Women win big at REBNY ingenious deal awards

Sisters Tara and Darcy Stacom as well as Mary Ann Tighe win top honors.

It was indisputably a ladies night at the Real Estate Board of New York’s Most Ingenious Deal of the Year awards held last night at the 101 Club at 101 Park Avenue. Cushman & Wakefield’s Tara Stacom, her sister Darcy Stacom of CBRE Group and Mary Ann Tighe, also of CBRE, all took home top honors for deals completed last year.

It was also the first time two awards had been given for the same deal: The first place Henry Hart Rice Award was presented to Tara  and her Cushman colleague Michael Rotchford for brokering Conde Nast’s $2 billion, one million-square-foot lease at 1 World Trade Center on behalf of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, while Tighe and CBRE colleague Gregory Tosko received the second place Robert T. Lawrence Award for representing the publisher in the same deal, which closed last May.

“As 2011 marked the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, it is important to recognize the progress that has been made downtown,” said REBNY President Steven Spinola wrote in a statement. “The transformation of Ground Zero to One World Trade Center holds historic weight and will be remembered for restoring confidence back in the city,” he said of the winning deal.

Tighe, posing for photographs with her award, told The Real Deal she was surprised that the same deal had nabbed two awards.

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“It says a great deal about the deal,” she said.

Meanwhile, Darcy was awarded the third place Edward S. Gordon Award with CBRE colleagues William Shanahan and Paul Gillen for the sale of 2 Gotham Center. Stacom’s client, Tishman Speyer, in partnership with Square Mile Capital and the Modell family, completed the $415.5 million sale of the 670,000-square-foot Long Island City building to H&R, a Canadian Real Estate Investment Trust listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange last November. The closing price shattered the previous Long Island City record and was the third largest outright sale of 2011.

Twenty-seven companies submitted ingenious sale, lease, and finance transactions for consideration for the trophies, REBNY said.