Center Piece: The Mattone Institute Teams With Alumni to Make Career Connections

Just about five years ago, the Mattone Family Institute for Real Estate Law first opened its doors at St. John’s Law with a generous endowment from Joseph M. Mattone, Sr. ’53C, ’55L, ’94 HON, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Mattone Group. In that time, from its home base in a well-appointed suite on the Law School’s third floor, the Mattone Institute has helped to prepare hundreds of aspiring real estate attorneys for success in the field.

In the classroom, students learn about commercial leasing, real estate development, real estate finance, and other key subjects through an innovative curriculum taught by renowned scholars and practitioners. They also participate in co-curricular programs, like the Real Estate Law Fellowship Program, the Real Property Law Society, and the N.Y. Real Property Law Journal, and engage with leaders in the field at site visits, fireside chats, and a range of in-person and virtual events.

At the heart of all the Mattone Institute offers is a group of St. John’s Law alumni who are committed to helping students make career connections. “The Institute exists to support students who are interested in real estate law, and we fulfill that mission year after year by teaming with alumni who work in the industry,” says Robert J. Sein ’03, who has been the Mattone Institute’s director since 2017. “A number of those alumni partners serve on the Institute’s Advisory Board, and all understand how important it is for students to build real-world experience hands on.”

Helping students gain that experience is a full-circle opportunity for Kelly Porcella ’07. When she was a St. John’s Law 1L, Pamela McCormack ’96 hired her for a summer internship at a top

investment bank. After 17 years, their professional and personal ties remain strong as Porcella serves as Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel, and McCormack as Co-Founder and President, of Ladder Capital Corp, a commercial real estate investment trust.

McCormack and Porcella joined the Mattone Institute’s Advisory Board at the outset. “After serving on the Law School Alumni Association Board of Directors and cofounding its New York City Chapter earlier in my career, I wanted to find a new way to give back,” McCormack says. “I was delighted to see St. John’s Law committed to embracing the corporate-transactional side of the legal profession, and real estate specifically. I was also grateful for the opportunity to honor the Mattone family, who have—and continue to be—generous benefactors of the Law School and, by extension, its alumni.”

Over the years, with Porcella’s and McCormack’s guidance, Ladder has welcomed seven student externs from St. John’s Law. “It’s a robust externship program that offers students a comprehensive educational experience and connections in corporate law and the commercial real estate industry,” Porcella explains. “Working with both our Legal & Compliance group and our Transaction Management group, they get broad exposure to corporate, regulatory, and real estate subject areas to help them determine where they might want to focus, and to specialized internal and external counsel as resources and potential employers.”

Like McCormack and Porcella, Thomas G. Maira ’96 was happy to support his alma mater and its students through the Mattone Institute. As a real estate partner at DLA Piper, he coordinated the launch of an externship program in the firm’s New York Real Estate Practice Group. “I attended St. John’s Law on a full scholarship and appreciated that start to my legal studies and career,” he says. “Now I want to help students who are very focused on real estate law get experience in actual practice and build the St. John’s Law brand as real estate graduates.” The program has been a success, with student externs staying on as paid interns and then earning full-time positions at DLA Piper.

St. John’s Law students also find professional success thanks to Fredric L. Altschuler ’72, who is senior counsel at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP and a Mattone Institute Advisory Board member. “For 40 plus years, I was single-mindedly focused on career and family,” he shares. “But as I got older and started to cut back on my practice, I began to think about how I could give back to the Law School and legal community. Real estate practice has been extremely good to me, and it seemed like a good time to pay my dues. The Institute is a great resource in feeding the New York City law firm and corporate pipelines with talented young future real estate lawyers.”

