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Columbia University Business School Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate

Alumni in the Media

Real Estate Alumni in the Media  

Here is what your fellow Columbia Business School Real Estate Alumni have been doing recently. If you don't see your news mentioned, please let us know.

PERE’s Thirty Capital Raisers Who Can Make a Difference

Congratulations to the following alumni for making PERE’s list of “men and women you want in your corner when fundraising in today’s ultra-competitive capital markets.”

Julie Brenton ’89

Michael Crawford ’85

Gentry Hoit ’90

Nancy Lashine ’81

Zach Aarons ’13

MetaProp Is Making the Innovative Mainstream

“What was once considered to be fringe intellectual stimulation for the more innovative, forward-thinking people in the real estate industry has become mainstream,” said founding partner Aarons, who has funded more than 60 startups as an individual as well as 40 more—and counting—through MetaProp NYC’s venture capital funds.

Commercial Property Executive

Nicholas Bienstock ’96

Savanna to Spend $100 Million on Klapper-Owned Chelsea Building

Savanna, a Midtown Manhattan private equity firm, is close to taking over a Chelsea office building. The real estate investment manager, led by Christopher Schlank and Nicholas Bienstock, is tapping into its fourth fund to pay a price tag that hovers just below $100 million.

BizJournals


Amazon to Lease 1M SF in Savanna’s One Court Square for HQ2

“We’re thrilled that Amazon selected One Court Square as a critical component of its HQ2 plans for Long Island City,” Savanna managing partner Nicholas Bienstock said in a statement.

The Real Deal

Allison Chiaramonte ’09

8 Things to Look For in Your First Family Home

Buying a home is a process: defining your budget and your “need-to-haves” versus your “nice-to-haves” requires a serious conversation with yourself. Buying a family home is a whole other beast. With children (future, on the way, or already born), you’ll have to predict and foresee what you and your family will need in the years to come—a hard thing to do for even the most A-type planners among us.

Well-Rounded

Tom DeRosa ’88

Welltower & Hines Acquire Upper West Side Site to Develop Second Manhattan Seniors Housing and Memory Care Community

Welltower Plans Second Senior Living High-Rise in Manhattan

Welltower, Hines Plan Second Manhattan Senior Living High-Rise

Welltower, Hines to Build 2nd Manhattan Senior Living Project

17-Story Senior Living Complex Coming to Upper West Side

“We are very pleased to expand our partnership with Hines, which is focused on developing state-of-the-art residential senior care buildings in major urban markets like New York City,” said Tom DeRosa, CEO of Welltower. “The Upper West Side of Manhattan is a uniquely distinct neighborhood with a large population of affluent seniors yet zero supply of modern, purpose built residential care communities. This location is in the top percentile of the demand curve for our target households and The Welltower West will offer a seamless extension of this unique neighborhood for our residents.”

PR Newswire, Senior Housing News, McKnight’s Senior Living, Multi-Housing News & Patch

Howard Fiddle ’87

Bloomberg LP Renews Grand Central Offices

Bloomberg Inks 460 KSF Lease Renewal in Manhattan

Bloomberg Stays Put Near Grand Central

Global Holdings has signed a 460,000-square-foot lease renewal with Bloomberg for nearly 75 percent of the space at 120 Park Avenue through February 2029. The tenant has been occupying space in the Class A building since 2011 and the prior lease was about to expire in 2020. JLL’s Paul Glickman and Diana Biasotti represented Global Holdings in the transaction. CBRE’s Howard Fiddle and Craig Reicher, who earlier this year brokered another major lease on Avenue of the Americas, acted on behalf of the tenant.

The Real Deal, Commercial Property Executive & Commercial Observer

Geoff Goldstein ’07

Vanbarton Takes Small Loss on $75M Sale of Windsor Terrace Rental Building

Dermot Co. Picks Up Brooklyn Luxury Multifamily Property

The Dermot Company has purchased a 126-unit multifamily building in Windsor Terrace for about $75 million, according to property records and sources familiar with the deal. An HFF team including Andrew Scandalios, Jeffrey Julien, Rob Hinckley, Steven Klein and Geoff Goldstein, along with a Savills Studley team including David Krantz and Paul Leibowitz, worked on the deal.

The Real Deal & Multi-Housing News

Scott Meyer ’14

How to Invest in Opportunity (Zones)

Investors should be focused on long-term ownership when choosing properties, says Scott Meyer, managing principal and chief investment officer of Kairos Real Estate Advisors in South Miami, Florida. “An investor cannot benefit from the tax incentives if their plan is to buy a stabilized asset, throw a new coat of paint on it and call it a day,” Meyer says. Properties must meet the substantial improvement test, excluding land value, set forth by the Internal Revenue Service.

