NY is lucky to see a recovery: Himmel

Thanks to Wall Street’s success, New York has been “really lucky” in seeing a recovery, said Leslie Wohlman Himmel, a managing partner at Himmel + Meringoff Properties, which operates more than 2 million square feet of office and retail space in the city. “I do believe that New York City also has this fantastic intellectual capital, and as much as it may be cheaper to do business in other places, there’s this wonderful synergy here,” Himmel told the New York Times. “We are really trying to get New York City to have better tax and economic incentives to compete with places like North Carolina to get businesses here.” Himmel, 56, who will receive a lifetime leadership award from the Real Estate Board of New York next month, said that her firm recently refinanced three properties and just signed a contract on a secondary office building in Manhattan. The firm is conservative with financing, she noted, and it is working on over 20 distressed properties right now. [NYT]