NEW YORK CITY-Avison Young has nabbed a senior level broker from Cushman & Wakefield. Adam Rappaport, who served at Cushman for 13 years, most recently as senior director, has been hired as a principal at Avison, effective immediately.
At Cushman & Wakefield, Rappaport represented tenants and landlords in office leasing. Notable deals included SourceMedia, Inc.'s leases at 1 State Street Plaza and 1 Whitehall Street, totaling 142,000 square feet; the DirecTV Group's 138,000-square-foot lease at 1 Rockefeller Plaza; and Infor Global Solutions' lease at 641 Avenue of the Americas for 43,000 square feet. Rappaport also worked on behalf of UBS AG in the company's leases at 101 Park Ave. and 1285 Avenue of the Americas, totaling 143,000 square feet; and he represented BlackRock in transactions totaling 50,000 square feet at 40 East 52nd St.
The executive changed firms in order to get in on the ground floor of a growing company, he says. The New York office opened just last year.
“Although the New York office is new, it's very well-established and Avison has been able to cherry pick some top professionals that are good guys—they're honest and ethical,” Rappaport tells GlobeSt.com. “We're trying to build something in New York which is exciting, as is the level of professionals that are here.”
The company's small size—relative to Cushman's—is also a plus, Rappaport says. “It's nice to have a smaller shop because everyone is on one team and looking to grow the company,” he says. “When it's so big, it's hard to organize in that way.
Similar enticements were cited by John Ryan III when he joined Avison two weeks ago, after close to two decades at Jones Lang LaSalle. He also was appointed a principal.
Avison is clearly in growth mode; its New York office today is filled with 48 people, including 33 brokers—19 of whom are principals.It's growing its presence nationwide too. In Denver, CO, on Tuesday it announced the hiring of Marc Lunde, a 27-year veteran with a variety of local and national experience, as a principal. Over the past four years, the company has grown from 11 to 43 offices, jumping from 300 to more than 1,100 real estate professionals across Canada and the U.S.
Meanwhile, Cushman appears to be losing top talent. A trio of high performing brokers—Gregory Frisoli, Glenn Walsh and Lawrence Ruggieri—left the company on Feb. 25th to join Newmark Grubb Knight Frank.
In a Wall Street Journal article, Walsh calls the making of leasing assignments at Cushman “very frustrating.” In an interview with GlobeSt.com, Frisoli failed to confirm the article but he did call it “good.”
In response to the recent departures, Cushman & Wakefield's Jim Underhill, CEO of the Americas, tells GlobeSt.com, "We have a very strong, full-service platform—with some of the best brokerage and consulting professionals in the business—but it may not be for everyone.”
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Rayna Katz
Rayna Katz is a seasoned business journalist whose extensive experience includes coverage of the lodging sector, travel and the culinary space. She was most recently content director for a business-to-business publisher, overseeing four publications. While at Meeting News, a travel trade publication, she received a Best Reporting award for a story on meeting cancellations in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
