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Savills Studley picks up manager of CBRE’s retail group
Gerry Prager will oversee strategic growth, including growing retail footprint in NYC
Savills Studley picked up the senior manager of rival brokerage CBRE’s Manhattan retail group to head up the tenant-representation specialist firm’s national strategies.
Gerry Prager joined Savills [TRDataCustom], following in the footsteps of former CBRE broker Susan Kurland who joined the firm in May. At CBRE, Prager most recently served as the head manager of the firm’s 30-member powerhouse retail team, which includes brokers Richard Hodos, David LaPierre, Andrew Goldberg and Amira Yunis.
CBRE’s retail unit, which The Real Deal ranked first among Manhattan’s top retail firms last year handling 1.43 million square feet of transactions, was a $50 million revenue operation and a key piece of the firm’s business, Prager said.
In his new role, Prager will oversee Savills’ growth strategies both here in New York City and nationwide.
“The most important thing for us is to look at growth with acquisitions with the right talent that has the background to fit our existing culture of tenant representation,” he said. “Retail is clearly a piece of that puzzle and it fits in very nicely with office.”
Savills started building out a local retail team last year with the hire of Kurland, who had won a Real Estate Board of New York Most Creative Deal of the Year award in 2002 when she negotiated a 45,000-square-foot location for American Girl at 609 Fifth Avenue. More recently, she represented American Girl in its move to RXR Realty’s 75 Rockefeller Center, one of the most valuable retail leases of 2016.
Studley’s hire comes as other large brokerage firms have ramped their acquisitions of industry veterans lately.
Chief among them is Colliers International, which hired retail specialists Bradley Mendelson and David Green from Cushman & Wakefield, as well as the JLL investment sales team of Richard Baxter, Yoron Cohen and Scott Latham.
And Cushman & Wakefield made waves throughout the industry when it snatched investment-sales powerhouses Doug Harmon and Adam Spies from Eastdil Secured in October.