Start spreading the news. Avison Young is now a part of it — New York, that is. Canada’s largest independently owned commercial real estate services company has made its debut in the Big Apple with the opening of a new office on Park Avenue.

According to Ariel Property Advisors’ “Multi-Family Quarter in Review: New York City” report, New York multi-family sales increased 34 percent in the first quarter of 2012.

The new owners of 530 Fifth Ave. in Manhattan are targeting fashion tenants as they upgrade and reconfigure the building’s retail spaces — and are riding the crest of a wave that shows the world-famous corridor is once again seeing rising rents for the sector.

A 6,160-square-foot development site at 133-135 Greenwich St. in Downtown Manhattan has been purchased by Hidrock Realty for $28 million, and the new owner plans to develop a 28-floor, 300-room hotel at the cost of $70 million.

In the most recent development for the Times Square submarket of Midtown Manhattan, Normandy Real Estate Partners has acquired the 280,000-square-foot, 17-story office building at 1370 Broadway for a reported $125 million.

In an annual REIT conference sponsored by New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate, Sam Zell and William Mack offered several hundred real estate professionals and NYU students their views on leverage, consolidation and the industry’s uneven recovery.

Normandy Real Estate Partners has tapped Cassidy Turley to serve as the leasing agent for a 1.1 million-square-foot office portfolio in New Jersey, and in turn, Cassidy Turley has welcomed two of the real estate developer’s team members to the firm.

Where is the growth in an age of uncertainty? Some of the industry’s most influential leaders wrestled with that timely question Thursday at the annual REIT conference organized by New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate.

In a joint-venture purchase, Hackman Capital and Calare Properties have made their strong presence in the Massachusetts industrial market even stronger. The two recently acquired the former Evergreen Solar Plant, a 448,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in suburban Boston.

Broad Street Development and Crow Holdings have partnered on an $85 million investment for two buildings in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park neighborhood.