Location: Last year, a Legal Media Group study named you the best-connected and most powerful real estate lawyer in the world. That’s sort of extraordinary.

Mr. Mechanic: I did get a kick out of that, I have to admit. That was fun. I went to a meeting with a tenant I was representing with a pretty good sense of humor, and I walked in and he said, ‘Aha! We now have the best real estate lawyer in the galaxy!’ So you have to enjoy all that. But I think I’m pretty good at what I do, and certainly I have lots of relationships that I’ve developed in almost 30 years in the business.  read more »

Location: After years of bubbling real estate prices, the market is changing, and now is not exactly a good time to be selling an apartment—let alone thousands, which is your job. Do you lie awake panicked in bed?

Ms. de França: I mean, I realize it’s a challenging market, but I can’t say I’m living in fear of it.… We’ve enjoyed an incredibly robust market in the past five or six years, which is now stabilizing; I think that buyers are much more skeptical, consumer confidence is lower than it’s been. With that said, it gives us an opportunity to be patient with the consumer, educate them.  read more »

Location: How long has your family been out here?

Mr. Fodera: We’re just about an 80-year-old company; we’ve always operated in the city of New York, but we’ve been in Willets Point in this facility for almost 35 years.

Why’d you move out to Willets?

It’s tremendous as far as highway access, as well as the labor force, and it put us very close to our customers.

You do food distribution?

Bakery ingredient distribution. My clients start from the mom-and-pop stores right up to the biggest bakeries in the city.  read more »

Location: How did you first get into the hotel business?

Mr. Bashaw: When I got out of college, I bought a building in Cape May, N.J., and renovated it into a hotel in 1989, called the Virginia. … And then we bought another one called Commerce Hall, which we opened in 2002; 110 rooms, built in 1879, really amazing building.

Sounds like a lot of renovation work.

Well, we love renovating. That’s why this Atlantic City project is so fun for us.

So, these are two hotels, a HoJo’s …

And a Holiday Inn, and we’re combining them.  read more »

Location: The theme that unites the Mayor’s 2030 PlaNYC is that the city will grow by about one million people in the next 25 years. Do you agree?

Mr. Beveridge: It’s an interesting thing because the way they framed it was that it’s inevitable that the city’s going to grow that much. … If you take a look at it, that isn’t that much growth, percentage-wise, since they have it over 30 years.

So what happens in 20 years? How big is the city?

It will be bigger. Unless something bad happens! Then it will be smaller.  read more »

Location: How’s the capital market doing?

Mr. Herzka: If you’re talking about the Wall Street type of funding, that’s pretty much nonexistent.

Where’s the financing coming from?

From a lot of the commercial banks, large savings banks, life insurance companies, a consortium of banks funding larger deals, and of course the agencies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

And what kind of financing do you do?

Meridian actually specializes in all income-producing properties, whether it’s multi-family, retail, industrial or office. You’re sitting here with David Rosenberg, who heads up the capital markets group. And Ronnie Levine, who heads up the structured [financing] and construction group.  read more »

Location: Have you been better protected from this credit crunch because you sell buildings in the below-$100 million market?

Mr. Knakal: Clearly, the market for buildings over $100 million is much slower than the market for buildings under $100 million, mainly because of the availability of credit. … To the extent you’re looking for a nine-figure loan on an acquisition, that’s very challenging to find, mainly because most of those loans were provided by [commercial-mortgage-backed securities] lenders that are no longer active.

How have your sales been affected?

Our number of transactions is off by about 21 percent compared to 2007.  read more »

Location: You like to give parties with dozens of Russian violinists and industrial quantities of caviar. Is decadence your worst trait?

Mr. Rosen: The last thing I am is decadent. … I’m a big thinker; I do a lot of stuff; I enjoy life immensely. … When I throw parties, I blow a lot of money, you know what, so be it; that’s what I like to do.

That sounds like Trump. Do you think of yourself as a high-art Donald?  read more »

Location: You’ve made a name for yourself as a real estate broker and hospitality consultant, making deals on behalf of operators like Jeffrey Chodorow, Giuseppe Cipriani and Stephen Starr. Now, you’re a part owner yourself here in the new Surf Lodge in Montauk. How did you make that transition from middle man to being sort of the man?

Mr.  read more »

Location: On the rail yards, how did News Corp. tell you that they were no longer interested in being an anchor tenant?

Mr. Blau: There were several rounds, and they [the M.T.A.] called us in for what they said was the final round. We had hoped, or thought, that we would be designated at this meeting, which was to happen the next day; and literally 12 hours before the meeting, we got a call from News Corp. that said while they were very, very interested in the site, they couldn’t agree to commit at that moment.  read more »