DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN — The tenth annual “Only Brooklyn” real estate conference, featuring some of the most influential players in the real estate industry, was held at BRIC Arts Media Sept. 19, drawing an audience of property owners, developers, investors, tenants, landlords and those curious about the market itself. 

Hosted by TerraCRG, a Brooklyn-based commercial real estate agency, the five-hour event drew more than 300, and discussed curated panel topics that revolved around current real estate projects, trends, and issues happening throughout the borough.

Something for everybody

Dan Marks, CEO of TerraCRG, spoke exclusively to the Brooklyn Eagle regarding the current and future state of the real estate market. 

“If you look at the data, things have been relatively flat over the last couple of years,” Marks said. “But our hope is that with the passage of 485-x, the residential development incentive to build and the looming City of Yes initiative, it will kick start more transactions, volume and more activity in the market.”

Marks continued, “Brooklyn is simply the coolest place in the world. It has arts, culture, architecture and a vast number of diverse neighborhoods. It’s a true melting pot. You really can’t find that anywhere else.”

Topics of the day

Conference topics of the day included residential developments, the commercial landscape and affordable housing. The keynote speakers were Marks; Dan Garodnick, director of New York City Department of City Planning and chair of the City Planning Commission; and Andrew Kimball, president and CEO of the New York City Economic Development Corporation. 

Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso also made an appearance. 

“Brooklyn is growing, and it’s growing fast,” Reynoso said. “But if you look more closely, we are looking down the barrel of a major housing crisis. Brooklynites are being forced out of their neighborhoods and struggling to find new housing that is safe and affordable and dignified.” 

Reynoso pointed out that New York’s vacancy rates have reached its lowest level since 1968.

“It’s about our city’s inability to plan,” Reynoso said. “Unlike most major cities around the world, we don’t have a 10 or 20 year plan to guide or grow development. We need housing plain and simple and are working hard to set a new standard in Brooklyn.”

Garodnick also addressed the housing crisis in the borough.

“We have simply not built enough housing, and New Yorkers are feeling this every day,” said Garodnick. “That’s why we are proposing City of Yes for housing opportunities, to allow for a little more housing in every neighborhood in New York, which will make a big difference.” 

Brooklyn: “the best place in the world”

The first panel, Brooklyn’s largest residential developments, included Jed Resnick, CEO at Douglaston Development; Jared Della Valle, CEO of Alloy Development and chair of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership; Sam Charney, principal at Charney; and Brian Ezra, founding partner at Avery Hall.

Charney spoke to the neighborhood of Gowanus as a “hot spot” and described it as “incredible.” 

“It’s the perfect confluence of the public and private sector working together,” he said. 

Valle added that his company, Alloy Development, has “a mission to make Brooklyn beautiful, equitable and sustainable.”

“There were 170,000 new residents that moved to Brooklyn over the last decade, and we need to accommodate [that],” he said.  

The heart of the creative economy

Speaking next was the panel on the Brooklyn commercial landscape. It featured Susi Yu, co-founder of Bungalow Projects; Beth Demba, head of capital deployment in the east region for Prologis; Randy Peers, Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce president and CEO; and Alyssa Zahler, managing director of commercial leasing for Two Trees Management Co. 

Industry City, the South Brooklyn Army Terminal and the Brooklyn Navy Yard have become the center of the creative economy in Brooklyn, according to Peers.

“We moved the Chamber to Industry City because we wanted to be at the heart of that creative economy,” he said. “But there is still a divide — Canarsie, Brownsville and to some degree East New York — they are all still struggling, and it’s a real challenge. Without a doubt, Brooklyn is still the hottest place on the planet right now.” 

Zahler at Two Trees, who said her company focuses primarily on DUMBO and Williamsburg, noted that, “[This past] July and August, which are traditionally very slow months for our industry, were two of our best months in terms of leasing and overall annual contracts, and that is pretty encouraging for us.” 

Affordable housing

The final panel on “Brooklyn housing: affordability and policy,” featured speakers Ofer Cohen, founder and chairman of TerraCRG and founder of Ailanthus; Bryan Kelly, president at Gotham Organization; Frank Monterisi, COO at Related; and Kirk Goodrich, president at Monadnock.

The panel was asked their thoughts regarding the rising cost of housing and what can be done to bring it down. 

“New York City doesn’t really have a fair housing policy,” Goodrich explained. “So if you are poor and you live in subsidized housing, you are probably living in East New York or Brownsville — areas that don’t have great schools or amenities.”

Goodrich went on to say that fair housing is about making sure people can live in higher opportunity areas.

“We have tens of millions of unused square feet of residential floor area on public sites where we could be building, but we don’t,” he pointed out.  

Monterisi at Gotham added that public housing, “is the largest housing problem that we have in the United States. It’s not just a New York problem, it’s a national problem.”