Jonathan L. Mechanic is chairman of Fried Frank's Real Estate Department. Prior to joining Fried Frank as a partner, he was general counsel and a managing director of HRO International, a real estate development organization.
Mr. Mechanic routinely counsels developers, owners, investors, REITs, and lenders in all aspects of commercial real estate transactions. Notably, he represented JP Morgan in connection with its redevelopment of 270 Park Avenue into a new 2.5-million-square-foot headquarters building, Maefield Development in its approximately US$1.6 billion acquisition of 20 Times Square, and CWCapital Asset Management in its sale of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village to Blackstone Group and Ivanhoé Cambridge. He also represents landlords and tenants in commercial leasing and ground lease transactions, including his representations of 21st Century Fox and News Corp. on their headquarters leases at 1211 Avenue of Americas; Citigroup in its long-term lease of its headquarters at 388-390 Greenwich Street and the exercise of its option to purchase the building; Coach in the sale-leaseback of its headquarters at 10 Hudson Yards; Ernst & Young in its more than 600,000-square-foot lease for its new headquarters at One Manhattan West; Shiseido in its 225,000-square foot lease for its US headquarters and JP Morgan in its 437,000-square-foot-lease, both at 390 Madison Avenue.
Mr. Mechanic was awarded the 2016 Distinguished Alumnus Award from NYU and the 2016 Chambers USA Outstanding Contribution to the Legal Profession Award. For a decade, Mr. Mechanic has been recognized by Chambers USA as a “Star Individual” in real estate. He is consistently included on Commercial Observer’s “Power 100” list of the most powerful people in NY real estate and was the only practicing attorney to make the list in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. Fried Frank’s Real Estate Department is consistently recognized as Law360’s Real Estate Group of the Year and was awarded the Chambers USA 2018 Real Estate Client Service Award.
Mr. Mechanic has taught the real estate transactions course at Harvard Law School for nearly ten years. He also lectures regularly for NYU Law School, REBNY and PLI, and is a co-author of The Commercial Office Lease Handbook published by the ABA.
He is on the Executive Committee of the Board of Governors for REBNY and the Board of Trustees of NYU Law School. He is also Chairman of the Advisory Board of NYU Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, a member of the Advisory Board of NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate, a member of the Industrial Advisory Board for Columbia University Center for Urban Real Estate, and a member of ACREL.
Mr. Mechanic received his JD from New York University School of Law in 1977, where he served as an editor of the Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif, and his BA, magna cum laude, from Brandeis University in 1974. He is admitted to practice in New York.
Martin Polevoy is the head of the real estate practice group in New York. His practice includes all areas of real estate, including acquisitions and dispositions, development, leasing, financing, joint ventures, construction contracts, restructuring and workouts. He represents many well-known national and international owners, developers, investors, and financial institutions, as well as European and Asian investors, in both debt and equity transactions in the United States.
Mr. Polevoy's practice includes representing the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as real estate counsel in the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site; the development of a 1.7 million-square foot headquarters building for The New York Times Company in Manhattan; representing L’Oreal USA, Inc. in their new 400,000 square foot headquarters lease at the Hudson Yards development project in Manhattan; representing General Motors in the relocation of their New York headquarters; representing a major investment bank in over 2 million square feet of leasing transactions and the acquisition of its Manhattan headquarters building; acquisition of over 4 million square feet of first-class office buildings for a prominent German open-end real estate fund; and serving as national real estate counsel for one of the largest real estate funds in the United States, and representing Asian investors in the US, including Greenland Group [Shanghai], and CommerzReal Group [Weissbaden, Germany].
In addition, he has been a frequent participant, as program chair and as a speaker and panelist, in continuing legal education programs of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers, the Practicing Law Institute, Georgetown University Law Center, and the Anglo-American Real Estate Institute. He has also written extensively on various aspects of real estate law.
Mr. Polevoy has been recognized as a leading real estate practitioner in many prominent surveys. The respected English research publisher Chambers & Partners cites him in Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business as a leading lawyer in real estate, commenting, "His enthusiasm and immense knowledge are his greatest assets, according to clients." Chambers also noted Mr. Polevoy's "wealth of experience and practical business approach," described him as "incredibly dedicated and responsive," and said he "is a highly experienced lawyer whose distinguished career and expertise continue to attract high-profile clients. While described as 'a big name in leasing,' Polevoy provides an all-around service that is highly respected by his peers."
