Group, the New Jersey-based retail real estate brokerage representing 8 million s/f of retail space. “The good thing about these two events is that it’s going to help spotlight New Jersey and put it on people’s radar screens.”

Organizers have estimated that Super Bowl 2014 will generate approximately $550 million for the local economy.  The Formula One race’s lead organizer, Leo Hindery, has said that the three-day event will generate an additional $100 million in economic activity.

Lanyard called the events “icing on the cake,” since New Jersey’s retail business is already in good shape and picking up quickly.  Vacancy rates dipped below eight percent this year, compared to a 13.5 percent national average, according to data from The Goldstein Group.

Certain zip codes in Jersey have the highest retail sales numbers in the nation. Take the Garden State Plaza in Paramus, just north of the Meadowlands, which usually takes the number one or two spot, Lanyard said.

Retail corridors along highway routes have picked up particularly well, he added. National and large out-of-state retailers are already showing heightened interest. But it’s not just retail that will benefit; hotels, restaurants and taxi drivers will get a boost, too.

“Everyone benefits from this kind of exposure,” Lanyard said.  “The commerce and the revenues that come out of this are really going to be good for Jersey for years to come because it’s going to give many of these retailers a really good boost to help them through the sometimes slower seasons.”

At a press conference following the announcement that Super Bowl 2014 would be held in New Jersey, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said “every day people will be watching what’s going on.”

“The events, the social events, the game preparation events – all the things that will put a great spotlight on all the things that are great about this state and about this region,” he added.

He’s also called the American Dream project “an extraordinary economic boost for this region and for our state,” saying that over 35,000 permanent jobs would be created once it’s completed.

The ugly mall is to get a new look

To gauge the impacts that a major national or international sporting event can have on a city, a shining example is Super Bowl 2012, held in Indianapolis, Indiana, said Jeff Merritt, director of retail and office advisory services with Cushman & Wakefield/Summit Realty Group, based in Indiana.

JEFF MERRITT

Merritt was a volunteer with the organizing committee in Indianapolis that put together a “Super Bowl Village” downtown, blocking off six city blocks, with musicians rocking two stages and an 800-foot zip line giving visitors a bird’s eye view of downtown along with a quick thrill.

Between tents, temporarily-leased spaces (typically one-month) and other pop-up retailers, Merritt estimated that over 100 retailers set up shop in and around the Village, as malls, restaurants, parking lot owners and hotels took on “swarms of people.”

“The whole key to the successful effort was taking every single asset and putting our best-foot forward,” Merritt said. “It brought this city, not just retail, to a higher level.”

Beyond the major sales boost, the aesthetics of the city were transformed, creating long-lasting effects:  vacant buildings were renovated by retailers looking to get in on the action, and the city streets took on a clean sheen, as volunteers worked around the clock to make things shine and help visitors feel at home.

“You can’t just put lipstick on the pig,” he said.  “We had to do it the right way, and the city really shined because of it.”

But having a centralized location for the events, which is thus far not part of any announced plan for Super Bowl 2014, had its downside in Indianapolis, as the hopes of retailers outside the Village never panned out, Merritt said.

“Retailers in outlying areas were probably a little disappointed,” he said.

Michael Stone, a senior director with Cushman & Wakefield New York retail operations, believes Super Bowl 2014 will have a similar localized effect in New Jersey, confined mainly to boosting business for retailers in the American Dream supermall, which is set to be completed in the fall of 2013 and will be connected directly to Giants Stadium through a redeveloped train terminal.

MICHAEL STONE

“We’re really excited about the synergy of all these things happening at the same time,” Stone said. “The visibility of the Super Bowl and the national attraction of people and media attention will really put the American Dream project on the map.”

But, he added, there’s not a lot of retail surrounding the Meadowlands, which is rather isolated, and while events like the Super Bowl and the Formula One race will brings thousands of people into the area who will certainly go shopping, that’s only in addition to the “incredible amount of tourism that we already have.”

Max Dobens

There’s not a lot that spooks Max Dobens, not even real spooks. He’s settled into his newest role at Prudential Douglas Elliman, and his new office digs, like it’s where he was always meant to be.

Every fourth Friday, he barbecues in the back yard of the townhouse at 137 Waverly for the office Broker of the Month, and he’s redecorated the conference room to give it a more “clean and contemporary look.” 

