Our heritage as a real estate owner and operator began in the 1950s, when Peter Bronfman used the proceeds from the sale of his Seagram Company holdings to invest in The Montreal Forum, the arena that was home of the Montreal Canadiens hockey team. From these icy beginnings, we began looking for opportunities to build an unrivaled portfolio—with the belief that high-quality properties in the best locations, as well as the strong tenant basis and long-term leases they attract, will withstand market cycles and drive long-term value.
The Real Estate Story
100 Bishopsgate, Central London
Walmart industrial warehouse, Dongguan, China
In 1996, we acquired the assets of Olympia & York, which owned premier properties such as London’s Canary Wharf and the World Financial Center in Lower Manhattan. By then, we had accumulated one of the most significant commercial property portfolios in New York.
The O&Y transaction paved the way for our Manhattan West development, which is one of the world’s largest and highest-quality mixed-use developments in the heart of midtown Manhattan.
Over the decades, we’ve expanded the scale and scope of our real estate business through a disciplined investment approach. Today, we have built one of the largest real estate portfolios in the world, with over 500 million square feet of iconic commercial spaces globally.
Insider View: Ankur Gupta Real Estate, Mumbai
Ankur Gupta still remembers the deal that got away. He was representing an Indian company in a potential real estate transaction with Brookfield when Managing Partner Cyrus Madon concluded that the deal wasn’t right for us. “I liked the way he asked questions,” Gupta said. “By the end, it made a lot of sense to me why Brookfield didn’t do the deal.”
Today, Gupta is head of real estate for Brookfield in India, where he helped establish our real estate presence through three of the largest private investments in the country’s history.
“I’ve had the privilege of working my way up from part-time intern to managing partner,” Gupta said. “It says a lot about Brookfield that so many of us have been able to grow within the firm.”
Case Study: Manhattan West
Manhattan West was one of our most ambitious large-scale development projects, and it demonstrates Brookfield’s ability to bring together our areas of expertise: deploying large-scale, patient capital on a project, leveraging insights from our deep history in development, and putting our operating proficiencies to work. The eight-acre, six-building mixed-use complex reflects our focus on “placemaking”—creating places for people to live, work, dine, shop and play.
Located in New York City’s Hudson Yards district, Manhattan West transformed what was once blighted, underutilized acreage into a dynamic urban neighborhood—while creating significant value for investors. The site is a showcase for our expertise in developing multipurpose properties, with more than seven million square feet of office space, luxury apartments, a boutique hotel, curated retail and restaurants, and two acres of green open space.
Few real estate companies have the ability to successfully manage a development project such as this one; the vision and scope of Manhattan West presented civic, real estate and engineering challenges that we were able to overcome.
