For more than two decades, boutique brokerage owner Jodi Pulice has bid to provide real estate services to governmental agencies, typically as the woman-owned business partner to larger companies. But she said taking the lead position in a public agency project for the first time changed the history of both her company and transit contracting in America's largest city.
When Pulice and her firm JRT Realty Group went after the new assignment to lease the 130,000 square feet of retail at the Port Authority Midtown Bus Terminal in Manhattan, JRT positioned itself as the lead contractor with a minority-owned subconsultant, the brokerage and project management firm formerly known as Management Consulting and Controls Group, which now goes by the name MCCG USA.
JRT, one of the largest woman-owned commercial real estate firms in the United States, and partner MCCG USA won the multiyear contract to market and lease the high-profile shop space. Pulice, founder and CEO of JRT, said this marks the first time the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey selected a services team made up entirely of minority businesses. It came after JRT responded to the request for proposals as the lead contractor, she added.
"We've been around for 26 years, and every time we have bid for any contract, we've been a second-tier firm," Pulice said in an interview. "This is the first time that a government agency, a city agency like the Port Authority stepped up and said, 'You know what? We want you to be our primary.'
"After being around 26 years, I nearly fell off my chair."
JRT previously leased the Midtown Bus Terminal for several years as the minority contracting partner of global brokerage Cushman & Wakefield.
Located in Times Square, the Midtown Bus Terminal is the busiest bus terminal in the United States, according to the Port Authority. It provides 250,000 passenger trips on busy weekdays and, in 2019, it handled more than 70 million passenger trips and 2.4 million buses as they arrived and departed.
The new leasing team is likely to face some challenges as potential tenants try to gauge when regular traffic will return to the bus terminal after getting disrupted by the pandemic and so many New York office occupants working from home.
The retail space at the bus terminal is 97.3% leased, and about 28,000 square feet of space is available, according to CoStar data.
"With hundreds of thousands of people coming through the doors every day, it's a tremendous opportunity for retailers," said Greg Smith, president of JRT. "They just need to come and see what opportunities can be presented to them."
Smith said interest is already high in the available shop space at the terminal, especially from restaurant operators.
"It's all different kinds of food," he said. "Restaurants, grab-and-go food. There are thousands of buses that come and go from the bus terminal every day, so all of those people are visitors twice a day taking the buses" and represent potential customers.
Pulice said the diversity of the leasing team would benefit the leasing effort and attract new tenants to the terminal.
"The creativity is brought to the table when you have people with a diverse background," she said. "So they are bringing things to the table that maybe I hadn't thought of or other people that look like me and look like Greg never thought of."
Pulice said JRT and MCCG USA "want the vendor base to reflect the consumer base. And this is a perfect opportunity because of the diversity of the team."
The Port Authority "looks forward to working with the JRT and MCCG USA team to jointly re-brand and re-energize the Midtown Bus Terminal as a true retail destination that is home to a vibrant mix of name brands that can serve the needs of more than a quarter of a million commuters each day," Leah Bassknight, assistant director of real estate at the authority, said in a statement.
Over the coming months, Bassknight said, the efforts of the Port Authority and JRT and MCCG USA "will begin a cycle that proves, without a doubt, that the resilience of New York and the resurgence of retail in the city is real" and will prove to be long lasting.