Susan Fine
Principal
Fine Development Partners

Susan Fine, principal of Fine Development Partners, has had a thirty year career leading real estate development in New York across all sectors – from high-end commercial development to affordable housing and from revitalizing great City landmarks to investing in retail to support transit infrastructure.

Most prominently, she led the renovation and retail transformation of Grand Central Station.

Recently, she developed the first privately financed retail transit center within the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s subway system- TurnStyle, at Columbus Circle. The 40-store complex, financed by an investor group led by Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group and Ms. Fine, Turnstyle opened in April 2016, offering the commuter a range of dining and shopping options. According to the Wall Street Journal, “the subterranean marketplace presents a departure from the way the MTA has handled development” and is a model for future privatization. The New York Times complimented “the density, variety and clarity of the design,” calling Turnstyle “a small scale evocation of a busy shopping street.”

Ms. Fine began her career at Olympia and York, supporting the four-office tower development of the World Financial Center, and executing the first retail to open at Battery Park City.

On behalf of Tishman Speyer, Ms. Fine master planned the renovation of Rockefeller Center’s retail and public spaces.

In addition to her work in Manhattan, she led the effort, together with Goldman Sachs, to build 1800 units of affordable housing in Southern Queens.

She brings to all her projects both an aesthetic sense of what will attract the attention of tenants, particularly retail, as well as an understanding of the complexities of ensuring public approvals. On top of the projects listed above, she was able to secure the disposition of the Starrett portfolio for Blackacre, and ran development for Fisher Brothers where she was charge of the Con Ed properties and secure public approvals for what was then the largest undeveloped site in Manhattan. More recently, she acquired designed and sold a development in Fort Greene, and a condominium project developed within a US Post Office.

Susan Fine is an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania and ColumbiaUniversity and serves on the Board of Symphony Space on the Upper West Side of New York.