High-Profile Industry Professionals Join Avison Young NYC Office

By Veronica Grecu, Associate Editor

Less than two weeks since opening its first New York City office and appointing former Cushman & Wakefield CEO Arthur J. Mirante, II as Principal and Tri-State President, Canada-based commercial brokerage company Avison Young has hired a prominent investment sales team to continue its aggressive expansion in Manhattan.

Former Grubb & Ellis industry leaders Vincent Carrega, Neil C. Helman, Jon Epstein and Charles B. Kingsley join Avison Young as principals, effective immediately. According to Earl Webb, president of U.S. Operations for Avison Young, this prime addition expands the depth of the company’s capabilities while also creating a culture of collaboration and adding to the team’s broad-based experience to further develop the company’s relationships and business-line coverage in the Tri-State market.

Vincent Carrega’s more than 30 years of commercial real estate sales experience with Grubb & Ellis translates into numerous high-profile transactions on behalf of a wide variety of investor, corporate, institutional, public, private and individual owners. His recently completed transactions include the structuring/disposition of high-profile Manhattan development sites at 1517-25 Third Avenue, 200 West 72nd Street and 350 Amsterdam Avenue, as well as a large development site at Eighth Avenue and 46th Street.

Neil C. Helman, the former executive vice president at Grubb & Ellis, brings 27 years of real estate investment sales experience. During his career, Helman has been involved in the disposition of several high-profile development sites and property sales and recently closed on two prominent bankruptcy sales: Cabrini Medical Center to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and 555 Sixth Avenue to Stonehenge Partners.

With 25 years of experience in investment sales in New York City, Jon Epstein joins Avison Young after serving as executive vice president on the capital markets team of Grubb & Ellis. Prior to his Grubb & Ellis tenure, Epstein was a senior director at Cushman & Wakefield. His noteworthy transactions include 555 Avenue of the Americas, 725 West End Avenue, The Plaza Hotel, Lexington Avenue YWCA, 90 West Street, 225 Fifth Avenue and 350 Broadway.

Charles B. Kingsley specializes in the sale and disposition of investment properties and, prior to joining Avison Young, was an executive vice president with Grubb & Ellis’ New York capital markets team and senior director in Cushman & Wakefield’s New York middle markets group.

With more than 30 years of experience as a broker, owner and manager of Manhattan real estate and over 3 million square feet of property sold under his brokerage, Kingsley was one of the winners of Canada’s 50 Best Managed Companies program for 2011. Kingsley’s transactions of note include 335 Broadway, 555 Avenue of the Americas and 421 Hudson Street, as well as the retail condominiums at 127 Seventh Avenue in Chelsea and the Orion at 350 West 42nd Street.