Ruth C. Furst’s Background

Ruth C. Furst, President of Premier Partners Inc. is a 30 year veteran in New York City Commercial Real Estate. As a leasing broker Ruth was a pioneer in the renaissance of the Flatiron /Park Avenue South District in the mid 1980’s changing the area from industrial to office space to house creative companies. In 1983 while a Vice President at Huberth & Peters Inc. Ruth moved Slater Hafnt Martin Co. from mid-town to 111 Fifth Avenue, a former loft building at 18th Street. It was the first office tenant in the building and the second advertising company to move to lower Fifth Avenue.

From this innovative transaction, Ruth had the vision to see that area south of Midtown could be converted from gritty, working lofts to creative offices for exciting visionary companies. This led Ruth to open Furst & Company, a Commercial Real Estate Company in 1984 at 304 Park Avenue South. Furst & Co. became the Leasing agent for 8 buildings; consisting of over 1,000,000 square feet of loft space that was converted to office use.

Furst & Co.  marketed and was responsible for leasing 230 Park Avenue South, a 350,000 square foot old printing building to Burson Marsteller Co. (Public Relations) in 1984. This retrofitted headquarters building gave a strong boost to the emerging Midtown South Area. Furst & Co. sold 40 West 20^th Street , a 120,000 square foot loft building to National Resource Defense Council in 1987. The NRDC retrofitted the entire building to be environmentally intelligent and became one of the first "green buildings" in NYC.

Ruth Furst completed in excess of 1,000,000 square feet of transactions in the Midtown South Area to corporate and entrepreneurial clients including: Young & Rublicam, Swatch Watch USA, The Wine Spectator, W.B.Wood & Co.,& Acocella Realty Corp.

In 1990 Furst & Co. became Premier Partners Inc. and moved to 275 Madison Avenue. Here she became the exclusive leasing agent for 275 Madison Avenue, 360 Lexington Avenue, and 33-39 West 34^th Street. in addition to her already sizable clients. At this time there were 15 brokers working at the company. 

With the downturn of the NYC Real Estate market in the early 1990s Ruth got involved with other investors buying a landmark townhouse which was in total disrepair at 130 West 70^th Street New York, N.Y. They totally gutted and renovated it  and this income producing property continues to appreciate in value.

In 2001 she advised an investment group in buying a mortgage in foreclosure for 46  West 55th Street. They closed on this 8,000 square foot commercial building and sold it to an Italian clothing company (Les Copains) making a substantial profit for the investors.

In 2004, Ruth Furst sold the Russian Tea Room, 250 West 57^th Street a 20,000 square foot building that houses the famous restaurant and catering facility to its current owner.

From 2003 –2007, Ruth was involved in the total restoration of the famous 4,000 seat Loew’s Paradise Theater Complex on the Grand Concourse Bronx, N.Y. This old and magnificent movie theater has become a concert hall and entertainment complex which opened to great publicity on October 29, 2005. She worked on leasing the retail stores adjacent to the theater for a number of years.

In April 2007 Ruth gave an investment seminar for the Association of Real Estate Women (AREW) on women having the courage to invest in income producing properties.  The essence of the seminar was: Feel the Fear And Do It Anyway. It was about trusting your intuition and taking the risk to create opportunities for yourself. This inspirational seminar was met with great success and talked about for years.

While getting involved with investment properties she continued to complete office leasing transactions representing companies such as: Laforce & Stevens (Public Relations), Swatch Watch, Weiss Investments, Venaca (software) , Bright Power Inc. (environmental)), Acker & Jablow Fabrics LTD, the Global Foundation for Democracy and Development (President of the Dominican Republic and so on.

Ruth is currently finding and developing sites for boutique hotels that want to open in new exciting areas of Manhattan. She represents a number of European Hotel companies and is actively working on a number of transactions. She is also involved in commerical leasing in Manhattan working with small to medium size companies.

We have Vision -- We are Entrepreneurial – We are Innovative        Ruth C. Furst, President, is a member of The Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) and The Association of Real Estate Women (AREW). She holds a bachelor’s degree from Queens College New York.