Scott H. Benson hustled to a meeting with the mayor at Yonkers City Hall as he talked by phone about his new post in commercial real estate and the recent merger that put him there.
Benson, who 25 years ago founded Benson Commercial Realty Inc. (BCR) in Tarrytown, this month merged his business with NAI Friedland Realty Inc. in Yonkers, the commercial real estate company founded in 1970 by Robert Friedland. The merged company, with 24 brokers and 10 office staff, will retain the NAI Friedland name and its headquarters will remain at 656 Central Park Ave. in Yonkers.
Benson succeeds Friedland as president, while the firm”™s founder will continue to serve as chairman. Benson said he is working closely with Friedland Realty CEO Anthony “Tony” Lembeck, the attorney who heads the company”™s day-to-day internal operations.
Signaling one of the new directions in which the newly arrived president plans to take the company”™s brokerage operations, Friedland Realty recently opened an office at 777 Westchester Ave. in White Plains. Its location in The Exchange, Normandy Real Estate Partners”™ cluster of office parks along the Platinum Mile in Harrison and White Plains, will position Friedland office brokers to directly compete with the major brokerage teams ”“ CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, Jones Lang LaSalle, Newmark Grubb Knight Frank ”“ in the county”™s office market. Benson said he will soon announce the hiring of a “seasoned” office broker to operate the White Plains office.
Both Benson and Friedland noted the merger combines their companies”™ respective geographical strengths ”“ BCR in the Westchester market north of the Bronx River Parkway, Rockland County and southern Fairfield County, Conn., and NAI Friedland in southern Westchester and the Bronx, where its brokers have been especially strong in industrial and retail leasing and sales. The combined firm exclusively handles more than 180 commercial properties.
Benson said he sold his company”™s Connecticut office at 168 Field Point Road in Greenwich to Friedland Realty.
Their complementary market strength “is why the merger makes so much sense,” he said. “It took Bob and I about a month to put this (merger deal) together. It was too logical.”
Benson noted that NAI Friedland also manages about 1.2 million square feet of commercial property. That management operation gives Benson an entrée to tenants and a better grasp of the various tenant movements in the market, he said.
“That”™s one of the key components that Bob has that I never had” as CEO at BCR, he said.
Friedland in a press release announcing the merger said he has known Benson professionally for 27 years. “At this stage of my company”™s life cycle, it is time for a dynamic real estate professional such as Scott to step in as the visionary and transform our company,” he said.
“A lot of why Bob turned to me,” said Benson, “is he needed expertise in running day-to-day broker operations. It was a very, very logical choice.”
He said BCR “at full complement” had 15 brokers.
Benson envisions regional expansion for NAI Friedland in the Hudson Valley and Fairfield County that might be largely driven by mergers with established real estate companies.
He said one potential merger would help the company to expand its retail presence in shopping centers and “mainstream retail corridors” such as Greenwich Avenue in Connecticut.
The company is also eyeing a possible strategic merger to expand in Rockland and Orange counties.
Benson said Queens is a promising market where Friedland Realty might place its own brokers if a merger deal cannot be done. Real estate prices, especially for retail space, are rising in Queens, he said, and it could be a crossover option too for Bronx companies needing industrial space that is increasingly scarce in their borough.
On his company”™s home turf in Yonkers, Friedland”™s new president met with Mayor Mike Spano to see what financial incentives are available for what he described as “a billion-dollar acquisition group” looking at the city on the Hudson for redevelopment opportunities.
