By Sarah Trefethen
Veteran broker Laura Pomerantz, formerly a principal and founding partner of PBS Real Estate, has struck out on her own.
Laura Pomerantz Real Estate officially launched Monday.
The new company’s founder started seriously considering the move in the fourth quarter OF last year, and made the final decision in January, she told Real Estate Weekly.
“Retailers are really back in expansion mode and focusing on both national opportunities and international opportunities,” Pomerantz said. “It’s a perfect time in terms of retail landscape.”
The company will offer leasing, acquisition and portfolio management services for whatever class of property a client needs, she said. “Even if your retail client starts as your retail client, over time as they grow, they need office space.”
Betty Ende and Ilyssa Rothfeld, Pomerantz’s team from PBS, are joining her in the new venture, and she said she is looking to add to her team with additional experienced retail brokers interested in taking a more entrepreneurial approach to their work.
Brokers with expertise that would complement Pomerantz’s focus on luxury and aspirational luxury retailers — such as big-box specialists — might be a particularly good fit, she said, but chemistry is also important.
“Anyone who, I would think, has the same level of integrity as we have here and experience and has a good book, I would want to talk to,” she said.
The new company is based in New York, with offices in 230 Park Ave., and is already working with several prominent national and international companies, including Abercrombie & Fitch, Levi’s, Joe Fresh, Ippolita, Ted Baker London, Gant, Vince Camuto, Hotel Chocolat, Jack Rogers and Scoop, as well as consulting services to the Bal Harbour Shops.
Pomerantz has successfully concluded over eight million s/f of office and retail transactions for clients including Bloomberg L.P., Tom Ford, Giorgio Armani, Stuart Weitzman, David Yurman, and Josie Natori, and serving as the exclusive and national representative for Ted Baker/London, Levi Strauss & Company, Mulberry and Vince Camuto, to name a few.
She has represented Abercrombie & Fitch for flagships in the United States and internationally, recently completing deals on their behalf in Milan, Paris, Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Brussels, Copenhagen, Dublin, London and Madrid.
Prior to establishing PBS, Pomerantz was a senior managing director at Newmark & Company and previously held senior management positions at SL Green. She also served as an EVP at The Leslie Fay Companies, supervising its designer fashion division and serving on the company’s board of directors
