Having moved into the metro New York market in recent years by acquiring a Westchester-based real estate company serving retail tenants, The Shopping Center Group is mounting a charge to expand its landlord representation business in Westchester and Fairfield counties led by a veteran commercial real estate broker.
- David Firestein
- Pamela Strauss
Pamela Strauss, a Westchester native, earlier this year joined The Shopping Center Group, a retail brokerage based in Atlanta with 23 offices nationwide, as a senior adviser leading the company”™s drive to represent landlords in the lower Hudson Valley and southern Connecticut as their exclusive leasing agent. Strauss has experience working with both landlord and tenant clients as the owner and president of Retail Strategies LLC in White Plains, a company she founded in 2004 after spending two years as a commercial broker at Murray Hill Properties in Manhattan.
At The Shopping Center Group”™s office at 711 Westchester Ave. in White Plains, Strauss works with a team that includes David Firestein, the former owner and president of Northwest Atlantic Real Estate Services LLC in White Plains, which merged with The Shopping Center Group about 3 1/2 years ago.
Firestein now is a managing partner in the Atlanta company”™s New York offices. He is best known in real estate circles as the broker who first brought Starbucks to New York City in 1994 and has since brokered “several hundred” lease deals for Starbucks, he said, as the Seattle coffee company”™s exclusive agent in the metro New York area. Firestein and former partners at Northwest Atlantic have further bolstered The Shopping Center Group”™s tenant business with clients that include REI, Papyrus, Whole Foods, Staples, Bobby’s Burger Palace and Guitar Center.
Firestein said the company has stepped up efforts to represent owners of large shopping center properties in this area, where, unlike many other areas of the country, retail has both shopping center and downtown Main Street components. “We know most of the landlords in this (Westchester) market, the Hudson Valley and southern Connecticut,” he said.
Jeff Pandolfo, director of leasing for The Shopping Center Group”™s Northeast region, said the company also aims to grow its property management business. “That”™s part of our goal for expansion in Westchester, to not only lease but manage properties,” he said.