U.S. News & World Report

Jonathan More ’09

Mission Capital Arranges $13M Loan for Sterling Organization's Mag Mile Development

Mission Capital Advisors announced that its debt and equity finance group has arranged $13 million of non-recourse, floating-rate financing on behalf of an affiliate of the Sterling Organization to recapitalize 110 E. Pearson Street, a 9,000-square-foot vacant retail property in the heart of the Magnificent Mile section of Chicago. Jonathan More, Alex Draganiuk, Lexington Henn and Justin Hunt of the Mission Capital team secured the loan from Thorofare Capital, a Los Angeles-based national commercial real estate loan origination and servicing company.

Commercial Property Executive

Patrick Nelson ’10

Hot-Desk Giant WeWork Has a Spot in the New One Central Plaza but no Plans Outside Dublin Yet

The company’s head of real estate for Europe, Patrick Nelson, told Fora that WeWork aims to have at least five locations for each city in which it has a presence….“I personally like to have a minimum of five buildings in any given city, because that’s the moment that members start to recognise that this is something much greater than some office space,” Nelson said.

The Journal

Clelia Peters ’09

MetaProp is Making the Innovative Mainstream

MetaProp co-founding partner & advisor Clelia Warburg Peters, president of Warburg Realty, brings key residential real estate insights to the equation with her significant experience in strategic business development, cutting-edge technology and financial investing. According to Peters, an increasing dependence on technology is changing almost every aspect of how Warburg Realty is run. “In terms of my day-to-day communication with my brokers, we’re moving to tools that are faster,” said Peters.

Commercial Property Executive


NYC Slow to Nurture Proptech, Say Venture Capitalists

“New York, from a regulatory or government perspective, maybe was a tiny bit slow to step in and engage with supporting this,” said Clelia Peters, co-founder of venture capital firm MetaProp and president of residential brokerage Warburg Realty. “London was a lot faster.”

Crain's New York Business

Robert Reffkin ’03

Compass Agents Put $20M in Commission toward Buying Company Stock Options

Although Compass has offered lucrative bonuses and equity to attract talent, CEO Robert Reffkin said the Agent Equity Program was the company’s response to agents who wanted to invest a portion of their earned commissions in stock options (much like he said lawyers, bankers and financial advisors often do).

The Real Deal


Compass Acquires DC Indie Brokerage

Earlier this year, CEO Robert Reffkin said Compass, which was valued at $4.4 billion in September following a $400 million Series F round, pays between four and six times a firm’s annual pre-tax earnings when making an acquisition.

The Real Deal

David Simon ’85

No Black Friday Chaos? No Problem for Top Malls

As it turns out, the death of Sears is the birth of a brighter future for the folks who own the land underneath. For instance, Simon Property Group CEO David Simon recently told analysts that department store closures are actually a net positive for the mall operator, which slightly grew revenue in the third quarter to $1.41 billion. “We’re planning for the ultimate, unfortunate demise of Sears and we’re ready for it,” the chief executive said during the firm’s quarterly earnings conference call in October. “And we have the balance sheet, and the capital with intellectual and human resources to deal with these set of events.”

The Virginian-Pilot


The US’s Biggest Mall Operator Says the Mall of the Future ‘Doesn’t Need Department Stores’

“We're going to redevelop this,” he said. “We're going to generate positive momentum with the properties due to this. We're going to reinvest in the communities. We're going to be able to drive traffic from this box, put all of that aside.” Simon said the company has already closed some department stores this year, and has seen sales getting the benefit from the closures. “Our industry got just too carried away with having all these big department-store boxes,” Simon said.

Business Insider

Brian Steinwurtzel ’04

Gural Family’s GFP Planning $240M Biotech Center in Long Island City

The Gural family is planning to build a $240 million biotech center in Long Island City, which–along with a certain Seattle-based e-commerce company–is emerging as destination for the city’s life-sciences and lab industry….GFP co-CEOs Eric Gural and Brian Steinwurtzel will lease the building at 45-18 Court Square West alongside King Street Properties from Richard Scharf’s Abro Management, which bought the property in 2007 for $33 million, documents with the New York City Industrial Development Agency show.

The Real Deal

Constantine Valhouli ’03

Would You Rent this One Bedroom in a New Building in Bed-Stuy for $2,850?

“First off, when did Bed-Stuy become 'Bedstuy?' I'm continually baffled by listing language. Anyhow, the building seems nice but a bit...basic. Like no one was really having fun with the interior or exterior design (except for the wood-paneled hallways, which are actually rather interesting). New buildings like this make Bed-Stuy (sorry, 'Bedstuy') 2018 feel like Williamsburg circa 2008.”

Brick Underground

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