Some of us get our positive reinforcement from the Oscar committee. Others from the Pulitzer committee. And, in New York, where real estate brokers get about as much respect as, say, newspaper reporters, some of us get it from the Real Estate Board of New York.
On Tuesday evening, after The Observer went to press, REBNY presented its annual Most Ingenious Deal of the Year Awards at the 101 Club on Park Avenue. The Ingenies are, as one real estate insider put it, “something you’ll refer to probably for your entire career.”
The Observer got the award winners’ names in advance of Tuesday evening’s event.
And so the 2008 Ingenie winners, selected from 39 nominees in 21 deals in 2007, are …
Mary Ann Tighe and Gregory Tosko of CB Richard Ellis won first place for “Adding Color to Grey: The Winding Road to Grey Group’s 370,000-square-foot anchor lease at 200 Fifth Avenue.” This year, just as the market was starting to struggle, Ms. Tighe and Mr. Tosko brokered a deal that will move Grey Group, an advertising firm, from its Third Avenue headquarters into the Toy Center building.
Moshe Sukenik and David Noonan of Newmark Knight Frank won second place for “The Land Swap that led to the new Lincoln Square Synagogue,” a sale and leaseback deal that REBNY described as “one of the most complex land assemblages in Manhattan.” The deal will create “the largest new synagogue in Manhattan since Temple Emanu-El in 1927.”
Andrew J. Singer and Kathleen McSharry of the Singer & Bassuk Organization took third place for the finance deal “50 Murray Street.” REBNY said the deal “enables World-Wide Holdings, the ground lessor of 50 Murray Street, to arrange replacement permanent financing for the luxury rental housing development.”
