Still leasing after all these years

Carl Austin at the Brynwood Golf and Country Club in Armonk, formerly the Canyon Club, whose 2009 sale he brokered for its former owner, Mitsubishi Inc.

Carl Austin might have been seized by dÃ©jÃ vu when he signed off on his part of the March press release that announced a lease deal for Hitachi Metals America Ltd. at its Westchester headquarters (see related story, p. 1). At 70, Austin is in his 43rd year over a six-decade span as Hitachi”™s real estate agent in the county.

That client-broker relationship is older than his company, Austin Corporate Properties Inc. in Rye Brook, which marks its 40^th year in business in 2011. Austin”™s long list of past and current clients and deals made in land and building sales and office leasing reads like a name-dropping chronicle of Westchester”™s commercial development and corporate transformation.

The list includes Ciba-Geigy, IBM, General Foods, PepsiCo, Avon Products, Starwood Capital, Sanford Bernstein, Towers Perrin Forster & Crosby, London and Leeds, Schulman Realty Group, Halpern Enterprises, Duke & Benedict, Lazard Realty, Reckson Associates, Cohen Brothers Realty, Diamond Properties, Mitsubishi as owner of the former Canyon Club golf course in Armonk, Marriott and the Rockefeller family, among many others.

Many of Austin”™s clients have brought him repeat business through the years. Hitachi Metals America, for example, a Japanese-owned company to which Austin was introduced by a banking contact in the late ”™60s, relocated from New York City to Red Oak Lane in Harrison in a deal brokered by Austin. He later brokered the company”™s move to its new Purchase headquarters in 1984. In 2003, he represented Hitachi Metals and the buyer, Demetriades Developers, in the $8.5-million sale of Hitachi”™s 58-acre headquarters property at 2400 Westchester Ave. That followed the 2002 deal in which Austin brokered Hitachi”™s relocation to an approximately 25,000-square-foot space in The Centre at Purchase, the four-building office park on Manhattanville Road. The recent Hitachi deal, in which Austin again represented the tenant, was a 10-year renewal of that lease.

Staying focused on its mission

A gracious survivor of both good times and bad and said to be universally well-liked by competitors and colleagues, Austin described the pursuit of a living in the commercial real estate industry as “a high-wire act” for him and his numerous “brethren.”

“I”™ve enjoyed every moment of that,” he said.

In the Westchester office-park landscape one sees along I-287 and other major highways, Austin was there at the beginning. A Cornell University graduate, he began his real estate career in 1966 with a small industrial broker in the county. Five years later, he started his own firm, soon joined by his late brother, Andrew.

Working from their homes at the start, “His wife typed for him, my wife (Jill) typed for me, so we were off and running,” said Austin.

Forty years later, the company remains determinedly small, numbering only its founding president and two vice presidents and long-time Austin employees, Diane Clutchker and Philip M. Luria. Clutchker joined the company in 1974. Luria has been a broker there since 1987.

“That has really been my focus ”“ to be a source here, and a consistent one” for property owners and tenants, said Austin. “We were considered like a boutique firm ”“ small, absolutely dedicated to our clients, thorough and considered the source in Westchester. Not to take away from our brethren, that has been where we have tried to make our niche ”“ special care.

“We have taken on projects that we feel with certainty will lease or sell. We will not take on assignments unless we feel we can succeed.”

”˜I was just bitten”™

At the start of the ”˜70s, Austin saw no future as a broker of industrial properties. The old order of commerce was changing in Westchester, and the young real estate professional was drawn to the new order rising on rezoned vacant land.

“We are not a blue-collar company,” he said. “I saw myself gravitating toward those corporate offices, which were just emerging.” After doing a deal in Stamford, Conn., in which General Electric leased 193,000 square feet of office space, “I was just bitten,” he said. “This was the future.” Hitachi”™s move to Westchester and a deal with Dictaphone in the county further convinced him of that.

“I found myself in an industrial real estate company doing corporate office work,” he said. With the trepidation of a young father working on commission with three children, he left to venture on his own.

Austin credited success in the early years of his business to one of Westchester”™s pioneering office-park developers, Joel Halpern. On Route 119, Halpern”™s company built the Tarrytown Corporate Center and Austin was hired as leasing agent for a complex that would grow to include six buildings. Austin signed IBM Corp. to nearly 500,000 feet of space there in a series of deals in the late ”˜70s.

“He could have hired anybody ”“ Cushman & Wakefield and all that their name means in the industry,” Austin said of Halpern. “He said, ”˜I want someone I can call at 3 in the morning.”™ I said, ”˜You found the right guy.”™ It was a fabulous relationship. He gave us our start. I still miss him.”

After Halpern”™s untimely death in a boating accident in 1981, Austin continued to represent the family”™s real estate development company. In the mid-”˜90s, he was involved in the $83-million sale of the Halperns”™ office portfolio in Tarrytown and White Plains to Reckson Associates Realty Corp., another client and major player in Westchester”™s office market with longstanding ties to Austin.

The go-go years

Austin”™s company occupies an office at 3 International Drive in the Reckson Executive Park in Rye Brook. He represented Reckson in its $81-million purchase of the six-building, 80-acre campus from the English development company London & Leeds, a former Austin client that built Royal Executive Park there.

Austin and his industry colleagues saw “the go-go years” of the ”˜60s, ”˜70s and ”˜80s decline in the sharp real estate downturn at the start of the ”˜90s. “After that you could argue we never really attained again the activity of those decades,” he said.

For Austin”™s business and numerous other real estate companies, the go-go years had been largely fueled by relocations of small and medium-sized companies from New York City to the new office buildings rising in Westchester. That office construction halted entirely 20 to 25 years ago.

“I see our job as a county is to do what we did back in the ”˜70s and in effect to brand ourselves again as the best suburban corporate office choice,” said Austin. “Because of our strengths: location, amenities, recreation, education, transportation and quality workforce.”

“The health of New York City is rising again,” which bodes well too for the economic health of Westchester and Fairfield County, Conn., Austin said.

“Hopefully we will be the beneficiary of an improving economy. But we are dealing now with aging buildings that may not fully meet the needs of today”™s business requirements.”