Throughout his career, Altschuler has helped to recruit and hire talented lawyers. He has also been an able and enthusiastic mentor. “I’ve developed many real estate industry contacts over the years,” he says. “With those connections, I’ve often helped fellow lawyers and clients in identifying employment opportunities, making introductions, giving advice, and the like. So when Rob Sein and I discussed how I could best work with the Institute, we both felt I could help advise law students and recent graduates about identifying job opportunities, being a lawyer, working in a law firm environment, and handling their career.” Altschuler enjoys this ongoing partnership. “Thanks to the Mattone Institute, law students today are being exposed to what real estate practice really is and, to me, that is incredibly

valuable and a large reason why I’m so excited to be involved,” he says. His excitement is shared by John V. Terrana ’84C, ’91L, the Co-Managing Partner and Chair of the Tax Certiorari Practice Group at Forchelli Deegan Terrana LLP (FDT). He and his firm have been involved with the Mattone Institute since its inception.

As Terrana sees it, it was an easy alliance. “We’re one of Long Island’s largest fullservice law firms, and have a longtime and deep relationship with St. John’s,” he says. “Close to one-third of our attorneys are alumni. We’re also heavily concentrated in real estate, have worked with the Mattone family many times, and find them to be outstanding corporate citizens. So I was certain that we could make a difference and offer students invaluable experience in many real estate-related practice areas.”

Terrana’s vision for helping students is now a reality. FDT regularly brings on interns and externs from the Law School, and several past interns and externs are now full-time attorneys at the firm. Reflecting on that fruitful partnership, and all the others that alumni have forged with the Mattone Family Institute for Real Estate Law, Sein says: “We’ve been focused on student success from day one, and our alumni have supported us every step of the way. As employers, as mentors, and in countless other roles, they help our students make career connections that will benefit them, the real estate industry, and the wider legal profession for years to come.”

FROM HARNESSING AND SUPPLYING CLEAN ENERGY TO REIMAGINING AND REVITALIZING THE PLACES AND SPACES WHERE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE LIVE AND WORK, ALUMNI IN THE FIELD OFFER THEIR TAKE ON THE FUTURE OF NEW YORK CITY REAL ESTATE.

Everyone can sense it.

New York City is on track for a post-pandemic renewal. Spring is in the air. Mandates and restrictions are easing. New leadership in Albany and City Hall is bringing opportunity for conversation and collaboration. Retailers, restaurants, and offices are sparking back to life, and their employees are once again emerging out of buses and trains, enhancing pedestrian activity. Our Midtown East neighborhood is reawakening.

But I don’t take the pace of this recovery for granted—we still have hard work in front of us to stimulate the economy and bring our people back in greater numbers. And I also recognize that the postpandemic commercial real estate canvas that emerges may offer a somewhat newer look, as discussions continue about zoning and legislative options for commercial-to-residential building conversion.

Whatever the built environment may be, those who call Midtown East home during some part of their day want new, state-of-the-art public and work spaces that are easily and quickly accessible by mass transit. The real estate community is building for that future as it continues its unparalleled commitment to our city and region. That commitment is nowhere more obvious than in the Midtown East neighborhood surrounding iconic Grand Central Terminal.

It’s difficult to imagine the immediate and impressive impact that the Vanderbilt Corridor Rezoning and the Greater East Midtown Rezoning would have on New York City’s economy and Midtown East’s rebirth—never mind how important it would all be in a postCOVID world. I’m extremely excited about new projects spurred by these rezoning initiatives that would help reshape the area’s commercial office infrastructure. They would also tie in desperately needed transit improvements that the government hasn’t been able to finance on its own.

Change is already underway. SL Green’s state-of-the-art One Vanderbilt, adjacent to Grand Central, has already introduced a new pedestrian plaza. A new tourist destination, the Summit, sits high above Midtown and provides additional access to all facets of the landmark public transit hub. Others major developments include 270 Park Avenue (JPMorgan Chase), 175 Park Avenue (RXR Realty and TF Cornerstone), 343 Madison Avenue (Boston Properties), 415 Madison (Rudin Management), 417 Park Avenue (GDS Development), 425 Park Avenue (L&L Holdings), 520 Fifth Avenue (Rabina Properties), and 570 Fifth Avenue (Extell Development).

