PODCAST: MaryAnne Gilmartin On Gridlock, Entrepreneurship And Why Baltimore 'Deserves A Future'
Bisnow's audio series, Bisnow Reports, examines every facet of the international commercial real estate industry — from the murky future of retail and office to real estate’s reckoning with diversity to the effects of climate change on the built world, and so much more. You can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify and Amazon Music, or scroll down to listen in your browser.
On this episode, MaryAnne Gilmartin, the founder and CEO of MAG Partners, sits down with Bisnow.
Her company is just over 2 years old, but Gilmartin has been a fixture on the New York City real estate scene for decades. Once the president and CEO of Forest City Ratner, her developments include Barclays Center and the New York Times Building on Eighth Avenue.
MAG Partners now has a roughly $1B development pipeline, including three residential projects spanning 1,000 units and a ground-up office development in Manhattan. Last month, the company announced it is taking over the Port Covington megaproject in South Baltimore, along with San Francisco's MacFarlane Partners. The firms are joining the plan to build a mini-city launched by Sagamore Ventures, the development firm founded by Under Armour founder Kevin Plank.
On the podcast, she spoke about running her new firm, leading Mack-Cali as interim CEO, taking on the ambitious project in Baltimore — her first outside of New York City — and her concerns about political dysfunction and division in New York.
“There’s no way to do anything big and bold without expecting some friction,” she says on the podcast. “It’s just getting harder and harder. There’s really more divisiveness in the country and city than I’ve ever seen … Maybe when gridlock occurs and nothing's happening and the city is falling apart and people still want to be here and they love our city, then something will give, because something has to give.”