Local legend has it that horror writer, Edgar Allen Poe, once lived at 137 Waverly. When asked if he’s seen any ghosts there, Dobens replies, “Not here.”Well, you’ve gotta ask ….“Then where?”

A long, long time ago, on a dark, windy night on the plains of South Africa, the veteran broker was visited by the apparition of a horrible specter …“I was in South Africa with my family for the World Cup,” recalls the soccer-daft New Yorker. “At the end of the tournament, we went on safari and the cottage we were in had a fireplace in the living room. I threw a log on as we went to bed, but a little later, the place started filling up with smoke.“I was laying in bed and heard what sounded like dried seeds being dropped on the roof. At first, I thought it was a squirrel. [Do they have them on the African plains, this reporter wondered].

But it kept going …..”By now, he could not attempt to define, or even to describe the incessant sound that pulled him nervously out of slumber and down the creaking and shivering stairs.“I saw this apparition move down the stairway and go straight out the door,” Dobens says. “I saw it,” he insists. “I wasn’t dreaming.”This reporter believes him.

That’s the thing about Dobens, he can carry on a conversation just as easily and convincingly about ghosts and ghouls as he can about walkups or penthouses. He’s a natural at being himself, and there is no doubt his easy-going and affable manner helped him land his new position as a PDE executive vice president, director of sales, West Village. 

He explained, “I always tell our agents that they are each their own brand. You can be Prudential, Corcoran, Halstead, whatever, but I am always Max Dobens and who I am and how I treat people goes with me everywhere.

“When management was asking around about me for this job, one senior executive came up to me and said, ‘Max, you must have done something right, because no-one had anything bad to say about you.’ That was the best back-handed compliment I ever had.”

Dobens grew up in the one traffic light town of Hamilton, New York, and went to Michigan State to study business and marketing. But he says, “The things that I use every day in the real world, I learned outside the classroom. I sold stuff in a fraternity store and I started a non-discriminatory fraternity. We had Jewish guys, a couple of Chinese guys, Black guys, White dudes and gay guys all just getting along.

“It was a great time, but it was also my first taste at starting a small business. I was selling an idea, starting something that didn’t exist before. I had to speak in front of people, make everyone get along, negotiate, sign leases for the house. That’s all the stuff I do now. That’s my rock.”

His first job was in corporate sales at Avis car rental and, coincidentally, where he met his wife, who was then the manager of a tour company looking for payment rates for Avis in Spain.

He later went to work for Leading Hotels of the World, the hospitality consortium that specializes in, among other things, hotel inspections for its member properties. Dobens traveled the world, from Scotland to Stockholm, “inspecting” some of the world’s finest destination hotels.

He traveled to Paris on Concorde and dined at the Hotel Plaza Athenée. He rode a one-horse sleigh on a snow-covered Norwegian mountain. But with a growing family and a booming dot com business back in New York, Dobens was tempted into the new tech world where he worked first as a business development director at Iguana Studios, and later as an online content manager for a dot com newbie.

Then one day, while he was vacationing with his family in Greece, he got a fax from his boss telling him the firm had gone bust and he had no job. “At first, I was shocked,” says Dobens. “But thank god I was taking my real estate course. I came back and finished the course.”

He was supposed to take his exam on September 11, 2001. From the windows of the classroom at 123 William, he could see the twin towers burn. When desperate victims began to throw themselves to the ground, Dobens recalls, “I couldn’t look. I had to leave. To get home to my family.”

A week later, he drove to Albany to sit the exam and then quickly went to work selling real estate for Prudential Douglas Elliman. That was in 2001 and, since then, he has gone on to become a New York Residential Specialist, earning what is essentially the equivalent of a master’s degree in residential real estate brokerage. 

He is an honorary faculty member at the Hospitality School of Business at Michigan State University and lectures to students on a regular basis about how to translate their college experience into the real world. 

A consistent top producer, last year he was a member of the PDE team that ranked seventh overall in Gross Commission Income (GCI), tenth overall for the most transactions, and achieved the firm’s Pinnacle Award for earning more than one million dollars in commissions. 

The promotion to EVP has come at the perfect time, as far as he’s concerned. “The whole value proposition of working in this office is that you’re in a boutique firm environment with all the benefits of working for a large company,” he says. “It’s part of a new thing at Elliman that, if you get burnt out or tired of brokerage, there are other opportunities. I decided I wanted to be manager, although I think the name is a misnomer. I am a coach and a leader. My job is to help people who are really good at what they do and make them even better, and I am having so much fun doing it.”

