Verada’s Nate Mallon wins REBNY “most ingenious” honors

Any college student can tell you that the best reward for finishing a long, complex assignment is an ice cold beer. That’s just what Verada’s Nathaniel Mallon got after securing the land in Greenpoint for his client Brooklyn Brewery’s new headquarters.

But that wasn’t his only reward. Mallon’s deal was recognized by the Real Estate Board of New York as the Commercial Sales Brokers Most Ingenious Deal of the Year at an awards ceremony Wednesday night at a Convene space in Murray Hill.

“[The deal] was extremely complex,” Mallon said after receiving the honor. “There were so many variables with public entities and private parties working at different speeds. So we all have to band together and really use our thought process to get the deal done.”

“Extremely complex” might be an understatement. The client’s specific needs for its headquarters — the actual brewery, retail space, a rooftop garden, administrative space, a liquor license, a loading dock and research operations, among others — made finding an existing building next to impossible.

But finding land for Brooklyn Brewery’s new space required municipal approvals that were challenging themselves, as city zoning rules make it difficult to build breweries outside of heavy manufacturing districts. Mallon had to work with multiple city agencies to get the deal done. 

The Greenpoint plot at 1 Wythe Avenue is in the shape of a triangle, with Wythe to the north, North 15th Street to the south and Banker Street to the east. It will nearly double the brewery’s current footprint. Despite rumors that Brookly Brewery was planning to leave the area entirely, the new headquarters will sit just four blocks from its existing space at 79 North 11th Street in Williamsburg. The building is scheduled to open in the summer of 2024. 

Mallon’s firm, Verada, is just a year old, and he says it’s already leased 100,000 square feet of retail in North Brooklyn. After a reserved acceptance speech for the award, Mallon’s poker face melted after the ceremony, when he was heard shouting “What a year — yes!”

Second place went to Savills’s Ira Schuman, who won the top honor in 2021. This year he was recognized for securing a lease for Civic Hall, a nonprofit technology training center, at 124 East 14th Street in Union Square. With a hard ceiling to how much Civic Hall could pay, Schuman had to identify tax exemptions that could apply to just the tenant’s portion of the building.

“You must be kidding, right?” asked Branton Realty’s Woody Heller, a former Savills veteran who served as co-chair and a judge for the awards. “I have absolutely no idea how you can figure that out or how to get it done.”

James Kuhn, Evan Layne and Brett Siegel of Newmark took third place for brokering the sale of 25 Water Street, a 22-story Financial District office building, to Metro Loft and Jeff Gural’s GFP Real Estate who plan a residential conversion. The project will produce 1,300 new apartments. 

A separate award for the Most Promising Commercial Salesperson, colloquially referred to as “rookie of the year,” went to Savills’ Andrew Dzenis.