A good time for entrepreneurship in five boroughs

Real Estate Weekly, Feb 16, 1994 by Marjorie Seaman

Opening a commercial real estate company tn 1993 seemed like a good idea. The market had shown the first signs of life in six years, when the government had become every property owners partner in the proceeds, and the recent Mayoral election, coupled with bargain prices creating a natural absorption of vacant space, seemed to bestow some new found confidence and optimism on the part of those seeking space, for rental or for sale. I wanted to be a part of the upswing.

My partner, Robert S. Klein, and I had been working at a large industrial and commercial borough real estate brokerage house for the last 8 years, and had established ourselves as leading producers in the commercial and industrial real estate market, by establishing and maintaining strong relationships with business owners on the buy and sell side, enabling us to maintain a steady stream of repeat business and business through referrals.

With over 15 years of combined real estate experience, we represent a strong alliance of experience, knowledge, and expertise in the commercial and industrial arena, covering the corporate and manufacturing sectors in the metropolitan area with a level of service, access, resources and results unprecedented in the local or national real estate market today.

Learning entrepreneurship at the family dinner table while growing up in Long Island gave me the vision and inspiration to join the ranks of small business owners in New York. My grandfather, Milton Seaman, opened Seaman & Company, Inc., a Manhattan-based insurance brokerage, 75 years ago. My father, Burton Seaman, took over the family run company some 45 years ago, developing the business into the commercial sector, and today, my brother, Alex Seaman, runs the business now known as Seaman & Co./AMSCO Coverage Corp., in Syosset, with two young sons, Kevin and Brian, waiting in the wings as the fourth generation, to occupy desk space.

My own career track was less direct. Before obtaining my Master's Degree from New York University's Graduate School of Public Administration (now known as the Wagner School of Public Administration), I graduated from The University of Michigan with a degree in political science and sociology. From there I began a 7-year public sector career, beginning as a tenant organizer in Manhattan, then to director of an office for then Councilman Robert J. Dryfoos, then City Hall during the Koch Administration within the Mayor's Office of Operations under Brendan Sexton, to a position in corporate retention within the Office of Economic Development, promoting city benefits and tax incentive programs to corporations planning to relocate.

Before moving into real estate, I managed a staff of 18 people at the East Williamsburg Valley Industrial Development Corporation, a city-funded economic development arm established to create local manufacturing jobs for local unemployed residents.

Lastly, and equally important in the formation of a successful brokerage career has been my involvement in various business and trade organizations: the Young Men's/Women's Real Estate Association (YM/WREA), a 450-member society of the city's highest producing commercial real estate brokers, property owners and developers, of which I have edited the newsletter for the last two years, and the Long Island City Business Development Corporation, in which I serve on the real estate and area development committee.

It is my belief that those first years in the public sector were instrumental for me in establishing a firm understanding of how the city works, the political process, the people it involves from all levels and sectors and communities, and the importance of service first, which is the first priority for any successful real estate broker.

Personally, I get a tremendous level of excitement selling and leasing industrial and commercial real estate, from seeing the production line in the factory on a day-to-day basis, to meeting a diverse collection of players in the corporate and industrial sectors, to developing and implementing negotiating skills which make the most unlikely situations become a meeting of the minds. The days fly by, the deals are definitely there waiting to happen, and at the outset of 1994, this activity level is most encouraging. May it continue for us all.