5 Minutes With The Ruby Team
Ruby, Awards for Excellence in Market-Rate Housing Development Finalist
MaryAnne Gilmartin, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, MAG Partners
Who has had the greatest influence on your career and what was the best advice he or she gave you?
Any notable success I have been fortunate to have in my field has been because of others. Two outsized forces that shaped my career have been Bruce Ratner and Mary Ann Tighe. For 23 years at Forest City Ratner, Bruce dared me to think big and be bold in pursuit of making places and contributing good to our city. Being his wingwoman in making early, audacious bets on our city when others wouldn’t by bringing the first big box retailers to NYC when they were too intimidated to come on their own or believing we could bring major league sports back to Brooklyn by building a world-class arena are roles I feel privileged to have held. Working beside Bruce brought career-making magic, over and over again. Mary Ann Tighe believed in me as a value creator before I believed it myself. Her mentorship, counsel and friendship make her a singular shaper of my professional self. She invests in people, and I was lucky that she underwrote to my potential early on.
As a ULI NY Awards nominee, what makes you most proud of your project?
One of the proudest parts of RUBY is that she is a physical manifestation of our city’s unstoppable resilience. The building honors her namesake, Ruby Bailey, who had boundless determination to change the face of fashion in the 1920s and our city is better because of her. We, too, had an unwavering belief in New York’s ability to emerge from COVID (and put money behind that conviction) thanks to the incredible MAG Partners team who designed, built, and leased RUBY during one of the darkest times for humans in modern history. These powerful lessons about the indomitable spirit of our city are manifested in RUBY.
What excites you about the future of New York City?
Our city inevitably reinvents itself, emerging from challenge and crisis better than ever. I’ve seen it after the great financial crisis, 9/11 and Superstorm Sandy. Another generational renewal feels upon us. Young people continue to flock to our city in pursuit of big dreams. Technology and innovation, moving at warp speed, seek to help solve problems with our aging infrastructure. Our industry understands now more than ever that quality and beauty create sustainable value, resulting in places that matter. New York City, in all of its splendor, can be so much better. I hope to have some small part in making it the city it deserves to be.