REBNY's Annual Brokers Awards honors outstanding achievements.

Lawrence D. Ackman and Simon Ziff of the Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group LLC have won the Real Estate Board's Henry Hart Rice Most Ingenious Deal of the Year Award for arranging acquisition, construction and mezzanine financing for the Henry Hudson Hotel renovation project. According to brokers, this is the first time the Rice award has been given for a transaction centering on mortgage financing.

REBNY's Robert T. Lawrence Memorial Award for leasing the new world headquarters of investment banking firm Wasserstein Parella at an already fully leased Rockefeller Center building has gone to a team of Cushman & Wakefield brokers consisting of John Gray, Amy McBride, John Moxley, Stuart Romanoff, Robert Taylor and Peter Van Duyne; and Gordon Ogden and Joseph Thanhauser, III of the Byrnam Wood-Thanhauser Group, LLC.

This is Thanhauser's fifth Lawrence award. He has also won two Rice awards. He holds a record number of Real Estate Board prizes won by an individual for exceptional accomplishment in commercial brokerage.

Facing a scarcity of capital for hotel projects, Ackman-Ziff convinced lenders that a mixture of condominium and leasehold interests in the property, and other factors affecting renovation activity, would not prevent the Henry Hudson's transformation into a successful commercial hostelry. The brokers' task included preparing the mortgage application package, obtaining a bridge loan to acquire the condominium unit owned by WNET/Channel Thirteen, and negotiating construction and mezzanine financing at favorable terms. Incidentally, the sale of the Henry Hudson Hotel was an element in the transaction recognized with the 1997 Henry Hart Rice Achievement Award.

To accommodate the Wasserstein Parella Group at 1301 Avenue of the Americas, the Lawrence award winners assembled 180,000 square feet of space in that building by negotiating interrelated new leases, renewals or subleases involving eight parties and approximately 750,000 square feet. Working under a deadline as the midtown office market tightened and rents rose at an accelerating pace, the brokers from Cushman & Wakefield and Brynam Wood-Thanhauser dealt with principals from four nations on such matters as verifying rumors of some tenants' downsizing, addressing an existing tenant's options and "puts" for additional space in the building, and obtaining a waiver of renewal rights.

The judges for the contest were Albert Behler, president and CEO of Paramount Group; Woody M. Heller, managing director of Jones Lang LaSalle; Jeffrey Lenobel, partner at Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP; and Christian Ritter, executive vice president of Helaba. There were 13 submissions for this year's contest.

The awards were presented by Real Estate Board president Steven Spinola at REBNY' s 56th Annual Sales Brokers Cocktail Party held at the Yale Club on April 12th. The program was introduced by Darcy A. Stacom, chairperson of the Sales Brokers Committee. Woody Heller was program chair for the event.