Brokers Who Assembled the Impossible Take Home Real Estate Board of New York’s Top Honors

The Real Estate Board of New York awarded its 82nd Annual Commercial Sales Most Ingenious Deal of the Year honors on May 11 at Lever House. Geoffrey Newman of Savills won first place for assembling six properties along Gramercy Park over 13 years, including a 34-unit cooperative building that required unanimous shareholder approval and navigating New York’s Sliver Law and cantilever rights. CBRE’s Scott Gottlieb, Brendan Herlihy and Michael Wellen took second for placing Universal Music Group in a 336,000-square-foot, 20-year headquarters lease at PENN 2. Mark Weiss and Jared Thal of Cushman & Wakefield finished third for representing Goodwin in a 300,000-square-foot, 20-year lease at 200 Fifth Avenue.

Each winning transaction required brokers to solve problems that extended far beyond standard leasing or site acquisition. Newman’s deal depended on coordinating 32 individual owners in a cooperative whose development potential was constrained by zoning law, then restructuring the transaction after a judge voided a key agreement twice. The CBRE team positioned UMG’s headquarters as both a brand statement and an operational consolidation, merging artist arrival infrastructure with street-level activation. Cushman & Wakefield steered Goodwin away from conventional legal-sector office choices toward a location and layout that prioritized cultural fit over market convention...