Each of these projects showcases the forward-thinking vision and success of neighborhood rezoning efforts. At this critical time, with the commitment of a smart and resolute real estate community, they are helping New York City get back on its feet—just another reason why we welcome these investments here in Midtown East, the world’s central business district.

I’m very excited about the proposed Affirmation Tower project on Manhattan’s West Side. If given the green light by state officials, the tower would be the world’s tallest building owned by majority Black-owned companies, the tallest building ever built by a woman-led contractor, and the world’s tallest skyscraper designed by a Black architect.

The development team’s latest vision for Affirmation Tower includes affordable housing, the NAACP’s new headquarters, commercial offices, and New York City’s first Civil Rights Museum. This will be a beacon of Black excellence in the most iconic city in the United States, where Black people make up almost 25% of the population. Our people have been left out of creating the infrastructure of this city since its inception, but this tower could change that.

For Black people and other minorities, owning property is the best way to build generational wealth. The Affirmation Tower project will also create jobs for minority contractors and businesses because Black developers are more likely to hire minority tradesmen. This will cause millions, if not billions, of dollars to circulate through Black and minority communities, which have been historically excluded by systemic racism such as Jim Crow laws, redlining, and job discrimination. More recently, those communities have also been disproportionally affected by the pandemic.

I’m very pleased that affordable housing units are part of the proposed Tower. I’ve seen city rents increase year after year. When I first moved here in 2005, my rent was $375 a month. I now pay almost 10 times that amount. This fine city operates on the backs of hardworking middle class people, and more and more of them are getting priced out of living here. We should be doing all we can to provide a living wage to all workers, that includes lowering the cost of housing.

A study by the Selig Center for Economic Growth found that money circulates once in the Black community, six times in the Latino community, and nine times in the Asian community. In white neighborhoods, money circulates nearly an unlimited number of times. I started a real estate investment club last fall focused on educating and empowering the Black community, so our money circulates through it. Our club invests in Black-, women-, and minority-owned businesses, and plans to purchase real estate in Black neighborhoods.

Affirmation Tower would stand as an affirmation of all that’s possible for our club’s investors, and for the entire Black community. Rising high in the Manhattan skyline, it will show all who live, work, and look upwards here that the dream of creating a New York City built by and for all can indeed become a reality.

Our future depends on the fight against climate change, and the real estate industry will play a vital role in ensuring a more sustainable future driven by clean energy. The project I’m most passionate about right now is called Clean Path NY, which will transform the way New York City is powered by reducing its reliance on fossil fuels. Our company—energyRe—was recently awarded the right to develop the project after a competitive request for proposal run by the New York State Research and Development Authority. Clean Path NY is a partnership between energyRe, the New York Power Authority, and Invenergy. The founding investors at energyRe include principals of Related Companies, where we’ve focused on sustainable development in and beyond the energy sector for decades. Now, through this project, we’re taking our involvement in solving New York City’s clean energy challenges to the next level, benefiting people here and statewide.

The impact of Clean Path NY will be enormous. At the moment, a major traffic jam on New York State’s energy grid is blocking renewable energy produced upstate (where the grid is 90%+ clean energy) from reaching downstate and New York City (where the grid is 80%+ powered by fossil fuels). Our project is comprised of a stateof-the-art, 175-mile transmission line that will clear that traffic jam and bring 3,800 MW of wind and solar power from Upstate New York directly into New York City.

As a net result, this new energy pathway will transform the way the city is powered by dramatically reducing fossil fuel generation. The project’s impact will be measurable and enduring. Clean Path NY will lead to the removal of 49 million tons of carbon from New York’s atmosphere through 2040 and will reduce the harmful particulate matter in our state’s air by 20% every year. That will directly lead to better health outcomes, cleaner air, and real progress on environmental justice in New York City and frontline communities across the state.

