An Unauthorized Guide to CRE’s Power Rankings

“I have a competition in me.” - Daniel Plainview

Commercial Observer just dropped the Power 100, its much-anticipated annual rundown of the women & men shaping our built environment through a combination of capital, connections & chutzpah. The unveiling of the ranking, the cash cow of the publication’s editorial calendar, generally triggers three types of behaviors from CRE’s movers & shakers: Those high up on the list tout exactly where they’ve landed, those lower down prefer to focus on the fact that they made the cut, and those not on it pretend it doesn’t exist.

We at The Promote have found the CO list a handy way of measuring juice, that inscrutable cocktail of actual dealmaking, legacy brand, political clout & media savvy that defines what the industry thinks of as power. However, rather than capture this essence, the writeups that run along w/ the list tend to be a treasure trove of Unquotable Quotes ™️. So we thought it’d be good to take a crack at some unfiltered analysis on some of the notable names - think of it as bootleg DVD commentary on your favorite CRE moguls. 📀 🧃 

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Power (Cont.)

• Marc Holliday, SL Green, #1: A shoo-in if we’re overweighting 🗽 . One Vandy became America’s most valuable skyscraper by a distance ($4.7B, $2,700+/ 🦶) after a stake sale to the Japanese. The REIT leased 3.6M+ sf of office over the year. Its capstack jiujitsu at 280 Park saw it buy its own mezz for a 50% discount from the long-suffering Koreans, after which it scored edgy hedgie Paul Singer’s Elliott Investment Management to a marquee lease. It has faced headaches over its NYC casino bid and taken a $90M black eye from partner New York REIT at Worldwide Plaza (more on that fascinating case at 14:06 here). Still, a stupendous year by any standard, enough to earn Holliday a hefty pay bump to $21M. 🏇 

• Marc Rowan, Apollo, #7: When he’s not tormenting NIMBY Hamptonites, Rowan’s busy building an insurance-powered flywheel that’s making Apollo a main character in CRE’s private-credit craze. Apollo’s been AUM gobbling ™️ through acquisitions such the $1.5B deal for REIT Bridge Investment Group, has been in talks w/ Zuck’s Meta to finance a $35B data-center development bet, and even though Q1 earnings weren’t hot, who cares – fundraising was. 🦞 

• Jeff Blau, Related, #4: In ‘24, Blau finally emerged from under the mammoth shadow of Related founder Steve Ross, who stepped down to move south and spend money “like a drunken sailor” reshaping West Palm Beach 🌴 (Ross is now #34 on the list in his own right.) Blau’s Related broke ground on another HY skyscraper and landed Deloitte to anchor it, launched (of c) a data-center biz, landed the plum assignment to develop the House of Griffindor in Miami, and pulled off a Lufthansa heist-like deal to snag Signature’s rent-stabilized loan book even though it was far from the highest bidder (more on that at 12:50 here).

• Nathan Berman, Metro Loft, #35: The office-resi alchemist is whom New York’s unloved office stock turns to for salvation. Berman is in a fascinating position rn – he’s raising a record $700M+ for the 1,600-unit conversion of the Pfizer HQ, even while staring down distress and executing painful recaps on others. 🪙 

• Doug Harmon & Adam Spies, Newmark, #17 AND Gary Phillips & Will Silverman, Eastdil, #18: Knowing how these things go, we can tell you that this specific positioning is what the editors must have most agonized over in the entire ranking. Both duos have cornered the trophy I-sales market, brokering everything from Miki Naftali’s megabet on the UES (deep dive at 8:00 on the pod here) to hairy note sales to an embattled pension’s trophy Manhattan office tower. (There is a firm-level rivalry here, too, which we explore at 19:30 here.)

New Pod: Rechnitz’s Uncut Gems & Skyscraper Structural Corruption

“It sort of beggars belief at times that he's not in prison or dead.” 💀 
“The net result of something like this is that you have this web of coverage that creates this impression that this is the building you got to be in. And that impression is super important for sales velocity.” 🥥 

Floyd Mayweather. New York real estate. Police corruption. Diamonds. Celebrities. LA mansions. Crypto pump-n-dump’s. All these elements come together in the fantastical tale of Jona Rechnitz, a hustler extraordinaire who one adversary described as the “Jewish John Gotti.” In Ep. 10 (!) of The Promote Podcast, we riff on Rechnitz’s cartoonishly controversial career. We then break down allegations of “structural corruption” at one of the country’s most famous supertalls, 432 Park Avenue, and what implications it could have for the future of this bizarre asset class.
Listen on Spotify here or tune in via Apple Podcasts here. If you’re interested in advertising, hit us up here. And show us 💌 via ratings & reviews. 🙏 

Chrysler Building Back in Play

The ink on the court order wresting the Chrysler Building back from RFR is barely dry, and already Cooper Union is making moves: The college is quietly marketing the leasehold on the Art Deco icon via Savills 🤔 , The Promote has learned. This 1930s vintage 1.2M sf property is a daunting prospect for any buyer – it has a global brand but is in dire need of an overhaul. RFR couldn’t make the numbers work even at its $150M ($125/ 🦶 ) purchase price in ‘19, which was already a massive 💇‍♂️ from the $890M valuation ($740/ 🦶) Abu Dhabi bought in at in ‘08 (for a full rundown of the global players who’ve gotten shellacked by this property, check out our thread.) RFR had to grapple w/ rapidly skyrocketing ground rents ($7.8M in ‘18, $32.5M now and $41M in ‘28) as well as an allegedly felonious partner in Austrian mogul René Benko; Benko’s arrest in Jan. was the beginning of the end.

CU, which has a longstanding sweetheart tax treatment at the property, could slice this deal a few different ways: it could demand a fat lump sum up front; it could ask for a hefty set rent per year w/ defined escalations over the 99Y term (easier for it to land financing on such an arrangement); or it could opt for a more entrepreneurial deal in which it takes lower annual rents with fair-market-value resets plus profit participation, creating more upside but harder for it to go get a loan against. (The Promote has been itching to dive into the universe of ground leases in general, and shall do soon.)

Bayview Buys Slice of Signature CRE Book

The Blackstone/CPP/Rialto JV continues to sell off slices of a $17B pie of Signature Bank’s CRE loan book. The latest deal is a $395M sale to Bayview Asset Management, per Bloomberg, backed by 121 performing loans. Newmark’s Harmon & Spies (see 👆️ ), which scored the lucrative assignment to unwind Signature’s $60B book, brokered the transaction. Other buyers from the Blackstone JV include Maverick & Morgan Stanley.

Quickies

• JDL, w/ Kayne Anderson $$, now eyeing full control of Lincoln Yards megaproject (more context here)

• “Sugar-coated gut punch:” An operator vents about the new lily-livered Opportunity Zones legislation 👊 

• More extreme Traveling HFC eradication bill has passed the House - but may run headfirst into the TX constitution (More HFC coverage here, here, here)

• Another Eastdil to Cushman move: Debt guy John Paul (JP) Leveque

• Calling oneself a “visionary” is a tough look 

Unquotable Quotes