Dobens then reels off the many programs he’s brought to the office in pursuit of his goal, like “higher education Thursdays” when he teaches “real world” lessons in qualifying your buyers, networking and personal branding.

“This week we’re doing role play on how to pick up a buyer at an open house,” he says. “It’s something different every week, but always something that I think is missing from traditional real estate education.

“I am not teaching theoretical nonsense, I am teaching real life application. As a broker, I was shocked and appalled by how many people were running around with unqualified buyers — what the hell good does that do?

“It’s the tool box every broker needs. I am drinking my own Kool Aid right now, because I am helping people and its fun. I want to attract other brokers, too, those who aren’t getting the kind of support they need, because there are choices in New York City, and I can help them take their career to the next level. I was with a top team for 10 years and I’ve applied everything I have learned in life and in the classroom to being the best at what I do.”

He tells a story about playing soccer with his two boys at Brooklyn Tech, the high school in Boerum Hill. One of his kids was wearing a Brazil jersey, which sparked one of those Dobens conversations about who knows what with another dad.

“I ended up selling him an apartment,” says Dobens. “It turned out he worked for a private bank and, over the years, he must have referred me more than $20 million worth of business, all from that one game of footie. That’s the thing about being a broker. Who you are as a person is just as important as what you do as a job. Think about it … a bad attitude can really come back to haunt you.”

Olympic Tower

By Sarah Trefethen

Stanley Chera’s Crown Acquisitions Inc. has purchased a 49.9 percent interest in the Olympic Tower Complex on Fifth Avenue, forming a joint venture with Olympic Tower Associates, and affilate of the Onassis foundation.

The value of the deal has not been disclosed, but sources familiar with the deal say it is in the vicinity of $1 billion.

The four-building complex includes Olympic Tower at 645 Fifth Avenue, the Versace Building at 647 Fifth Ave., the Cartier Building at 653 Fifth Ave., and 10 East 52nd Street.

Leases in the complex’s 150,000 s/f of retail space are due to expire over the next five years, according to Harry Seherr-Thoss, executive managing director of Colliers International.
Seherr-Thoss and Robert L. Freedman, Colliers Tri-state chairman, arranged the deal on behalf of Olympic Tower Associates.

“Crown is very, very strong on retail on Fifth Avenue,” Seherr-Thoss said.

They were chosen for the partnership in hope that they could help maximize the value of the retail portion of the property, he said. Armani Exchange, Jimmy Choo, Gant, and jeweler H. Stern are among the complex’s retail tenants.

Crown investments include the retail condominium at 666 Fifth Avenue, the retail condo of the St. Regis Hotel on 5th Avenue, 530 Fifth Avenue and towers 2, 3, and 4 at the World Trade Center.

Olympic Towers launched its search for a joint venture partner in August, Seherr-Thoss said, and the Colliers team interviewed 40 potential investors including banks, private equity funds and individual investors. They passed on ten candidates for their client to choose from, including Crown.

“It’s a very good partnership. They have the same mindset, they’re entirely on the same page and they get along very well,” Sherr-Thoss said.

The complex also hosts 400,000 s/f of office space, where tenants include the National Basketball Association.

Built in 1974 on commission from Aristotle Onassis, Olympic Tower was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and was the first New York skyscraper to feature a combination of retail shops, commercial office space and owner-occupied apartments in the same building.

Liz Berger

By Sarah Trefethen

Lower Manhattan isn’t just for Wall Street anymore.

With a growing residential population and an influx of office tenants in creative services and other industries, the post-9/11 downtown is setting a new standard for urban lifestyles.

“Thirty percent of the people who live in lower Manhattan walk to work. I don’t think we can overstate the value of that,” Elizabeth Berger, president of the non-profit Downtown Alliance, told attendees of NAIOP’s “Building the Future of New York City” forum last week. “It sounds like an old-fashioned value, but it’s very, very current.”

The combination of office workers, tourists, residents and all that foot traffic creates fertile ground for a wide range of business.

“Every retailer realizes they need a outpost south of Canal Street,” said David Cheikin, vice president of leasing for Brookfield Properties, also at the NAIOP event.

