NEW YORK CITY-Sierra Realty Corp. has partnered with Lee & Associates to open Lee & Associates NYC—the second northeast location for Lee, and its 44^th in the US.

President James Wacht, managing principal Peter Braus and COO Joel Herskowitz will head up the office, which opened Tuesday. Wacht, who joined Sierra Realty in 1989, tells GlobeSt.com that the partnership gives Sierra access to the Lee name and “a capital infusion that’s going to allow us to grow a New York office and attract top quality brokers.”

So far the office of 14 includes two new brokers with decades of experience who have an office specialty, thereby expanding Lee’s practice. “We do a tremendous amount of retail leasing and we do a modest amount of office leasing,” Wacht says. “We’ve already had the ability to recruit some very top brokers who are eager to become principals in the company.”

For his part, Edward Indvik, CEO of Lee & Associates, says that the New York market holds “unlimited potential” for the brokerage. “From Lee’s perspective, obviously New York is the largest marketplace in the United States so it’s an easy one for us to understand the value of creating a first line brokerage operation there,” Indvik says. “For us it represents a real flagship opportunity for us on the east coast.”

Indvik adds that Lee has had its eye on opening a New York office for a while, recognizing for “at least the last 20 years that it was something we wanted to accomplish.”