Forest City Ratner’s newly minted chief executive MaryAnne Gilmartin has tapped the development’s company’s general counsel David Berliner to be her chief operating officer, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“I needed to make sure my bench was deep and capable of allowing me to succeed in a new role,” Gilmartin — who was recently profiled by The Real Deal — told the Journal. “David was an obvious choice.”
Berliner has been at Forest City since 1989, and has been involved in many of the company’s biggest deals, such as the 1990s push to bring retailers to West 42nd Street and more recently bringing the Brooklyn Nets to the Barclays Center.
“The key to success is not just focusing on obstacles but figuring out how to get around them,” Berliner told the Journal.
Forest City has faced some heat in recent months due to its delay in delivering housing to the Atlantic Yards megaproject, something that Berliner has promised to remedy. [WSJ] –Hiten Samtani