As Told to Steve Neumann
Courtesy Photos
Marc Holliday’s leadership of Manhattan’s largest office landlord has led to the company’s crown jewel: One Vanderbilt, a bold reimagining of the modern office skyscraper as a unique destination space.
> MY INITIAL ADMISSION WAS TO SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY IN 1984. I went there to play goalie for one of the best Division I lacrosse teams in the country. During my freshman year, I got a call from a friend, Chris Cameron ’89, who attended Lehigh, saying they needed a goalie. I visited the campus and fell in love with it. I had also done a little research on Lehigh’s business school and found out it was one of the best in its class. I transferred to Lehigh at the end of freshman year.
> BACK WHEN I WAS AT LEHIGH, THERE REALLY WAS NO REAL ESTATE PROGRAM. But my senior thesis was really a turning point for me, because it was in real estate finance. It was a new technology called “commercial mortgage-backed securities,” which is ubiquitous in the real estate world today, but back in 1988, the technology didn’t really exist. Now, thanks to Tara Stacom ’80, Murray Goodman ’48, Web Collins ’57, Harris Collins ’91 and other dedicated alumni who have been generous with their time and support, Lehigh has become a real force in undergraduate real estate studies.
> I KNEW I WAS GOING TO BE IN REAL ESTATE ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, though after I graduated Lehigh, I worked in capital markets and investment banking. It wasn’t until I was about 30 years old that I pivoted to a much greater role in the industry to the equity side as developer and redeveloper of assets [at SL Green]. I was also becoming much more civically engaged with New York City, not looking at it only as a market, but more as my home. I wanted to do whatever I could to help improve NYC, both from a business standpoint and philanthropically—and that’s been one of the great joys of my career.
> NEW YORK IS A VERY CHARITABLE TOWN. There are a lot of people and foundations in this city who give back to the community. One of my proudest initiatives is something called Food First, which we started in the middle of the COVID pandemic in 2020. It’s an initiative that was first launched to help first responders who worked 16- to 24-hour shifts. We reactivated all of SL Green’s restaurant and food and beverage tenants who were otherwise shut down and largely out of business. We basically paid our tenants to produce thousands of meals a day, benefiting the food needy while also helping food businesses through a traumatic period in their stability and health.
> WITH THE SUMMIT ONE VANDERBILT, we really pushed the envelope with new forms of design that I think was a little risky, at least in the beginning. The concept was to create a Central Park in the sky out of mirrored glass, a reflective experience using sight, sound, illusion and various thrill features. The SUMMIT provided these infinite vistas that people in the city hadn’t really experienced before. We’ve now had over 7 million people visit the SUMMIT since opening in October 2021. Overall, it’s been a huge success story.
> FOR A CAREER IN REAL ESTATE, MY ADVICE WOULD BE to dive right into it. There are a lot of opportunities right now. One of the greatest current challenges is to mitigate the real estate affordability issue throughout the country. There’s also this whole new frontier with technology firms becoming an industry force in New York City. Hospitality and socialization are brought into these commercial spaces. I think there are opportunities to create interesting developments, or adaptive reuse. The energy, inspiration, technical knowledge and creativity necessary to work effectively with this new wave of tech-related tenants is something that fits squarely in the mindset of talented and skilled Lehigh students.