Page 25 - RE-NJ

verticals that look a lot like an (operating company), without the equity investment component. And what I’ve been preaching here that I’ve taken from the SJP model is the notion of integration and making sure the platform isn’t just working in silos, but communicating across all the different services that we have.”
Cushman’s newest hires in the state have spanned multiple fields and, at times, bolstered what was already
an area of strength, as it did when
it added Waxman, Lissner, David Gheriani, Christine Eberle, Chris Griffith and Michelle Merkel. The team, which joined in November 2021, came with a deep network of owner and occupier clients in a booming asset class, having secured several high-profile leasing assignments in recent months.
With Nicolaou, the firm had a chance to add a talented multifamily broker to its already high-powered capital markets team, while complementing an area led by veteran C&W broker Brian Whitmer. Bronsnick also pointed to Cushman’s $500 million investment last year in Greystone, the commercial real estate finance firm, which gave it a 40 percent stake in
a multifamily lending platform that includes Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other debt products.
“We saw the opportunity for growth within our multifamily sector, and Nico fits it perfectly,” said Bronsnick, who is based in East Rutherford. “He’s got tremendous relationships within the private client side, within the institutional side.”
Equally critical was the addition
of Staskiewicz this past spring, in
a newly created post of leadership coach and business strategist, with
an eye toward the firm’s talent and business pipelines in New Jersey. Part of that role is
what Bronsnick
describes as
“more proactive
revenue
prediction” and
a more strategic
approach to
prospecting,
“as opposed to
reacting in reverse to say ‘this is how much money we made this year.’ ”
“What we want to do is identify new inception points for new business and what is our ROI on our time relative to where we’re identifying
those things,” Bronsnick said. “So it’s a heavy lift, but we’re trying
to change the game and make this more about creating roadmaps for our brokerage professionals — as opposed to always relying on the vagaries of the market and reacting to the marketplace — effectively creating our own markets.”
That can mean looking for leads in different places, but also targeting more specific clients than simply
“What we’re trying to do is create a wheel here and just keep the client inside our walls, which is why we have an advantage here.”
It’s part of what Bronsnick says is
a new approach to the managing principal role, which was apparent early in his interviews with Toby Dodd, C&W’s New York tristate region president. That was a key draw, he recalls, in addition to the main attraction of working with “a team of brokerage professionals that I have a tremendous amount of respect for.”
“The ability to work with this group was the primary driver, especially when Toby explained to me that they were looking at this role differently than they’ve ever looked at it in
the past,” he said, adding that he would be tasked with being a sort of “disruptor” in the role.
“They’ve allowed me to do exactly what they’ve set out for in terms of changing the managing principal role. And it’s not exclusive to New Jersey.”
As for further growth, Bronsnick sees an opportunity to add leasing
brokers “that have a specific focus on multimarket business plans”
but are based in New Jersey, he said. He also sees the potential to further expand its capital markets and industrial practices, along with project management and the group that’s dedicated to clients in the life sciences sector.
It’s all meant to build on a foundation that goes back decades in New Jersey. He notes that Cushman has
a long list of long-tenured brokers and professionals here, of varying ages, with a deep knowledge of what motivates their clients and other nuances from years of experience. Having Staskiewicz on the team will help ensure that the firm can take that expertise and establish it as a consistent template for the entire New Jersey region.
“These are critical things to being able to communicate well,” he said. “And what I want to do is transpose some of the knowledge of our veteran leadership and distill it down into our next-gen talent and our associates.” RE
REALESTATENJTM 23
Michael Staskiewicz
casting a
wide net, he added, such
as “identifying multimarket opportunities that contemplate occupiers that are in several asset classes
It’s time to
RETHINK REDEVELOPMENT.
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSULTANTS
AskESA.com/how
Learn how ESA’s comprehensive portfolio of environmental services can
and

ENVIRONMENTAL CONSULTANTS

Nico Nicolaou
as opposed to one.” It also means conditioning brokers to leverage Cushman’s other offerings, such
as project, property and asset management, to create the proverbial one-stop shop.
“This is what we’re doing locally, because our client base here in New Jersey is looking for someone to be able to service their accounts in one phone call,” Bronsnick said. “And the market doesn’t necessarily always appreciate that these groups work independently of each other. All they know is the brand, and we have a hundred-year-old brand that’s an incredible story to tell.”
He feels that integrating those groups is both practical and attainable at C&W, in that every unit and every brokerage team in New Jersey reports to the managing principal — including capital markets and industrial, office and retail leasing. He even believes that gives the firm a leg up on the other major brokerage houses in
the state, where brokers and their managers are more segmented.
“And as you would imagine, there’s tremendous synergy between our capital markets group and our leasing teams, and there’s reciprocal business exchange between those two teams,” Bronsnick said. “So I’m working on a daily basis with capital markets, from a recruiting perspective, from a client interface perspective, from managing existing clients relative to the leasing efforts and making sure that we’re creating value so that when the client is ready, they bring the building back to capital markets to sell again.