Williams Equities’ Michael T. Cohen, Robert Getreu and Andrew Roos Take Manhattan

Williams Equities, a family-owned, New York City-focused commercial real estate firm run by Michael T. Cohen, Robert Getreu and Andrew Roos, marks its 100th anniversary this year.

Despite the company’s centenarian status, the trio of principals operates a portfolio largely in its prime, energized by a youthful wave of tech companies flooding Midtown South and an overall vigorous Manhattan office market.

Cohen, Getreu and Roos are second- or third-generation leaders of the company, originally established in 1926 by Victor Cohen as Williams & Company. The fledgling brokerage firm acquired its first property in 1953, and its portfolio grew to 2.1 million square feet by the end of the decade. Williams went on to establish strategic partnerships with Roos and Getreu’s predecessors, and their mounting acquisitions included 1700 Broadway, 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza and 28-40 West 23rd Street.

The 1990s saw then-Williams Real Estate Company transform into a leasing and brokerage operation, GVA Williams — a bid to stay competitive in an institutionalizing real estate world. The entity was sold in 2008 to what would become Colliers’ New York office.

“We wanted to manage assets, not people,” Roos told Commercial Observer.

Williams Equities now operates as a business within a business, and Cohen, Getreu and Roos all hold senior posts at Colliers. Williams Equities separately owns and manages its 14-property portfolio, made up of 12 directly owned and two affiliated buildings. Colliers afforded the family business a heightened platform and market insights, as well as fabulous Bryant Park views from 1114 Avenue of the Americas.

From that lofty perch, the principals oversee an office portfolio largely concentrated in Midtown South, a submarket that recently enjoyed its strongest first half-year of leasing since 2002, according to Colliers data, with tech-driven demand up 20 percent over the two quarters.

Williams recently added another Midtown South feather in its cap — the heavily discounted 470 Park Avenue South for $147.5 million — with redeployed capital from its $160 million sale of 655 Madison Avenue to developer Gary Barnett’s Extell. Williams Equities also joined a new partnership at the Flatiron District’s 888 Broadway with Global Holdings and Cannon Hill Partners.

Cohen, Getreu and Roos sat down with Commercial Observer in early September to discuss the 100-year history of Williams Equities, including the hard lessons and the strategic successes, and what’s in store for the company’s future.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Commercial Observer: You’re all second- and third-generation principals at Williams. Were you always going to get into this business?

Michael T. Cohen: My grandfather was one of the founders of Williams, so I’m the third generation of my family. I started right out of college in 1981. I was pretty much brainwashed. The irony is I really didn’t appreciate what the business was going to be like until I was inducted with a desk and a phone, and told to call strangers and see if they wanted to do business with me.

So it was quite a comeuppance for a kid that grew up on the Upper East Side, private school, Ivy League. It hit me like a ton of bricks.

Robert Getreu: I’m theoretically second generation. My father-in-law and brother were partners with Michael and Andrew’s dads. I did some construction and building management before coming into the brokerage side of the business in 1993.

I eventually entered the ownership side of the business while carrying on with brokerage work and portfolio management at the same time. I’ve had a host of roles over the years, which have now morphed into the ownership role that we all sit in today.

Andrew Roos: Growing up, I planned to be a journalist. I worked for the Associated Press and took pictures for Rolling Stone. I thought I was going to be one of those “Almost Famous” guys. When I realized that I couldn’t make the kind of living I wanted, I decided to try real estate.

My father set up an interview for me at the Washington office of Julien Studley. I put on a denim suit, Frye boots with stacked heels and had hair down to my shoulders, and to this day I can’t understand why they didn’t offer me a job.

I joined Williams Real Estate Company in 1976, third generation. My grandfather was partners with Michael’s grandfather. So I’ve been here for roughly half the history of Williams, and my son, Mac Roos, works with us now. He would be the fourth generation.

Are there plans in place for the next generation at Williams Equities?

Cohen: Robert and I don’t have offspring in the business the way Andrew does, but we’re grooming the next generation. Like any 21st-century business, we’re going to find the right people for the job to keep the machinery running over time. It’s a chapter that hasn’t been written yet, and only time will tell.

Roos: Many of the companies that were around when we started don’t exist anymore, like Cross & Brown and Edward S. Gordon Company. I think the fact that we’re still here is rather extraordinary in and of itself.

Your portfolio has historically been concentrated in Midtown South. Do you think of that as your domain?

Getreu: We have other assets throughout the city, but we feel very comfortable in that area. We recently sold 655 Madison in the Plaza District and bought 470 Park Avenue South, a Midtown South building, because that’s what the market was reacting to. We’ve seen a total resurgence of that marketplace in the last 12 to 18 months, and we’re working to capture it.

Cohen: The irony is, I think that the institutional buyer, or the internal rate of return buyer, is driving down returns for the Midtown steel and glass buildings, and our stock and trade, the Midtown South terra cotta and cast-iron buildings, offer a better risk-
adjusted return.

After the pandemic, some in our industry started preaching this idea that there were Class A’s and Class B’s, and the Class B’s were doomed. I believe they completely missed the gradations within Class B. The top-ranked Class B’s have a different appeal from steel and glass but are very robust. We’re seeing that now expressed by the technology companies and the AI companies.

Roos: Midtown South is Williams’ sweet spot. People want to be between 14th and 23rd streets, like Google at 111 Eighth Avenue. The types of people that occupy those buildings — a lot of them are half my age — but they raise billions of dollars, and they want a building that enables them to brand and attract people tha

Source: commercialobserver.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.