Newmark’s Mongeluzo wins REBNY’s top dealmaker award

An elaborate amenity space, a double–height outdoor loggia and a private lobby entry.

Those are just some of the perks Newmark broker Chris Mongeluzo and his team scored for their client, law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, in a 765,000 square-foot lease deal at 1345 Sixth Avenue — which earned him the industry’s top prize for deal-making Thursday night. 

The law firm initially approached the Newmark brokers about a three to five-year lease extension at their 600,000 square-foot-plus space at RXR’s 1285 Sixth Avenue. 

But the Newmark team – which also included Brian Cohen and Moshe Sukenik – convinced Paul Weiss executives to consider a newly available space at the Fisher Brothers building a few blocks away.

“It was 12, 18 months when we were just floundering on a three to five-year renewal and dragging the executive team over to 1345 and pulling all these aspects together to make it an opportunity that they couldn’t refuse,” Mongeluzo said at the trade group’s 80th annual awards ceremony at The Commons at 22 Vanderbilt.

Cohen and Sukenik were not eligible to be included in the award because their REBNY memberships had lapsed.

The law firm was initially impressed with the new space but reluctant to incur additional costs, so the brokers negotiated an “unprecedented” $200 per square foot tenant improvement allowance, said Woody Heller of Branton Realty Services, who presented the awards. The brokers also scored an extra $35 per square foot of concessions and a below-market loan from the landlord, he said.

The Newmark team also persuaded the landlord to reconfigure the tower’s elevators in order to add lower, less expensive floors to the 17-floor lease, Heller said.

“How do you overcome a client’s deep-seated resistance to a better solution?” Heller asked. “By methodically addressing each concern one ingenious solution at a time.”

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The second-place award went to CBRE’s Lauren Crowley Corrinet and Sacha Zarba for a deal involving LinkedIn, Empire State Realty Trust and film and television location company Backlot at the Empire State Building. 

Cushman & Wakefield’s David Lebenstein received third place for the $15 million sale of 240 Nassau Street in Brooklyn to Alloy Development.

“At the end of the day, everyone here has to step up and really push the envelope,” Mongeluzo said as he received his award. “There’s a lot of work to be done in this city, there’s a lot of doubt about what’s going on when you read the paper and I think it’s incumbent on everybody in here to keep their brain…in the ‘on’ position and try to move the chains forward.”