Benenson Capital Partners has named former New York City Economic Development Corporation President and CEO Rachel Loeb its chief investment officer. She joins in this key role as the 118-year-old firm begins to consider strategic planning of its vast portfolio for future uses.
“Benenson is recognized for its transformational approach to the stewardship of its portfolio — identifying, pursuing and executing imaginative redevelopment plans that create higher use and greater value for decades to come. I know Rachel to have great vision, drive, professionalism and heart, and I am delighted to have her on our team,” said Richard Kessler, Benenson’s chief operating officer. “Our portfolio has many opportunities in locations such as Boston, New York, Denver and Bellevue, Washington.”
Loeb will co-lead the company’s development, investment, asset management and construction strategies and teams. She boasts two decades of real estate and economic development experience and a proven track record in the private and public sectors.
Before joining Benenson, Rachel led the NYC Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) as president and CEO. With annual revenues of $250 million, she ran a diverse 60 million-square-foot portfolio and managed a $10 billion-plus capital budget. She launched the city’s post-pandemic economic recovery plan that led to historic investments in life sciences and offshore wind and created the city’s business development unit that won the Amazon HQ2 competition and negotiated the retention of the JetBlue headquarters.
Prior to joining NYCEDC, she was a real estate developer and created or acquired more than $1.5B of mixed-use assets and over 3,000 units of mixed-income housing across the northeast. Throughout her career, she has led a broad range of ground up developments, acquisitions, dispositions and financings for real estate properties and worked for privately held companies as well as at AvalonBay, a public REIT. Her career began in Vietnam working on the country’s first master-planned community.
