Robert Martin helped broker a deal where Assured Guaranty relocated to a smaller office space in a different building, despite having 11 years left on its original lease. This saved Assured Guaranty money by moving to a smaller space, and freed up valuable space in the original building. Martin also helped Foot Locker renew its lease in a complicated situation, negotiating deals that allowed Foot Locker to maintain retail space and relocate its offices to a newly renovated building. Martin's success comes from finding creative solutions that benefit all parties and opportunities that may not be obvious.

1. 44 | DECEMBER 16-30, 2015 | COMMERCIAL OBSERVER
POWER PLAYER
P
op quiz time, brokers. See if
you can get the following mul-
tiple-choice question correct:
You run across a tenant who
has a lot of extra space and is
paying too much. That lease isn’t due to expire
until 2026. You take the following action:
a) Nothing. It’s a dead end. Go to the bar and
grab another margarita.
b) Befriend the tenant now. In 11 short years,
they’ll know who to call.
c) Break into the landlord’s office and steal
the lease. (Make sure to get the landlord’s hard
drive, too.)
d) Look at the rest of the landlord’s portfolio
and arrange a swap beneficial to both sides.
RobertMartin,avicechairmanatJLL,isthe
kind of real estate pro who would answer d).
In November, Mr. Martin (who had remar-
ried only a month before, and is the father of
three, ages 24, 22 and 19) was the lead bro-
ker on a JLL team that closed a deal to relo-
cate Assured Guaranty, the municipal bond
insurance provider, into an 88,000-square-
foot office space spanning the entire 22nd
and 23rd floors of Paramount Group’s 1633
Broadway. The asking rent in the 15-year deal
was in the mid-$70s per square foot, and
Assured Guaranty will be relocating next
summer from its current offices.
From the outside, it may just look like
another big deal. However, the firm was not
actively looking for a new space, as it was
stuck in a lease that wasn’t expiring until 2026
(hence, our pop quiz). But Mr. Martin realized
that Assured Guaranty was paying for much
more office space than it needed. The space it
ismovingoutofat31West52ndStreet,whichis
alsoownedbyParamountGroup,isnearlyone-
fourthbiggerthanitsnewlocationandincludes
the top five floors of the property (25 through
29). Mr. Martin knew the right people to call at
ParamountGrouptomakethedealhappen.
“Itwasanideathatwehadthatsortofledto
putting something together,” Mr. Martin, 54,
said. “It wasn’t like the client called me and
said, ‘Hey, help me out here.’ ”
In addition to helping Assured Guaranty
save money, the move freed up valuable
space on the top floor of one of Paramount
Group’s premier addresses, where it could
charge rents surpassing $100 per square
foot, Mr. Martin said, rather than the $69
per square foot Assured Guaranty is paying,
according to CoStar. (Paramount Group and
Assured Guaranty did not return requests for
comment.)
“If he thinks there is a potential oppor-
tunity, he is good at sniffing it out, so to
speak,” said Amanda Bokman, a managing
director at JLL and a member of Mr. Martin’s
team. “He achieved a lot in that transac-
tion that many people couldn’t have—
just being able to create the right outcome
for all the parties. Everybody won in that
transaction.”
Throughout his more than three-decade
career as a broker, Mr. Martin has experi-
enced life at the top of every firm where he
has worked.
Inleasingactivity,hehasrankedamongthe
top five brokers internationally at his current
company for the past three years. And in the
16 years he worked for CBRE, until 2010, he
rankedinthetop3percentinallbutoneyear.
Evenbeforethat,in1991,withjustsevenyears
inthebusiness—workingforthenow-defunct
Grubb & Ellis—he was recognized as the top
broker among the firm’s 1,200 agents.
He was responsible for about 2.6 million
square feet of leasing activity over the last
year. And just based on the fact that he’ll sur-
pass the 1.9 million square feet of leases he
negotiated in 2014, once again Mr. Martin is
expecting to be ranked among the top five
brokers at JLL when the 2015 numbers are
finalized.
“It’s just a question of if I’m number one or
number two,” Mr. Martin said.
Much of the secret of his success has been
in forging the kind of win-win solution
that he pulled off for Assured Guaranty and
Paramount Group: looking for opportunities
that aren’t necessarily in plain sight.
Another factor might be a creative streak:
his first career dream was to be a film
director and producer. After growing up in
Tenafly, N.J., and attending The Calhoun
School on the Upper West Side, Mr. Martin
went to college at one of the great feed-
ers of the film industry, the University of
Southern California. (The film bug was in
his blood; he had an aunt who worked for
Warner Bros.) But following his sophomore
year, Mr. Martin transferred to The Wharton
School of the University of Pennsylvania
after realizing that he was more interested
in the business side than other aspects of
moviemaking.
Following graduation and a trip to Europe,
Mr. Martin didn’t have a clue about what
to do for work, but he knew that he didn’t
want a typical salaried job. It was a friend
of his stepfather, who, as they walked down
Lexington Avenue together one day, asked
him, “Kid, what do you want to do?”
