Retail brokerage MONA, which launched in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, will mark its one-year anniversary September 21.
Short for “Making Of A New Age,” MONA was launched by former Cushman & Wakefield top retail producer Brandon Singer and co-founder Michael Cody in New York City. At the height of COVID-19, a time when most commercial real estate brokers fled the city and decamped to the suburbs, Singer and Cody doubled down on New York City’s retail future. MONA is backed by noteworthy strategic partners and investors including Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs of RFR Holding LLC.
In the year since its inception, the MONA team has grown to five brokers, with more new hires in the works, and is finalizing major transactions throughout New York City. MONA is currently marketing more than 250,000 square feet of retail space in Manhattan, and the firm’s client roster includes some of the most exciting new age, direct-to-consumer, retail logistics and fulfillment, restaurant, and experiential unicorn retail and consumer-focused tenants, including Showfields, Fabric, REEF Technology, Odd Burger, Ben Soleimani Furniture, Sixpenny, 3DEN, Vivvi, and many more.
This spring, the company announced MONA CARES, an initiative to support the retail and restaurant communities in New York, in partnership with Restaurants Organizing Advocating Rebuilding, or ROAR. While the MONA CARES initiative was in effect, MONA extended its leasing representation services to restaurant owners and small retailers and committed to contributing a portion of its brokerage fee back into the city, with 50% of that percentage going directly back to the business owner to help with startup costs and the remaining 50% to ROAR’s Restaurant Employee Relief Program.
MONA chief executive officer Singer launched the company after spending more than 13 years at Cushman & Wakefield where he negotiated and participated in deals exceeding $2.5 billion in value. Cody, also formerly of Cushman & Wakefield, is a director and co-founder of the entity.
“It has been our tremendous privilege to have worked over the last year to usher in the renaissance of NYC retail – at a time when the city faced its darkest hour,” Singer said. “When COVID hit, brokers fled the city. But we stayed. We suspected then what we know definitively to be true now – that there will be a new age of New York retail. We’re thrilled to celebrate our first year as a brokerage, and we look forward to an incredible 2022 and beyond.”
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