Nancy Packes, an early pioneer of recent improvement advertising and marketing in New York Metropolis, died Thursday on the age of 80.
A Bronx native, Packes graduated from New York College’s College of Regulation in 1970 and labored as a prison trial lawyer for the following seven years.
Packes left legislation and in 1977 based her personal brokerage, Feathered Nest, which launched a greater than three-decade profession in actual property. She built the brokerage from the ground up, The Actual Deal beforehand reported, cold-calling landlords and commuting two hours from her residence in New Jersey.
By the point she offered it to Brown Harris Stevens in 1998, Feathered Nest counted greater than 70 brokers and a spot among the many high residential brokerages within the metropolis.
Throughout that point, Packes additionally served as a trusted guide and advisor for a number of the metropolis’s foremost builders, together with Donald Trump, Douglas Durst and Bruce Ratner.
“We don’t make a transfer on our layouts with out operating it by Nancy,” Durst instructed TRD in 2010. Durst labored with Packes on tasks just like the Epic at 125 West thirty first Road and the Helena at 601 West 57th Road.
Her break got here when she obtained an surprising name from Trump someday, Packes beforehand recalled to TRD. “Nancy, be right here tomorrow morning!” he instructed her. Quickly after, she was renting out the investor models at Trump Tower.
Packes made a reputation for herself together with her astute design sensibilities that went far past the function of a typical leasing agent.
In her guide function, she helped builders select flooring plans and construct purchaser profiles. At Douglaston Improvement’s Ohm rental building in Hell’s Kitchen, she satisfied developer Jeff Levine to construct a efficiency house within the ethereal foyer to cater to the nightclub-oriented neighborhood.
In a 2010 interview with the New York Occasions, Architect Frank Gehry in contrast Packes to a different maven of recent improvement, Sunshine Group founder Louise Sunshine, for her singular function in shaping town’s new improvement market. The pair labored collectively on Forest City Ratner’s 900-unit development at 8 Spruce Street.
In 2005, Packes helped launch Brown Harris Stevens Challenge Advertising, an arm devoted to new improvement condos, earlier than re-focusing her power on her consulting agency, Nancy Packes Inc., in 2009.
Lately, her agency’s knowledge arm, Nancy Packes Knowledge Providers, grew to become a trusted repository of rental market data and evaluation.
Packes is survived by her son, Seth, who additionally works for her agency, in addition to a daughter-in-law, granddaughter, nephews, nieces and cousins.