In recent years, the area that once went dark after five and on the weekends has become the home of a number of residentially oriented businesses, including a thriving Whole Foods market.

“A lot of the retailers down there have some very, very strong stores,” said Chase Welles, an executive vice president at Northwest Atlantic Real Estate Services who represents Whole Foods and Staples, which also has a downtown store.

Welles has noticed the change in the area, he said, and is currently seeking lower Manhattan locations for a number of other clients.

“The service retailers — butchers, bakers, candlestick makers — those people are down there, whereas they weren’t before. Before, it was Irish bars open for lunch,” Welles said. “The success of Whole Foods is an example of that.”

In 2011, retail rents along the downtown Broadway corridor averaged $184 per square foot, according to Downtown Alliance. That’s a 22 percent increase over asking rents in the fall of 2010.

Lower Manhattan’s residential population has nearly doubled since 2003, according to the Downtown Alliance, and annual household income is $188,000.Office space is growing right along with the number of residents.

The publisher Conde Nast’s decision to relocate its offices to over one million square feet in the World Trade Center was a “game changer” for lower Manhattan, Berger said, but she noted that there are more than 50 other creative firms baseddowntown, alongside the area’s traditional financial services.

More and more young professionals are choosing to live downtown or in Brooklyn and coastal New Jersey, all areas easily accessible by lower Manhattan’s conflux of trains, buses and ferries.

“Lower Manhattan no longer has to apologize for its distance from Fairfield or Westchester County,” said John Wheeler, managing director of Jones Lang LaSalle.

Lower Manhattan hosts 85.2 million s/f of office space, with another 4.5 million under construction, including the World Trade Center complex.When completed, the WTC will also bring another 550,000 s/f of retail space to the area, including two-levels of a below-grade concourse extending from the World Financial Center to both the new Fulton Street Transit Center and the corner of Liberty and Church Streets.

And Brookfield, which owns the World Financial Center, is planning another 200,000 s/f of retail, including a new dining terrace and additional space for luxury retailers in the financial center courtyard.

The WTC — along with the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty — also draws visitors to lower Manhattan. The neighborhood attracts 9.8 million visitors each year, and five new hotels are expected to open downtown over the next three years, adding over 1,000 guest rooms. In the closing keynote for NAIOP’s forum, World Trade Center president Janno Lieber hailed lower Manhattan’s emerging live / work community.

“You have one of the best public schools in New York, and you see school buses lined up two blocks from here in front of new condos and Bed Bath and Beyond,” he said.“It’s the one place where you’re really seeing that walk-to-work sustainable development model. Compact, dense, fewer trips, smaller carbon footprint.”

Out of 300 licensed sales agents and staff members at Town, about 18 are part of family teams

When Lee Schweninger was in elementary school, he attended open houses with his mother, Elaine, a longtime broker who now works at Town Residential. At one point, he even had a chance to answer phone calls at the sales office of a Lower Manhattan condo development. “At six years old, I was an unwitting intern,” he joked.

After graduating from college, Schweninger got his broker’s license and joined his mom at Town. Such family partnerships are common at the firm, which was founded just over a year ago by Andrew Heiberger. Husbands and wives work together, as do siblings. Heiberger himself lists apartments alongside his sister, Lisa, and the firm employs a set of twins, Aminata and Soukeyna Sy.

Town founder Andrew Heiberger works with his sister, Lisa

Of 300 licensed sales agents and staff members in Town’s six Manhattan offices, about 18 are part of family teams.

 “While some companies prohibit relatives from working together, we recognize that there can be tremendous benefits stemming from an inclusive approach,” Rose Scalia, Town’s director of human resources, said in a statement. “This is particularly true in real estate, an industry where apprenticeships are common and both skills and relationships can be passed down through generations.” 

By joining his mom, who worked for a decade at Prudential Douglas Elliman following a career in early childhood education, Schweninger has been able to work on deals that many rookie brokers would have to wait years to handle. 

For instance, the pair is directing sales at Observatory Place, a LEED certified luxury condo development at 353 East 104th Street in East Harlem. “We’re finishing it up,” said the elder Schweninger. “It’s 70 percent sold.” 

And recently, the mother-son team listed a three-bedroom rental at 166 Duane Street in TriBeCa for $17,500 a month, available June 1. Of course, because 20-somethings tend to be savvier with twitter, Facebook, and mobile apps than their parents, the benefits of a multigenerational partnership are mutual.

