NEW YORK CITY-Retail broker Kenji Ota—a former managing director at Newmark Grubb Knight Frank—has joined Cushman & Wakefield, where he has been tapped as an executive director.
“Cushman & Wakefield has long been home to one of the highest-producing retail teams in the New York market, and Kenji Ota will make a big contribution to our retail group's powerful growth trajectory,” says Ron Lo Russo, president, New York tri-state region. “He is a valuable addition to our contingent of first-rate retail brokers.”
Adds Suzy Reingold, COO, NY tri-state region, “We're excited to have a dedicated and talented professional like Kenji join an already strong retail team and we look forward to his contributions.”
At Newmark, Ota played a leadership role in business development and account management for both commercial property owners and retail tenants. He also helped owners boost asset value through the repositioning and upgrade of properties. Ota joined the firm in 2008. No one at the firm was available to comment on his departure.
Ota has compiled an impressive portfolio of tenant transactions, Cushman reports. He represented such prominent clients as Under Armour, New York Community Bank, Wendy's International, City Sports, and Urgent Care Manhattan.
There is much room to grow in the retail sector, notes Cushman in its latest research on the property segment. In the firm's recently released market report for the fourth quarter of 2013, Manhattan's retail sector was cited as an area of strength that has consistently outpaced national retail trends. Boosted by tourism as a key driver of retail traffic, the report found that the sector was steadily performing beyond expectations, with supporting fundamentals pointing to further sustainability.
Cushman & Wakefield's flagship retail research report, “Main Streets Across the World,” recently celebrated its 25th year monitoring and analyzing the evolution of the industry and global retail trends, ranking the most expensive locations in the top 334 shopping destinations across 64 countries.
Additionally, the firm's Global Cities Retail Guide, a guide designed to help real estate professionals better understand the business of international retail and food and beverage operators, tracks more than 105 cities and 44 countries worldwide. The web-based guide offers insights to local markets, including culture, demographics, customs, how business is done, leasing guidelines, where major shopping streets are, which type of retailers can be found in different submarkets and more.
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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.