Overall, Clean Path NY is an $11 billion project that will create more than 8,300 jobs across New York State. Projects like Clean Path NY are more important now than ever before. We see the effects of climate change becoming more evident every day—whether through severe weather or rising seas. When it comes online in 2027, our project will provide New York City with 16% of the power it needs. It will be resilient, reliable, and, most importantly, renewable energy. The green economy is a tremendous opportunity, and also an imperative for securing our future, and I’m incredibly excited that our project—Clean Path NY—is a vital part of that effort.

We all know that the pandemic has changed the way we think about the places we live and the places we work. In the United States and around the world, for the first time and in unprecedented numbers, employees are experiencing the freedom to work in different locations based on their preferences, making the traditional approach to office life feel like a thing of the past.

As employers think about their office footprint and plan for their real estate needs, flexible office space is becoming an appealing alternative. Not only does “flex space” allow employers to give their employees more day-to-day options, it also enables companies to enter new markets, test new ways of working, and reduce capital expenditures. Even government agencies are opting for flexible work arrangements after adopting new workplace technologies during the shutdown. With this shift, there is an opportunity for flex space to become a larger part of the commercial real estate market, although it remains only a small portion today.

At WeWork, we help people think about this shift by comparing it to the e-commerce disruption of traditional retail back in the early 2000s. Companies like Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy were retail industry leaders because they pivoted quickly and invested in omni-channel opportunities as more and more customers opted to do business with them online. Similarly, today, we’re seeing sophisticated owners and operators of real estate already leveraging, or at least starting to consider, flex space as part of their portfolios. Flex space will become a must-have amenity for any landlord looking to fill a portfolio of spaces, and a necessity for any company looking to attract and retain top talent. As an employee of WeWork, a global leading flex space provider, flexibility in where I work is something I value. I think there are many professionals like me who enjoy working from the comfort of their home, while also having the option of attending important meetings— or social events—at company headquarters. This is an exciting time in real estate, and I’m thrilled to be a part of the evolution towards more flexible thinking about where and how we work.

The COVID-19 pandemic has put a spotlight on opportunities to convert commercial space in New York City into residential properties. Growing the housing stock in this sustainable way will require shared vision, as well as a private-public partnership with state and local governments focused on removing regulatory obstacles.

On the regulatory front, New York Governor Kathy Hochul has announced plans to amend the Multiple Dwelling Law to facilitate conversions of Manhattan commercial buildings south of 60th Street that were built before 1980. That effort, and similar legislative changes, could clear the way for tremendous redevelopment that would benefit property owners, tenants, and the city more broadly. Governor Hochul’s support is rooted in past success. In Lower Manhattan, approximately 20 million square feet of office space has already been converted to apartments and, over the last 20 years, the area’s residential population has reportedly doubled. The rise of that mixed-use community proves that conversions can serve all stakeholders. Now, looking to Midtown Manhattan, experts believe that about 10% of older commercial buildings could be converted, generating some 14,000 new market-rate and affordable units.

While providing safe, affordable housing is a major benefit of conversion, it’s not the only one. We’ve seen that neighborhoods with more diversified uses are more resilient in the face of economic stress. For instance, Downtown Brooklyn seemed to suffer far less economic pain during the pandemic than predominantly commercial neighborhoods. Conversions could also boost public safety, as streets with a mix of properties tend to be less desolate. In addition, building owners may find conversion a cost-efficient alternative to upgrading properties to meet environmental regulations and the needs of today’s commercial tenants.

This isn’t to say that converting New York City commercial space on a large scale would be easy. Midtown East offers some insight. Changes to residential use there would require reconsideration of 2017 rezoning laws. For example, the requirement that conversions on side streets be approved through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure often involves uncertainty and inordinate delays.

Structural issues could also impede conversions. The large floor plates of some city office buildings render it difficult, if not impossible, to address requirements for light and air. Many laws and regulations that impede conversions were enacted long ago to address dangers in tenement buildings. But those provisions don’t necessarily reflect technology advances, such as new ways of providing air conditioning, ventilation, heating, lighting, sprinklers, and fireproof construction.

