You may have been to one of his parties. You’ve probably at least gotten an invitation. After all, Aaron McCann, 28, has been throwing quarterly real estate networking parties ever since he arrived in New York City from Boulder, Colo., nearly five years ago.
They started very small, says McCann, a former broker (“for all of three months,” he told The Real Deal) who now works in the acquisitions division of real estate investment firm Bern Investments. “It was six or seven of us,” he said, “sitting around a bar in Midtown after work just talking about real estate.”
In December 2003, that started to change. A party in the Serena Bar in the basement of the Hotel Chelsea drew more than 80 people, and, from there, the parties every quarter got bigger. The latest one, a December soiree in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, drew 1,925 RSVPs in one week; about 1,500 people, McCann says, showed, making for a cocktail-enhanced meeting of the minds involving just about every aspect of the New York real estate community – financiers, brokers, developers, journalists, and attorneys. That was pretty much McCann’s idea all along.
“I could tell when I got into New York real estate that who you knew was equally as important as what you knew,” McCann said. “The concept is that it’s an informal networking event that draws every aspect that comprises the New York City real estate development industry.”
McCann works with a planning committee that meets eight days before each party. He deliberately invited people from throughout the industry to be on the committee, and it now has 50 members. The committee doesn’t accept corporate sponsorships for the parties – the key here is keeping things informal – but it will work with a venue to set things in motion. The committee, McCann says, worked with the Trump Organization for months to organize December’s party.
More are, of course, planned, says McCann, a native of Omaha, Neb., who now lives in Williamsburg. “Each one,” he said, “has been bigger and bigger than the last.”