“[Lee] can do a lot of things I can do, but not really well,” Elaine Schweninger said, referring in part to her son’s grasp of the latest tech trends. “We’re a good team.” 

Lee Schweninger

Schweninger exposes her son to the glamour of TriBeCa and SoHo, where most of her business is concentrated, and he keeps her in the loop about the young professional scene in Brooklyn, where he went to high school and now rents an apartment. 

Such arrangements work so well that a number of brokerage firms welcome teams of relatives.Two sisters-in-law, Lauren and Maria Cangiano, work together at Halstead, for instance. And a husband and wife team, Paula and Joseph Cesarano, recently joined Houlihan Lawrence’s White Plains office. 

Elaine Schweninger

Many of Schweninger’s longtime friends in the industry have brought their children on board. “I said to a colleague, ‘we should start a support group for people that work with their children,’” Schweninger joked. “I remember the kids when they were in grammar school, preschool.”

At Citi Habitats, which also boasts a handful of family teams, Ira Schulte, a former social worker and psychotherapist who at one point ran his own brokerage firm, relies on his son’s social media skills to help market listings.

“He would still be using a typewriter if he could,” joked the younger Schulte, who joined his father at the firm a year and a half ago, after receiving a bachelor’s degree in business and marketing and working in management at Circuit City.

Though the Schultes often handle separate listings, father and son worked together to secure a buyer for a large combined apartment — made up of two studios and a one bedroom — at 4 Lexington Avenue, a pre-war co-op building near Gramercy Park where the elder Schulte had four previous listings. 

“Michael helped with marketing ideas,” Schulte explained. “We did open houses together.” 

Mike and Ira Schulte

In addition to the sharing of expertise, father and son benefit from a sense of familial duty. While the younger Schulte was vacationing on a houseboat in Amsterdam recently, an offer was accepted on one of his listings in Murray Hill. 

He had no qualms about asking his father to finalize the sale for him, and the elder Schulte didn’t think twice about helping out. 

Michael Hamberger, a colleague of the Schultes’ at Citi Habitats, is more than familiar with this type of scenario.

For much of his adult life, Hamberger has worked side by side with family members.

After graduating from college with a degree in accounting, he helped his father set up window displays for department stores — including elaborate Christmas displays at Macy’s.

Michael Hamberger

“My father retired, sold the business, and we decided we had enough of each other,” Hamberger joked.
Now, he sells apartments with his wife, Fern. “I’ve been in family businesses all my life,” he said.

The two began investing in real estate shortly after they were married, but it wasn’t until four years ago that they joined forces at Citi Habitats.

“Together, we bought and sold houses for 31 years,” explained Fern Hamberger, who began her career in IT and then switched to mergers and acquisitions. “It wasn’t until 9/11 that it became a business.”

Fern Hamberger

Much of her finance work was disrupted by the attacks — and besides, she was exhausted from frequent travelling. “Real estate is in my blood,” she said. “I thought, why not be a broker?”

Before joining Citi Habitats, she launched her career at Nest Seekers, where she quickly found success: one of her first sales at the firm was a $5 million apartment.

When she approached her husband about joining her, he initially shied away. “At first he said, ‘No, no, I don’t want to work with you,’” she joked.

When he eventually agreed to help, business boomed, and the couple carved a niche in relocations. At one point, their daughter briefly joined them before heading off to law school. “Sometimes [Michael] says, ‘Why didn’t we start this earlier?’” Hamberger said.

Much like the Schultes and other parent-child teams, each Hamberger brings something to the table: Fern, who was born in Egypt and speaks Arabic, Italian, French and Hebrew, can relate on a personal level to the couple’s international clientele, while her husband knows the five boroughs inside out.

“I speak many languages and that helps with relocations,” Hamberger explained. “He’s a native New Yorker, and knows every nook and cranny of the city.”

Their status as husband wife – not just business partners – has also helped them maintain social relationships with clients, which often lead to referrals.

Not long ago, the couple, who live in Bergen County, NJ, and recently purchased a small studio in Manhattan to crash at after late nights working, helped a young woman find a home in New Jersey.

When the client and her boyfriend were ready to move in together, the Hambergers secured them a larger house.

Later, they attended the couple’s wedding. “They introduced us to friends and family,” said Hamberger. “They relate to us.”