In-Person Roundtable: The Future of Real Estate with Joel Bergstein, President of Lincoln Equities Group

Joel Bergstein is President of Lincoln Equities Group (LEG) and has been with the organization for over 28 years. After joining the firm as VP of leasing, Bergstein rose through the ranks of LEG to become Executive VP in 1998, spearheading the company's acquisition and development initiatives. He led the company into its current operating partner platform, partnering with domestic and international opportunity, private equity and pension funds. In 2007 he assumed the role of President of LEG. Bergstein heads up LEG’s large scale development platform, orchestrating major residential and industrial land development projects in and around NYC, and is a founding partner and active participant in LEG’s $500M European property investment platform. Joel serves on numerous real estate advisory boards and is a speaker and frequent commentator in real estate trade and business media.

John Alascio is a Vice Chairman in the firm’s Equity, Debt & Structured Finance practice. John is based in Cushman & Wakefield’s Manhattan offices and is one of the executives running the firms Tri-State/Metro Equity, Debt, and Structured Finance platform as well as National Joint Venture Platform within the Industrial Advisory Group. The team conducts transactions across all major U.S. markets.

John has extensive expertise in structuring transactions involving single asset and portfolio level financing, structured equity deals including joint ventures, preferred equity, recapitalizations, and programmatic ventures. John’s experience spans property asset classes including industrial, office, retail and mixed use, multifamily, as well as specialty property types including cold storage, self-storage, and life sciences. He has specialized expertise and experience in logistics and industrial real estate and related property uses including land and pre-development, speculative construction, build-to-suit financings, and large portfolios requiring senior and sub-debt structures, note on note financing, and SASB executions in the securitized markets. Over the course of his career, John and his team has been actively involved in the sourcing, underwriting and execution of over $45 billion in transaction volume.

Prior to joining Cushman & Wakefield, John spent the last 11 years in commercial banking and investment banking, working for Oberon Securities, USA Bank, and Lighthouse Business Group.

Since joining Cushman & Wakefield in 2013, John and his team has successfully closed over $45B of equity, debt, and structured financed investments. Some notable financings include the $450MM financing and sale of the UPS warehouse facility in Bayonne, NJ on behalf of Lincoln Equities Group, the $208MM acquisition financing for Novo Nordisk’s North American headquarters in Princeton, NJ, arranging and syndicating a $200MM build to suit construction financing on behalf of Centene Corporation in Clayton, MO, and securing $400MM of acquisition financing for 375 Hudson Street in New York, New York. Most recently John advised on ARES REIT IV $350,000,000 refinance of 24 industrial assets. John also advised on the $100MM financing of Merrill Lynch’s office campus in Hopewell, NJ, and was part of the team that executed Unilever North America’s Sale/Leaseback headquarter building that won NAIOP’s Deal of the Year honors in 2017.

Ari Davis is a Partner in Tannenbaum Helpern's Real Estate and Construction Law practice. He concentrates in enabling commercial real estate transactions, including sales and acquisitions, joint ventures, leasing and financing. Ari has counseled a diverse set of clients, from family-owned businesses and single member limited liability companies to Fortune 500 companies. He negotiates retail and office leases and subleases on behalf of landlords and tenants for spaces ranging from small offices to entire industrial buildings. Ari frequently works with developer clients that sell and purchase multifamily developments, shopping centers and office buildings throughout the U.S., and he represents lenders and borrowers in various loan structures.

Some of Ari’s work has included the following:

representing a developer that acquired a controlling interest in a joint venture with a church, which was formed to acquire and develop the church property and multifamily units above it and
representing a car dealership client on a construction loan that it obtained from its national franchisor
Prior to joining the firm, Ari was an associate in the Real Estate, Development and Land Use Group of Chiesa, Shahinian and Giantomasi PC (formerly known as Wolff & Samson PC), one of the largest and most respected New Jersey law firms.

Outside of work, Ari enjoys spending quality time with his family and is an ever-suffering Cleveland sports fan.