(Editor’s note: This story first ran November 1, 2015)
The sun was shining and the air was crisp when 30 real estate pros from CIM Group, Kushner Real Estate Group, Criterion Group and Mitsui Fudosan boarded a bus idling on Park Avenue bound for the Bronx. The field trip, organized by white-shoe law firm Herrick Feinstein, promised a tour of the borough’s rapidly changing neighborhoods — including the much-buzzed-about South Bronx — which is how the group of developers found themselves hurtling over the Third Avenue bridge one afternoon in the middle of last month. Clutching swag bags with granola bars, mints and maps, the group filed onto a red trolley at the Bronx Courthouse and for the next 90 minutes, traversed the borough, craning their necks to catch glimpses of a burgeoning development landscape.
“We make shidduchs, that’s what we do,” said Herrick partner Jonathan Adelsberg, chair of the commercial leasing department, invoking the Hebrew term for matchmaking. [more]