It will be easier than ever to win the 76th Annual Real Estate Board of New York Ingenious Deal of the Year award for deals completed in 2019. That’s because just two leases and three sales were nominated, with none in the finance category.
Under the rules, the two leases will be combined with the three sales to determine the three prestigious award winners.
The two leases include the NYC Health + Hospitals 500,000-square-foot lease at 50 Water St., submitted by Brian Waterman, Ira Rovitz, Lance Korman, Romel Canete and Daniel Keegan of Newmark Knight Frank.
This transaction involved the election of a purchase option and flipping the deal to the current owner, who signed the lease with the city.
The second was for Uber, represented by Alice Fair and Sacha Zarba of CBRE, for its multi-building search and then 307,000-square-foot lease at Silverstein Properties’ 3 World Trade Center.
The first nominated sale involved both the sale and financing of the Parker Family Estate Portfolio, which included Truffles and the Parker New York Hotel at 34 Desbrosses St., which was nominated by NKF’s James Kuhn.
Three charities coordinated their sales for the second nomination. The Church of the Epiphany sold its 1393 York Ave. to Weill Cornell Medical College, and then bought 351 E. 74th St. from the Jan Hus Presbyterian Church, which then purchased the smaller 1745 First Ave. Whew!
These interconnected transactions were submitted by the Avison Young team of Jon Epstein, Susan Kahaner, James Nelson and Jennifer Ogden.
The third nominated sale was the Rego Park 18 Portfolio at 98-11 Queens Blvd. and 64-33 98th St. by Thomas Donovan and Eugene Kim of B6 Real Estate Advisors along with Hudson Park Realty’s Lynette Tulkoff.
Winners are supposed to be announced at a cocktail party at the 101 Club on April 7, so hoping that by then coronavirus concerns are abated.