Early in her career, MaryAnne Gilmartin, founder and chief executive of New York-based real estate developer MAG Partners, worked on projects such as the mega Atlantic Yards mixed-use residential and commercial development in Brooklyn that included the Barclays Center multipurpose indoor arena.
To help rally support from the community and to showcase her commitment, she relocated from the New York suburb of Edgemont in Westchester County to Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood while working for developer Forest City Ratner, now a part of Brookfield Asset Management.
“I moved my family half a mile from Barclays in the midst of developing the project,” she told a packed room of about 120 at an event hosted this month by the Real Estate Institute at Fordham University. “The morning I woke up after we moved in, I drew the blinds on my daughter’s window and there was a giant sign hung on the back of the multifamily building that says, ‘F you, MaryAnne.’ They were trying to drive me out of Park Slope. … I would walk down the street not knowing if they love or hate me.”
In a vindication of sorts, Barclays Center has since become what Gilmartin described as Brooklyn’s “town square” with 50% of its employees living within the New York borough. The project has made the area “a better place,” she said.
