It was a small affair, but a mighty one.
The guest list at The Hollywood Reporter’s fourth annual NYC Power Broker Awards read like The Real Deal’s own ranking of top brokers in New York City: Fredrik Eklund, clad in a navy blue suit and matching turtleneck; his business partner, John Gomes, in an off-white blazer; Carl Gambino, a Compass broker known for his celebrity dealings, in a black jacket and t-shirt.
Ahead of the ceremony, brokers selected by the publication based on their sales volume, media presence and deal portfolio, filtered into the third floor of Ludlow House, Soho House’s outpost on the Lower East Side, after a change from the initial plan to entertain at Extell Development’s Central Park Tower.
Guests mingled over Peroni beers, glasses of white wine and iced Diet Cokes with wedges of citrus. Waiters with plates of Nori cones stuffed with tuna tartare, wagyu beef sliders and basil arancini floated around the room, dimly lit and with curtains drawn despite the late afternoon light.
Seated among the velvet-lined chairs was Compass’ Jim St. Andre, whose $60 million deal at 150 Charles Street made headlines last month when it set a new record for Downtown Manhattan.
“We don’t have any real data on what that means,”
A clan of Douglas Elliman’s leading agents clustered to the right of the makeshift stage, including Michael Lorber, son of the firm’s former chairman and CEO Howard Lorber, and Noble Black, who heads a megateam at the brokerage.
The hosts, Corcoran’s Steve Gold and Elliman’s Eleonora Srugo, kicked off the evening with the Stratospheric Sale Award — an ambiguous honor, according to the hosts, that went to Corcoran’s Deborah Kern.
“We don’t have any real data on what that means,” Gold said.
Srugo added that she “did ask five times for the actual addresses of the deals,” but Gold, who’s partnering with Kern to sell One High Line, assured the crowd, “It’s big.”
Next up was the Penthouse Sale of the Year Award presented to Fredrik Eklund and John Gomes of Elliman’s Eklund-Gomes Team, presumably for a $117 million sale at Central Park Tower last summer.
But Eklund said the prize wasn’t his to accept.
“We take a lot of credit for things we should not,” Eklund said.
He instead pointed to team member Kent Wu, who was primarily responsible for the deal (Though Gomes interjected, saying he handled the lion’s share of the negotiation).
“The point is, this is for Kent Wu on our team. We should not be here. I’m going to give this to him.”
Gold — who, Srugo pointed out, had been nominated for awards three years in a row and had never won — took home the Media Maverick trophy, awarded to agents with a sizable presence in the press and on social media.
Gold credited Srugo, his co-star on Netflix’s “Selling the City,” with encouraging him to go back to the small screen after his stint on Bravo’s “Million Dollar Listing” with what he called “the stupid Netflix thing everyone started but no one finished.”
He thanked Eklund, a fellow nominee and once his reality television co-star, for introducing him to the platform.
“Fredrik was the one who got me into the whole TV thing to begin with. Probably without you, I would have never got pushed to do that,” Gold said, and then gave a nod to Ryan Serhant, also nominated in the category, but stopped short of giving him praise. “He’s not here, so screw it.”
Clayton Orrigo accepted the award for Team of the Year as the co-founder of Compass’ Hudson Advisory Team — the No. 1 resale cohort in the city last year, per TRD’s recent rankings.
The broker, in light blue jeans and a white t-shirt, said he was fresh off a deal for a penthouse at 1 Great Jones Alley.
“I did not prepare at all,” Orrigo said. “I definitely did not think we were going to get this two years in a row. I don’t know why we did, but thank you.”
As the ceremony came to a close, Srugo and Gold once again took to the clear plastic podium, procured from behind a curtain mid-ceremony, to release the small crowd to post-awards cocktails.
“I’m going to go for one of the jokes,” Srugo announced. “The only thing bigger than the prices are the personalities.”
“And the chances of a lawsuit,” Gold added.
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