When interviewing Jeff Blau, the CEO of Related Companies, for this year’s Power 100 we asked a question Commercial Observer had never raised in the past:
Who do you think should be No. 1 on our list?
To revamp the old saw that every time a senator looks in the mirror they see a president, we imagine that every time a developer is asked his or her position in the real estate pecking order the only number they recognize is “one.” (Blau—along with Stephen Ross and Bruce Beal—got the nod himself last year.) However, if they took themselves out of the equation, who should be No. 1?
“You should pick Google,” Blau said. “They’re doing more real estate than anybody. You put Google on, everybody will say, ‘Holy shit!’ ”
Google’s $2.4 billion purchase of Chelsea Market in February was the third-largest single-building office transaction ever in New York City history—and the buy also said something even subtler about the future of the city. As Gotham jockeys to be named the new East Coast headquarters of Amazon with 19 other cities, this was a remarkable vote of confidence in this city. It said something about where the newer, techier, younger workforce wants to be.
The other thing the Google real estate purchase proved was that while many real estate players regularly say that real estate is in a holding pattern, or that we’re in “extra-innings” in an interminably long market cycle, there are players who are taking the initiative and not shying away from big things.
And that was one of the most important characteristics of those who rose in our estimation this year—they didn’t shy away from thinking big.
Brookfield Property Partners’ Ric Clark was No. 8 last year, but the company seemed unusually peckish this year; not only was it wading into multifamily with The Eugene at Manhattan West and Greenpoint Landing with the Park Tower Group in Brooklyn; not only was it leasing millions of square feet of space (like, say, EY taking 600,000 square feet at 1 Manhattan West, or Amazon taking 305,000 square feet at 5 Manhattan West); not only was it making big trades (a $2.21 billion sale of 245 Park Avenue to HNA) but after a first rebuffed attempt it managed to acquire GGP, itself one of the country’s heavyweight REITs.
Some of the heavy hitters didn’t have much room to go any higher. RXR Realty was tapped—along with Vantage Airport Group—to lead the multibillion-dollar expansion of the JetBlue terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport. Normally, this is the kind of deal that could send a developer into the top five. Unfortunately, RXR CEO and Chairman Scott Rechler was No. 4 last year, so there wasn’t a lot of room for improvement. (He’s No. 4 again.)
Silverstein Properties has always had a fairly high ranking in Power 100, but with its winning $1 billion-plus bid for the Upper West Side ABC campus it merited a spot in the top 10.
Every year publicists, landlords and brokers call Commercial Observer and ask two things: Where are they on the list? (We keep that strictly under wraps.) And what’s our methodology?
Our methodology is never going to satisfy everybody. (A “popularity contest” is how one publicist dismissed it when I tried to walk him through it.) How does one compare a landlord with a broker? It’s a difficult question. If the broker disappears from the deal, can he be replaced? Sure. But if a landlord has a great piece of real estate and nobody believes in the project or the neighborhood or the transportation, will it go empty? Sure again. Who’s more powerful? The answer is that it depends. CO’s editorial staff spent many hours wading through these questions, assigning spots on the list and trying to provide answers to questions like, “Is Google—a tech company—really a real estate powerhouse?”
Answer: Absolutely.—Max Gross