AT
THE DESK OF:
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fer Cohen founded TerraCRG in 2008 at the start of the recession. “They kind of laughed at us at first,” said Cohen, president of the Brooklyn-based commercial brokerage. But Cohen — who worked at Massey Knakal for all of three years before starting Terra — has by all accounts proven those skeptics wrong. The 16-broker firm is on track to close $200 million in business this year, Cohen said. And it’s created something of a niche selling midsize development properties, although the firm also does some leasing. (It leased the first Brooklyn outpost of
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OFER COHEN
Soul Cycle, the gym, last year in Williamsburg.) Cohen’s larger deals include a 12,690-square-foot site at 470 Fourth Avenue with 80,000 buildable square feet (currently in contract for $20 million) and a 200,000-square-foot Greenwood Heights site (sold for $19 million in September to CWN Property Management). This month, Cohen showed TRD around the company’s Park Slope office, which sits on a residential block, behind a parking garage. Let’s just say Cohen never sits down. Find out why below. By Guelda Voien
Cohen recently injured his back at the gym
and now works at this standing desk, where bricks from a development site Terra sold
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in Clinton Hill prop up his keyboard. Cohen noted he hadn’t heard of the ergonomic fad of standing on the job, but said: “I actually kind of like it now.”
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This blue, er, abstract painting was done by
Ocean, one of Cohen’s six-year-old twins. She and her fraternal twin sister, Daya, are also in the photograph below, at the family’s summer home in Montauk.
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A photo of Cohen at the first Brooklyn Nets
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Cohen came to the U.S. 18 years ago from
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This City Planning Commission book
game at the Barclays Center last year. The arena,
Israel. While he doesn’t consider himself religious,
outlines zoning in every part of Brooklyn. Cohen
which is half a block from Terra’s Pacific Street
he observes Shabbat, but really only in spirit, he
said he checks it three or four times a day. One of
office, has “doubled [retail] rents on nearby
said. He keeps two phones — a BlackBerry for
his daughters wrote his name on it.
streets and tripled rents within a block.” The firm
business, and an iPhone for friends and family.
has season tickets.
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Cohen said the real estate community
was skeptical when he launched Terra. He posts motivational expressions on his wall by visionaries like Mahatma Gandhi, which have helped him stay focused. One reads, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
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Cohen’s office is adorned with good-luck
charms, including this knife and this Israeli hamsa, which is believed to ward off evil. His superstition extends to his professional life, too. He said Terra brokers have a tradition of not calculating their commissions until the check is physically in the bank. And, he said, “we don’t celebrate a deal before it closes.” 26 December 2013 www.TheRealDeal.com
The BlackBerry “goes off on Friday evening,” he
10 Until his recent back injury, Cohen regularly
said.
went for 30-mile bike rides on the weekends on
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Mahatma Gandhi
a Specialized bike like the one pictured here.
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This terrarium replaced one that was given to
Though he hopes to get back to biking soon, for
Cohen by an intern at the firm, but which died off
now he is doing Pilates to speed along his recovery.
after he went on vacation and failed to water it. Still, Cohen liked the idea of a mini-ecosystem so
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much that he went to the same store and bought
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his own. “It’s just nice to have something green on your desk,” he said.
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This map shows Brooklyn in the 1930s.
Cohen bought it at the Brooklyn Flea, the yearround market populated by local vendors. It’s a reminder that the borough is in constant flux, he said.
9 Cohen in the front row of a Nets game at the Barclays Center.
PHOTOGRAPH OF OFER COHEN FOR THE REAL DEAL BY CHRISTIAN FERNANDEZ