About to turn 32, commercial real estate broker Brian Carcaterra was contemplating another retirement recently. It would not be his first.
“I think I”™m done playing lacrosse,” he said softly. He sat at the head of a conference table in the management office of Normandy Real Estate Partners, tucked away in the basement of a Westchester Avenue office-park building in White Plains. “I get more stimulation, I enjoy the mental aspect of the game more now from the sidelines” as a coach.
For seven years, Carcaterra has competed in a business suit and neatly knotted tie as a broker at Newmark Knight Frank, working out of the international real estate firm”™s Greenwich, Conn., office, where he is managing director. His playing fields are the commercial office spaces and chummy business networks of Westchester and Fairfield counties and metropolitan New York and those meeting places where leasing deals are made.
At Johns Hopkins University, Carcaterra excelled on defense in his former pursuit, earning three-time All-America honors as a goalie and competing in three NCAA Final Fours in one of the nation”™s most prestigious Division 1 lacrosse programs. In the highly competitive real estate market here, his reputation has grown as an aggressive scorer, most notably when Normandy Real Estate Partners this year chose him as exclusive leasing agent at The Exchange, the 14-building, 1.7 million-square-foot office portfolio formerly known as the Platinum Mile along I-287 in Harrison and White Plains.
There he heads a four-man Newmark Knight Frank squad that since March has scored about 200,000 square feet in new and renewed leasing at The Exchange despite a stagnant office market. Not that it”™s a job requirement, but all four brokers carry lacrosse sticks in their cars.
“When I came here seven years ago, there were one or two guys that played lacrosse” at his company, said Carcaterra. “Now there”™s probably a dozen.” He and a Johns Hopkins graduate in the lending division at Brookfield Properties have formed Re-Lax, a social networking group for former lacrosse players in the metropolitan area.
”˜My first stick”™
Raised in Yorktown Heights and its fervent lacrosse tradition, Carcaterra was a high-school All-American in goal at Yorktown High School. Six years later, Michael McCall, another NKF broker on Carcaterra”™s squad at The Exchange, starred as an attacker at Yorktown High. McCall went on to captain the University of North Carolina lacrosse team, where he ranks sixth all-time in goals scored.
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In recent summers, Carcaterra and McCall have teamed up too in the adult division of Westchester”™s Sound Shore Lacrosse League. Though the All-American has determinedly avoided playing his old goalie”™s position, their team racked up its fifth consecutive league championship this summer. That has Carcaterra pondering retirement as an amateur player for the more cerebral pleasures of coaching.
“Our town is so lacrosse-crazy and it”™s such a part of our culture, that growing up with a lacrosse stick was pretty natural,” said Carcaterra, whose two older brothers also played Division 1 college lacrosse.
Paul Carcaterra was a two-time All-America midfielder at Syracuse University, a rival lacrosse power that thwarted Johns Hopkins”™ bid for a national championship during his kid brother”™s goalkeeping years there.
Carcaterra and a recent addition to the Newmark Knight Frank team from Wall Street, Daniel Denihan, have known each other since they were 10-years-olds at a summer lacrosse camp. “It”™s a part of life in Manhasset too,” said Denihan, who still lives in that Long Island community. “I got my first stick when I graduated kindergarten.”
He and Carcaterra were roommates at Johns Hopkins, where Denihan was a two-time All-American attacker. Both went on to play three years professionally in the startup Major League Lacrosse, Carcaterra with the Long Island Lizards and Rochester Rattlers and Denihan with the Baltimore Bay Hawks and Bridgeport Barrage.
Their pay was $20,000 for a 12-game season, a player”™s salary that has since been halved by the financially struggling league. “The pay was great!” said Denihan.
“You would have done it for free,” said Carcaterra. “Everyone jumped at that opportunity” to play at the pro level.
”˜Leap of faith”™
Off the field, Denihan put in long, chair-bound hours as a credit derivatives broker at Tullett Prebon Americas Corp. on Wall Street. Juggling two careers proved difficult. “That”™s why I stopped” as a professional athlete, he said. “I loved playing lacrosse but work was too demanding.”
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Out of Lizards uniform, Carcaterra brought the gospel of lacrosse to California, coaching his sport at Beverly Hills High School and in a Malibu youth program. He too retired from the pro ranks after three years.
“I knew that I needed to start getting a career on path,” he said. “I wanted to look at opportunities that had the most earnings potential. Everyone I spoke to suggested Wall Street or real estate.
“I figured all my friends were on Wall Street and no one was in real estate. So I figured I”™d take the one route and if it didn”™t work out, I”™d network to Wall Street.”
It did work out ”“ so well that broker Carcaterra”™s arrival in his luxury car at a Sound Shore game prompted Mike McCall, facing the same career choice between Wall Street and real estate, to ask, “What does he do?”
It helped steer him to Newmark Knight Frank, where Carcaterra took him under his wing. The mentor advised McCall, who had been invited to join the pro lacrosse league, that it would be difficult to do both jobs well.
Looking to bail out of his Wall Street career, Denihan too was drawn to Newmark Knight Frank and the chance to work with his fellow laxmen. “I think I was always passionate about real estate,” he said. His family”™s third-generation business in Manhattan, Denihan Hospitality Group, a hotel management and development company, owns the Affinia Hotels chain and two other hotel brands. “I just thought working with Brian would really propel me to be successful. The opportunity for me to come up and work with Mike and Brian was what made me willing to take a leap of faith.”
Another score
Failure, that common lot of athletes, also has prepared them for success in commercial real estate, they said. So too has the hard work and practice needed to excel in sports.
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“The neat thing about being an athlete and being in the sales business is that the experience you”™ve had in the past of failing and picking yourself up and learning from your mistakes, it gives you an advantage from those who haven”™t competed in sports,” said McCall. “Just being in sports, you”™re constantly put in that situation. No one”™s going to get it right the first time.”
For Carcaterra, putting on the business uniform after a successful lacrosse career was like “a new identity. You start from scratch. I walked away OK with it because I knew I was confronting a new challenge in life.”
“In real estate,” he said, “our deals take a long period of time from start to finish, so you don”™t get that immediate high you get on the field of making a play, scoring a goal. When you”™re finished, you have that respect for the process unlike you get from athletic competition.”
The youngest member of Carcaterra”™s team, Peter Hansen, was a Division 1 lacrosse goalie and captained the squash team at Hobart and William Smith College in upstate Geneva. As a fellow goalie, he understood his mentor”™s drive “to be a quarterback, be in control.”
Graduating from college this year, Hansen interned at Newmark Knight Frank”™s Connecticut office last summer. In September he was made a permanent player on the brokerage team.
His fellow laxmen-brokers congratulated a smiling Hansen around the conference table. He had just arranged his first meeting with a prospective client from a canvassing call. The kid had scored.
