Years ago, Raizy Haas remembers sitting in a conference room surrounded by men. She was the only woman in the room full of real estate players. She would sometimes pinch herself after realizing this, to re-focus.
But more than two decades later, that has changed. While the commercial real estate industry is still male-dominated, more and more women have become a part of the fabric of real estate.
“I think it’s evolved tremendously. I think that moment came and passed, which is great. It’s really changed,” Haas, senior vice president of project management and development at Extell Development, told Real Estate Weekly. “I do truly believe I’ve had some part in how the industry and developers approach projects. ”
Raizy Haas
Born in Israel, Haas moved to the U.S. with her family when she was just a few years old, and they settled in Brooklyn, where she was raised and continues to live now with her husband and three children.
Growing up, she would marvel at the skyscrapers during trips into the city with her family. Years later, when she told her family she wanted a career in the real estate industry, they were “very supportive.”
Her first job in real estate was managing a property in the Diamond District in Midtown Manhattan. During the years she spent managing the building, she saw Extell president Gary Barnett from time to time. Ten years into her career, Barnett asked her to come work for him.
“I was at the point where I needed direction, I was very young,” said Haas. “I realized there was a whole other part of the real estate industry that I wasn’t participating in.”
Now with nearly 20 years under her belt at Extell, Haas has worked on some of the city’s biggest and most ambitious buildings, including One57 on Billionaire’s Row, The Orion, The International Gem Tower, and 45 Walker Street in Tribeca.
The Orion was the first skyscraper and new construction project Haas worked on at Extell. She called it an “amazing” project, “uncharted territory at the time.”
Extell was originally planning to make the building a rental, but they instead decided to condo, a choice that many people told them was “crazy.”
“They said ‘You must be out of your mindʼ and [Gary Barnett] said no, we’re doing it,” recalled Haas. The decision turned out to be the right one, and the building sold out in less than a year. The building was the first the company did that gave buyers a choice in what kinds of finishes their apartment would have.
“It raised the bar for developers in the city,” she said.
Next month, Haas will be speaking at Real Estate Weekly’s annual Women’s Forum on a panel about neighborhood changes, something she says Extell is very familiar with.
“Everything Extell has done has been in emerging neighborhoods at one point,” said Haas. When the firm was working on The Orion in Hell’s Kitchen in the early 2000s, Haas said “people were scared to walk around there at night,” and many couldn’t fathom a luxury residential building rising in the neighborhood. Now, it is a “completely different” neighborhood, with many luxury rentals and condo buildings in the pipeline.
In 2007, Extell completed the Upper East Side building The Lucida, located on the corner of East 85th Street and Lexington Avenue. When the firm was first planning the building, Haas said it was a time when luxury buyers wouldn’t go north of 85th Street.
And one of most notable examples is the building that started what would become Billionaire’s Row on 57th Street, a name that was coined based on One57 and other megatall towers where units have commanded astronomical prices.
When Extell first began assembling the One57 site, Haas asked a veteran broker that she knew for comps, and he just laughed at her. “He said, ‘That’s one of the worst corridors in the city,’” she said. “It was almost this blighted area. There were a lot of shuttered mom and pop stores.”
Nowadays, the corridor is known for the record-breaking sales prices and famous names that have purchased apartments there.
“When you develop projects in emerging neighborhoods, they become the anchor,” said Haas, adding that it creates an attractive opportunity for a buyer, who is able to get in at a great price point. “We’re very proud of the buildings we build. They’re solid and well-designed. It’s not just coming into a location — we put down roots there.”
Currently, Haas is working on several projects, including 1 Manhattan Square, the supertall luxury condo building on the Lower East Side that will have 815 units once completed, and 138 Willoughby Street, the company’s first project in Brooklyn.
That building is part of the City Point development in Downtown Brooklyn, and will be a 59-story, mixed-use condo tower with 458 residential units once completed.
Haas sees many more buildings in her future, and hopes to continue to tackle challenging projects, which to her, are the most fun. “The more challenging a project the more fun, otherwise it gets a little boring,” she said.
Haas said the firm wouldn’t rule out doing a project in other boroughs such Queens or the Bronx, as long as it “makes sense” for them to do it.
For information of the Real Estate Weekly Women’s Forum taking place in The Bar Building on June 14, go to www.nycwomensforum.com
