Eastern Consolidated to launch retail leasing division

For the first time, the 32-year-old investment sales firm Eastern Consolidated is dipping its toes into retail leasing, industry sources said.

The firm is assembling a retail leasing team, a little more than a year after it launched a retail investment sales group that is headed by Adelaide Polsinelli, a senior director at the firm.

The Midtown-based company has focused exclusively on investment sales since partners Peter Hauspurg and Daun Paris  founded the firm in 1981. (They were married two years later.)

While many smaller firms remain focused on one discipline or another, most firms with more than a handful of brokers work across both sales and leasing. Eastern Consolidated has 46 brokers and salespersons, according to a review of the website of the New York State Department of State, which regulates real estate licenses.

Paris, speaking for the company, declined to comment. It was not clear when the new division would launch, or how large it would be.

Eastern Consolidated has done 15 retail sales deals over the past several months valued at more than $200 million, it says on its website. Eastern’s Polsinelli has brokered deals such as 72-76 Greene Street in Soho for $41 million, since launching the new division, CoStar Group data shows.

The move is reminiscent of changes at another local firm, Massey Knakal Realty Services, founded in 1988. That company began as an investment sales firm, but in January 2011 it launched a retail leasing division, and since then has expanded into mortgage brokerage.

Tim King, a principal with the sales and leasing brokerage CPEX Real Estate, was not aware of the change and called it a “smart, strategic move.”

“It enables them to capitalize on their investor base who are purchasing retail assets and then assisting them with replacing or upgrading the retail tenant,” King said.