BY STEPHEN KLEEGE

Each year, the Real Estate Board of New York selects six real estate professionals, be they specialists in residential or commercial sales or leasing, to bestow its Bernard H. Mendik Lifetime Leadership in Real Estate award; Young Real Estate Man of the Year award; Kenneth R. Gerrety Humanitarian award; Louis Smadbeck Broker Recognition award; Harry B. Helmsley Distinguished New Yorker award; and George M. Brooker Management Executive of the Year award.

After the jump, we honor this year's honorees with a series of profiles and illustrations.

To read the full story, click here.

BY AL BARBARINO

East Coast Begins To Clean Up And Assess Damage From Hurricane SandyAs forecasters became more and more certain that a monster storm named Sandy was barreling toward Manhattan in the 48 hours leading up to its landfall on Monday, October 29, Real Estate Board of New York President Steven Spinola lay in a hospital bed recovering from a sudden medical emergency.

But the hospital stay didn’t prevent him and others at REBNY from mobilizing one of the most concerted disaster recovery efforts in the organization’s history.

Two days after the storm hit, working from his bedroom on doctor’s orders, Mr. Spinola called Department of Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri with one thing on his mind: how to get owners back into their buildings.

“Everyone assumed it was going to be a bad storm, but I don’t think anyone believed it would be the storm that it was,” Mr. Spinola said. “We were trying to come up with a structure to allow building owners back into their buildings. And lower Manhattan was the primary target for us.”

To read the full story, click here.

BY JOTHAM SEDERSTROM

Any institution with 117 years under its belt is sure to accumulate truckloads of data points, and the Real Estate Board of New York, which celebrates its 1,404th month in existence this February, is no exception.

Indeed, from its modest beginnings as an organization with fewer than 50 members to its current position as the real estate industry’s most influential lobbying group, the board has come along way—and The Commercial Observer has the numbers to prove it.

After the jump, a random sampling of data points from over the course of REBNY’s distinguished, colorful history.

To see the REBNY Index, click here.

BY RICHARD PERSICHETTI

Every year for the past 116 years, the Real Estate Board of New York has hosted its annual banquet. This year, the 117th banquet will take place on 1-17, which either is a coincidence or the REBNY Board has a secret numerologist among its ranks.

As we are unable to look back at commercial real estate statistics from 1896 due to a non-functioning flux capacitor, a time-travel-less comparison over the past 17 years proves that 2012 was a typical year of ups and downs for the market.

The overall Manhattan vacancy rate dipped 70 basis points to 10.2 percent in 2012, closing in on market equilibrium and the 9.9 percent 17-year-average vacancy rate from 1996 to 2012. At $69.18 per square foot, Manhattan Class A asking rents were up 8 percent year-over-year. But compare that with the last 17 years, and 2012 asking rents rank sixth on an inflation-adjusted basis, well behind the inflation-adjusted high of $95.15 per square foot back in 2007.

To read the full story, click here.

BY JOTHAM SEDERSTROM

They enter alone and in small groups, often single file, but by the time the city’s brokers, politicians and landlords reach the mezzanine level of the New York Hilton, they’ve already fanned out into concentric circles, each composed of friends and colleagues.

And as the room continues to fill each year, so too do those clusters of men and women, each one separated by a mere foot or two from the next, and the next and the next. Indeed, with an estimated 2,200 guests expected to attend this year’s Real Estate Board of New York gala, those small footpaths will only narrow, making it more challenging than ever to connect with allies or retreat from rivals.

It’s with these considerations in mind that we at The Commercial Observer and REBNY have compiled a comprehensive seating chart inside the Hilton’s Grand Ballroom, where employees of firms including Vornado Realty Trust (front and center) and the law firm Morrison & Foerster (near the bathrooms) can all eventually be found, or avoided, whichever the case may be.

Take a look before the lights dim, draw up a plan and use this map, above and on the next page, as a resource.

To see tonight's seating chart, click here.