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Deals & Dealmakers

WHO’S NEWS: Helmsley Spear bolsters ranks; Drew Warshaw joins Enterprise

Helmsley Spear announced the appointment of James Emden as vice chairman of the firm.
Emden’s primary focus is the representation of tenants in the acquisition of space through lease or purchase, as well as in the marketing and disposition of real estate. His representation also includes property owners, investors, and developers.
While his work focuses predominantly in the New York City area, Emden’s clients are both local and national.
Emden began his career in the real estate department of Loews Corporation. He went on to serve as a vice chairman at Edward S. Gordon Company, Insignia, and ultimately CBRE. He later joined Colliers International as vice chairman and, most recently, he served as vice chairman of Compass.
Emden has closed transactions valued at more than $2 billion globally, including several of New York City’s most significant leases.
He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Ohio State University where he served on the Board of Directors of the Arts & Sciences School from 2010-2013.

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Helmsley Spear announced the hiring of Eric Lassoff as a managing director focused on tenant representation and landlord agencies.
Lassoff has over 20 years’ experience in commercial real estate and has completed hundreds of transactions, specifically focusing on Midtown and Midtown South.
He has represented advertising agencies, architects, art galleries, editorial houses, educational institutions, engineers, not for profits, production companies, technology companies, and theatrical costumers.
On the landlord side, he has represented Extell, Gray Block, Muss Development, Noam Corporation, The Rosen Group (now Koeppel Rosen), and Thor Properties.
Before joining Helmsley, Lassoff was an executive at MHP Real Estate Services. Before that, he was a managing director for 11 years at Colliers International, formerly GVA Williams, and began his real estate career at Insignia/ESG, now CBRE.
Lassoff received his B.S. in Communications from Syracuse University with a dual minor in Marketing and Advertising.

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Enterprise Community Partners announced that Drew Warshaw will serve as the first Chief Operating Officer (COO) for Enterprise and its family of companies.
As COO, Warshaw will oversee the implementation of Enterprise’s forthcoming five-year strategic plan.
He joins Enterprise from Clearway Energy Group, among the three largest renewable energy companies in the United States. Before that, he helped launch the Renewables division of NRG Energy, Inc., a Fortune 250 company, a division which was later acquired and reorganized as Clearway.
Prior to Clearway, Warshaw served in several public sector roles, first at a policy think tank, then in a gubernatorial administration and, most recently, as chief of staff at The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, where he was pivotal in the turnaround of the World Trade Center rebuilding.
Warshaw holds a BA from Cornell University and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

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L&L Holding Company has appointed Jamil Lacourt as executive vice president and director of Construction.
Lacourt has more than 20 years of real estate, construction, and project management experience.
He will work alongside vice chairman of Capital Construction Bill Potts in a newly-created role where he will also be responsible for establishing uniform practices for reporting, bidding and budgeting, coordinating contractor and subcontractor relationships, and executing construction efforts throughout L&L’s growing portfolio of commercial properties.
Prior to joining L&L, Lacourt served as principal and director of Project Management for OC Development Management, where he oversaw L&L’s repositioning and expansion of 150 Fifth Avenue.
Prior to OC Development Management, Lacourt served as Vice President at JLL, Associate Director of Construction at Stanford University, and Senior Vice President at Citi.
Lacourt received a Bachelor of Science degree in construction management from the State University of New York (SUNY) Farmingdale.
He also obtained his Project Management Professional (PMP) certification as well as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) accreditation from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Gittings Photography

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Jack Resnick & Sons has appointed Marlene C. Guzzino as Assistant General Counsel at the firm.
Guzzino will focus on all legal issues impacting the firm’s six million square-foot commercial office and retail portfolio.
Guzzino has more than 15 years of commercial real estate experience. Prior to joining the firm, she served as partner in the Manhattan office of Greenberg Traurig LLP.
SHe held an externship in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio and internship in the United Kingdom Parliament House of Commons.
She received a J.D. from The Michael E. Mortiz College of Law at Ohio State University and graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in Political Science from Fairfield University.

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Dane Real Estate has hired Kristii Farrell as the Head of Business Development.
Farrell will have specific responsibility for overseeing longstanding client relationships while also opening new avenues of business across all of our practice areas.
She began her career in Ohio at the company Owens Illinois. She then worked in sales for Special Electric, an OEM company, in charge of all the Midwest sales. Thereafter, she became the CEO of BlueTrail Financia, a micro-loan investment company.

