The Ingenious Deal of the Year Awards highlight the year's most ingenious and creative sale, lease or finance deals, and recognize dealmakers that demonstrate the most ingenuity, creativity and professional skill.

“We are delighted to honor these leading brokers that have shown tremendous determination, dedication, and ingenuity in navigating such intricate transactions,” says Steven Spinola, REBNY president. “Their accomplishments are a true testament to the extensive research, persistence, and sheer willpower that go into achieving success at the highest level in our commercial real estate brokerage industry.”

Woody Heller of Savills Studley, and chair of REBNY's sales brokers committee, presented the awards. The judges for REBNY's 2014 Ingenious Deal of the Year Awards were David Lebenstein of Cassidy Turley; Peter Hauspurg of Eastern Consolidated; Steve Alden of Debevoise & Plimpton; Andrew Albstein, Esq. of Goldberg Weprin & Ustin; John Gunther-Mohr of Santander; and Kevin Chisholm of 60 Guilders.

Shanahan, Stacom and Leibowitz won first place honors for arranging a partnership with Shanghai-based Greenland Holdings, which signed on as a 70% joint venture equity partner for Forest City Ratner's Pacific Park project in Downtown Brooklyn.

With no word for “joint venture” in Mandarin, Shanahan, Stacom and Leibowitz developed an alternative corporate deal structure with divisions, committees and a board of directors. Downtown Brooklyn, meanwhile, was best described through a comparison to Kowloon, a similar Hong Kong suburb.

Other obstacles included a record-low investment yield for Brooklyn, land pricing at double the amount for recent comps and an impossibly tight timeframe. The team obtained a six-month extension for the closing so they could secure the development and more than six million square feet of air rights.

Fiddle and Gerla extended and restructured a 1.77 million-square-foot lease with anchor tenant Credit Suisse at the Sapir Organization and CIM Group's 11 Madison Ave. Simultaneously, the team arranged a 550,000-square-foot lease with Sony Corp. of America by securing a building-within-a-building setup for the tenant with a new, dedicated entrance at the same property, but under a new address, 25 Madison Ave. The leases were followed by subsequent tenant wins with William Morris Endeavor and Yelp, leaving just one floor vacant.

Schuman and Carlos assembled six mutually dependent transactions with seven counter parties to create a new temple for Congregation Habonim and its nursery school. The brokers orchestrated the sale of Habonim's site at 44 W. 66th St. and the adjacent Disney-controlled site to Extell Development, while buying back the condominium at its base. Schuman and Carlos also located a temporary space for Habonim at 101 West End Ave. in a former Ethan Allen store. After all of the real estate fees and construction costs are paid, the congregation will receive an endowment of over $15 million.