“Isaid,‘IwantanunstructuredjobandIwant
to make money,’ ” Mr. Martin recalled. “‘I’m
willing to work hard.’ What I didn’t like about
otherjobsisthatyearoneyoumakex,andyear
two you make x plus 5 percent, and year three
you make x plus 10 percent. I didn’t want to
havetheamountofmoneyImakebeinsome-
one else’s control. And he said, ‘If you want an
unstructuredjobandyouwanttomakealotof
money,youshouldgointorealestate.’”
Back then, Mr. Martin didn’t know any-
thing about real estate, but he was a quick
study. He started with Grubb & Ellis in
1984, and in just a few years he represented
Mitsubishi Bank in its move from the World
Trade Center to a 200,000-square-foot space
at Brookfield Place (then known as the World
Financial Center), which he touts as his first
big deal. Years later, in the mid-1990s, he was
responsible for moving the Legal Aid Society
intothetopthreefloorsof90ChurchStreet,a
nearly150,000-square-footspace,withalease
of 20 years. At the time, the Legal Aid Society
was looking to relocate from 15 Park Row, but
wanted to stay in the City Hall area. And as
a nonprofit, the legal assistance organization
also required an affordable space (something
especially difficult to find in today’s market,
as well). Since 90 Church Street is owned by
the United States Postal Service, the landlord
didn’t pay real estate taxes, making the rent
an affordable $21 per square foot, as The New
YorkTimesreportedatthattime.What’smore,
several floors were vacant.
“I’m very proud of that deal, because my
client had an impossible need,” Mr. Martin
said. “There were no other options. No other
buildings operationally or that had the right
floorplate could make spacein[theLegalAid
Society’s] time frame, in their price point, or
in their target area.”
As usual in the brokerage world, not all of
hisdealshavecomethroughwithoutcompli-
cations.Mr.MartinrecentlyrepresentedFoot
Lockerinwhatbecameadiceysituationasthe
global athletic wear company was preparing
to renew a roughly 163,000-square-foot lease
for its headquarters on West 34th Street.
Without a right-to-renew clause, however,
Foot Locker was in jeopardy of losing both its
office headquarters on floors two through
four,aswellasitsflagshipstoreontheground
floor and basement at Empire State Realty
Trust’s 112 West 34th Street between Seventh
Avenue and Avenue of the Americas. There it
was paying “10 times less than” the market
value in rent, Mr. Martin said. Foot Locker
wantedtorenewthe25-yearleasesettoexpire
in2016,butESRTplannedtoincreasetherent,
he said. For the ground-floor retail space, the
asking rent is now $1,000 per square foot.
In 2013, with three years still left on Foot
Locker’s lease, ESRT went ahead and signed
the third and fourth floors of the build-
ing to Macy’s for office space, leaving Foot
Locker with no choice but to move some of its
operations.
“It was the landlord’s right,” Mr. Martin
said, but added, “I think that Empire State
Realty definitely sent the message to Foot
Locker.” (Foot Locker did not return requests
for comment.)
Despite the signing away of the third and
fourth floors, Mr. Martin was able to sal-
vage some of Foot Locker’s space. In order to
avoid the full effect of a ballooning ground-
floor rent, he helped the firm sign a 15-year
deal for a fraction of its original ground-floor
retailspace(5,500squarefeet),andjustunder
29,000squarefeetonthesecondfloor,which
previouslywasofficespace.Thatsecondfloor
willalsobecomeretailfollowingthecomple-
tion of its lease, helping Foot Locker retain
its flagship retail presence on the West 34th
Street corridor.
ERSTthensignedcosmeticschainSephora
to another portion of the ground floor, as the
space was in high demand, according to the
landlord’sdirectorofleasing,ThomasDurels.
“We’rethrilledtohavethebestlocationon
34th Street, directly opposite Macy’s, which
is so productive that Foot Locker decided to
makealong-termcommitmentandrestacked
to allow us to bring in Sephora and create
room for a third tenant,” Mr. Durels said via
a spokeswoman.
Then Mr. Martin negotiated a deal to relo-
cate Foot Locker’s offices to a property that
Vornado Realty Trust had completely reno-
vated at 330 West 34th Street between Eighth
and Ninth Avenues. At 145,000 square feet,
Foot Locker ended up with more space than
at its former offices at 112 West 34th Street,
which covered 128,000 square feet.
“It was a creative solution for them, and a
way to maintain 34,000 square feet of retail
space [on West 34th Street],” Mr. Martin said.
“We had several good options, but at the end
of the day, Vornado’s 330 West 34th Street has
good floor plates, some outdoor roof space,
and was closer to the West Side, where ten-
ants are moving over to the Manhattan West
Hudson Yards development.”
Robert Martin, a vice chair at JLL, is thinking outside the box when it comes to Midtown
By Liam La Guerre
AARONADLER/FORCOMMERCIALOBSERVER
Success Assured