Lessons from a real-estate "fixer" at key firm Fried, Frank: getting the deal done and the cost of delay. Plus, according to a critic, the cost of corruption.

A Financial Times profile yesterday of a key real-estate figure, Why everybody who’s anybody in Manhattan real estate relies on Jon Mechanic, offers some illuminating lines about the Fried, Frank lawyer whose firm hires prominent state and city legal bureaucrats after their retirement and, yes, has worked on Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park.

From the article:

 “They just have a murderers’ row of lawyers over there,” one real estate executive observed, invoking the Yankees of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig to try to convey the firm’s talent in legal specialities such as land use and zoning.

One interesting reason that Jonathan Mechanic (as mentioned in various "best of" lists) and his firm get hired is to avoid facing them as adversaries Another involves his connections to all in the field, including financiers.

And about Atlantic Yards?

So how might this "fixer who has made himself into an institution" affect the future of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park?

Well, after working as a developer himself before rejoining Fried Frank, he learned some things:

The ultimate lesson for Mechanic was the importance of getting the deal done. That is, to identify those elements that are vital to the parties and shove aside the rest. If it sounds simple in theory, it is complicated in a business where there are seemingly endless opportunities to not do deals. Disputes with city authorities, lenders, partners, potential tenants and others are the obvious ones. But time itself can be an antagonist. The longer it takes to finalise a deal, the longer the wait to begin generating revenue to pay back lenders.

(Emphases added)

The latter paragraph suggests momentum to always renegotiate--consider the likelihood of enforcing the May 2025 affordable housing deadline. 

But it also suggests that delay has its costs, as original developer Bruce Ratner learned, and surely current master developer Greenland USA knows. That means a desire for new concessions (subsidies, tax breaks, etc.) and new investors. 

A comment on "corruption"

Most of the reader comments were appreciative, but one critical one called it "overly worshipful," arguing that the writer ignored "the total and perennial corruption of the city and state governments, linked but not entirely owing to political campaign finance, plus the tangled and very beneficial web woven by US tax law for real estate."

And that, unmentioned. suggests that "getting the deal done" involves getting government overseers to compromise.