'Deal of the Year' awards granted.

Mary Ann Tighe, Gregory Tosko and Timothy Dempsey of Insignia/ESG won the Real Estate Board's Henry Hart Rice Most Ingenious Deal of the Year Award for the development of The New York Times' proposed 52-story headquarters on Eighth Avenue between 40th and 41st Streets. Tighe and Tosko previously won the Rice prize for the Conde Nast lease at Four Times Square.

Robert A, Knakal and Mark Massey of Massey Knakal Realty Services were given the REBNY's Robert T. Lawrence Memorial Award for assembling the easterly block of Second Avenue between 54th and 55th streets. The development site can currently accommodate 210,000 SF with a possibility of greater density if an off-site inclusionary housing venture can be arranged.

The awards were announced on April 10 at REBNY's Annual Cocktail Party, held by the Board's Sales Brokers Committee and its Real Estate Finance Committee.

When the New York Times moved its presses to Queens in the mid-1990s, the company's leaders began to consider transferring the newspaper's editorial and administrative offices from its current 89-year-old headquarters on 43rd Street to a new facility that would require less maintenance and offer a more efficient workplace. The Rice award winners designed a transaction that will produce a distinctive building which satisfies the Times' four objectives: remaining in its current neighborhood, securing floor layouts acceptable to its staff, holding its occupancy costs constant and incurring no rent or mortgage obligations that could compromise its journalistic independence.

Other challenges mastered by the winning brokers included guiding the Times through a site search and helping the client meet the applicable state/city design guidelines for the area. The brokers also structured a partnership with the developer Forest City Ratner that will give the Times opportunities to expand within its new, partially speculative building.

The Lawrence award winners identified an opportunity to assemble a promising development site at the north end of the block on Second Avenue's eastern side between 54th and 55th Streets. The brokers pursued the assemblage for almost nine years, shepherding 13 transactions with an approximate aggregate consideration of $30.35 million to create the development site.

These negotiations included a property swap, commercial and residential tenant relocations, air rights sales, sales of fee interests and persuading a 67-year-old nightclub owner to enter the real estate business by purchasing a property on speculation next door to one he already owned in hopes of a favorable transaction.

The contest's judges were Francis J. Greenburger of Time Equities, Peter Hauspurg of Easter Consolidated Properties, Woody Heller of Jones Lang LaSalle, Robert Ivanhoe of Greenberg, Traurig; and Jack Penrod of Fuji Bank . Twelve transactions were submitted for consideration. The cocktail party was sponsored by Crain's New York Business, the Durst Organization, HSBC and North Fork Bank