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Rosenberg & Estis, P.C. has named Michael C. Castellon a member. He will head the firm’s Construction Litigation practice group.
Castellon joined Rosenberg & Estis, P.C. in 2019 and has more than 30 years of experience in real estate law.
Prior to Rosenberg & Estis, Castellon served as General Counsel of the Skanska/Walsh Joint Venture, the designer-builder of the LaGuardia Airport Terminal B Redevelopment Project, the largest PPP airport redevelopment project to date.
In his role there, he prepared and negotiated hundreds of subcontractors, vendor agreements, non-disclosure agreements, negotiated and altered change orders and resolved a variety of work claims and disputes.
He also served as the North American corporate counsel for a French subway designer and builder, corporate counsel for an Austrian hydro-turbine designer, and prior to shifting to in-house roles, was a partner with Sutherland Asbill & Brennan and a shareholder at the construction law boutique firm Griffin Cochrane and Marshall.

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GSH Group announced Richard Hayes will be joining its corporate team July 1, 2020, as Executive Director of Revenue.
Hayes will be tasked with developing new business regionally, nationally, and globally.
A seasoned executive, Hayes has held senior roles within the commercial real estate and facilities maintenance industries over a 30 year career.
He started out in electrical engineering and he holds a Master’s degree in Engineering in Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology.

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Black Bear Capital Partners (BBCP) has expanded its national platform by opening two new offices, one each in Chicago and New Jersey.
The veteran capital advisory team of Matthew Stearns, Scott Modelski, and Zach Fitzgerald will operate out of the newly formed Chicago office, and will focus on commercial real estate debt and equity transactions nationally with a primary focus in the Midwest region.
Stearns is a Senior Managing Director and Chicago Office head. Modelski is a Managing Director and Fitzgerald is a Director. Stearns, Modelski, and Fitzgerald joined from Chicago-based Alpha Capital CRE.
Eric Trombly will also operate out of the newly formed Chicago office as a Senior Managing Director and will be responsible for direct principal investments.
Trombly joined from Meridian Capital Group and will report directly to Bryan Manz, Chief Operating Officer and New York Office head.
In addition, Emil DePasquale and Brandon Harris, Managing Partners of BBCP, will be expanding the New Jersey office with plans to hire new senior advisors. Previously with Meridian Capital Group, Depasquale and Harris will service debt and equity placement across all asset classes on a national basis with a primary focus in the New York/new Jersey Tri-State and oversee the national expansion of BBCP.

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AEIS has named Dr. Chandra Sekhar Meduri as Lead Metallurgical Engineer.
This newly-created role will focus on solving complex metallurgical technical challenges, and oversight of the firm’s Failure Analysis Laboratory which analyzes failures across all industrial sectors and material types. C
Dr. Meduri brings over eight years of engineering research and testing experience.
He earned his PhD in mechanical engineering at Texas Tech University in 2019, and was a founding member of the school’s mechanical engineering graduate student association.
After finishing his PhD, Dr. Meduri was a Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Texas at Dallas in Richardson, TX. supporting a team of seven engineers.
Before that, Dr. Meduri was a Materials Science Researcher at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX, and a Research Engineer at MetCel.
Dr. Meduri earned his B. Tech in Mechanical Engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University in Hyderabad, India; and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, OK.

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Spacesmith announced that David Roberts has joined the firm to support its growing office in the city of Hudson, N.Y.
Roberts will play a key role in Spacesmith’s business development across Upstate New York. Roberts is working on the designs for three high-profile projects in the region including two food-related works and a new, state-of-the-art largescale film and television production facility for Upriver Studios in the town of Saugerties.
Prior to joining Spacesmith, his recent work included a retrofit of an existing 19th-century sugar refinery for the boutique hotel One11 in the French Quarter of New Orleans as well as the interiors for the Eileen Fisher Design Center and Showroom on 5th Avenue in Manhattan.
Previously in the Hudson Valley, Roberts served as project manager and designer on the conversion of an existing house into the Allaire Recording Studios in the hamlet of Shokan, and he has completed several single-family homes on his own as an independent design-builder.
The Australian native moved to New York after completing studies in environmental design and architecture at the University of Canberra.
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JLL announced the hire of Chief Data Officer Yao Morin to JLL Technologies.
Yao will lead JLL’s global data strategy, product roadmap and delivery. JLL Technologies is a division of JLL unifying the company’s technology, businesses, services and applications.
Yao previously served as chief data officer and head of U.S. engineering at StubHub.
She also drove the development and modernization of Intuit’s data infrastructure as head of data science and machine learning engineering/principal data scientist.
In her new role, Yao will refine and accelerate JLL Technologies’ approach to gathering, extracting, storing and leveraging data assets across all JLL businesses.

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