My colleagues and I look forward to advising our clients in connection with these exciting issues. With appropriate legislative amendments and government support, including sensible incentive programs, the promises of large-scale conversions from commercial to residential use can be realized.

The project I’m most excited about right now is the redevelopment of Manhattan’s PENN District, which comprises 30th to 34th Streets between Sixth Avenue and Ninth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan.

The project is spearheaded by Vornado Realty Trust, which owns roughly 10 million square feet in the PENN District and has committed more than $2.4 billion to its redevelopment, in addition to more than $3 billion committed by New York State. In the PENN District, Vornado is creating a campus, a city within a city, and a neighborhood of the future.

Among the highlights of the redevelopment project is the transformation of the former James A. Farley Post Office Building, an iconic New York City landmark that spans two city blocks and avenues, into the Farley Building. The Farley Building is well situated, standing adjacent to Penn Station and across the street from Madison Square Garden, the city’s bustling sports and entertainment venue. The Farley Building includes 730,000 square feet of office space leased by Facebook. It’s also home to the Moynihan Train Hall, a new gateway for Amtrak and Long Island Rail Road service that offers a range of dining, retail, and other amenities. With its PENN District project, Vornado has completed the construction of a new Long Island Rail Road 33rd Street entrance and is also expanding, revitalizing, and bringing new tenants to the Long Island Rail Road concourse, which will connect Seventh Avenue and the Moynihan Train Hall.

The redevelopment project also brings plans for the demolition of Hotel Pennsylvania, which will give rise to PENN 15, a modern, 2.7 millionsquare-foot tower, and the redevelopment and updating of the buildings that will now be known as PENN 1 and PENN 2. Together, PENN 1 and PENN 2 will comprise a unique, two-building, 4.4 million-square-foot, interconnected campus, with a focus on an amenity-rich office culture. Outside, there will be landscaped plazas and over 65,000 square feet of tenant space, including a 17,000-square-foot rooftop park. Inside, among other offerings, you’ll find new grand lobbies and more than 200,000 square feet of tenant amenities, including a social staircase with bleacher seating, full-service restaurants and a range of dining options, a 35,000-square-foot wellness and fitness center, a health center, a conferencing facility and flexible work suites, and a 280-person hall for presentations and events.

With the PENN District project well underway, it’s an exciting time to be part of the revitalization of a district and community that’s at the hub and heart of New York City.

Halletts Point, a $2.4 million real estate venture that will transform the Queens waterfront, is the project I’m most excited about at this moment. Developed by The Durst Organization, it’s a model of cooperation between the Astoria, Queens community, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), and a private developer that should serve as a model for real estate projects across the city.

The Hallett’s peninsula is the longtime home of the Astoria Houses, a vibrant, but underserved, NYCHA community. With Halletts Point, The Durst Organization is bringing residents a much-needed supermarket, as well as a vibrant mix of retail and community-use facilities. Once completed, the project’s seven residential buildings will offer over 2,000 rental apartments, including around 450 affordable housing units.

At 10 Halletts Point, the first of the seven buildings to open, The Durst Organization has created a complex consisting of a 22-story north tower, a 17-story south tower, and approximately 400 apartments. The supermarket offers the community over 23,000 square feet of healthy and affordable food options as part of the New York City Economic Development Corporation’s Food Retail Expansion to Support Health (FRESH) program. We’re also completing Halletts Point Building 7, a residential rental building dedicated entirely to affordable housing.

The impact of the Halletts Point project is evident in the additional development it has spurred on the peninsula. Prior to our project, with its mix of underutilized warehouses, light manufacturing, and empty lots, the neighborhood was fairly desolate. Today, you can see vacant lots transforming into essential rental housing that will revitalize the community and uplift its residents.

I’m extremely proud to have a role in The Durst Organization’s Halletts Point development project. It’s a vital addition to New York City’s built environment, and one that needs to be replicated widely to make our communities and living spaces accessible to all who call this wonderful city home.