RealShare EXCLUSIVE: Conference Attracting Major Players

WHITE PLAINS-More than 150 industry “movers and shakers” have already registered for the first ever RealShare Westchester County conference, which will be held on Aug. 18 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel here. The half-day conference will be hosted by Real Estate Media, publishers of Real Estate Forum, Real Estate New York and Globest.com. The program, which will begin at 7 a.m. with breakfast/registration, will cover a wide array of issues affecting the Westchester County real estate industry today including downtown redevelopment and waterfront revitalization initiatives, commercial leasing activity, the state of the commercial investment sales market and much more. After a welcome address by Jonathan Schein, president and chief executive officer of Real Estate Media, Westchester County executive Andrew Spano will take the podium to discuss the state of the county’s economic development efforts as well as its programs geared to maintaining the county’s quality of life.

In what is expected to be a spirited Town Hall Meeting, John Goodkind, executive managing director of Newmark, will be the moderator of a panel discussion that will broach the current state of the Westchester County real estate market and where it might be headed in the future. The panelists include Bruce Berg, chief operating officer and executive vice president of Cappelli Enterprises; Raymond J. Crotty, president and chief operating officer of Union State Bank; Michael Grossman, executive vice president of Mack-Cali Realty Corp., Joseph Simone, president of Simone Development Cos.; and Barrie Wood, managing director of CIBC World Markets.

Next, some of the biggest players in the investment sales sector will offer their views on the county’s red-hot property sales market. Moderating the program will be Andrew Merin, executive vice president of Cushman & Wakefield Capital Markets. The panel will feature Felix Charney, president of Summit Development Corp., the new owner of the Reader’s Digest property in Chappaqua; Michael Connolly, regional director of GE Commercial Finance Real Estate; Jeff Dunne, vice chairman of CB Richard Ellis Tri-State Investment Team; and Anthony E. Malkin, president of W&M Properties.

Michael Desiato, editor-in-chief of Real Estate Media will sit down for a one-on-one session of “Inside the Real Estate Mind” with Robert Weisz, president and chief executive officer of the RPW Group. Weisz’s firm has converted the former Altria Group property in Rye Brook into a multi-tenant building that has been the focal point of most of Westchester’s leasing activity of late.

Finishing off the conference will be a focus on the county’s major cities and the massive amount of development taking place there. White Plains Mayor Joseph Delfino, Yonkers Mayor Philip Amicone and New Rochelle Mayor Timothy Idoni will discuss their respective downtown redevelopment programs and what new projects are in the pipeline.