Port Authority Taps New Director

The agency taps one of its former executives as its new leader. Also, Turner Construction promotes manager to lead New York operations.

NEW HIRES

Anthony Shorris has been named the new executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer had nominated Shorris to replace Kenneth Ringler. Shorris most recently was a faculty member of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He had previously served as the Port Authority’s first deputy executive director from 1991 to 1995.

Robert Klein has been named a principal at Swanke Hayden Connell Architects of New York, where he will oversee the firm’s Workplace Strategy consulting practice.

Robert Prybella has been hired as vice president in charge of the regional railroad and transit services division at Edwards and Kelcey, an engineering, design, planning, and construction management firm based in Morristown, N.J.

T.H. Chang has been named principal and strategic director and Jim Berge has been named principal and director at the New York office of HOK, an architecture and design firm based in St. Louis. Both are in the firm’s science and technology group.
George Jacobs has joined the New Haven office of Dewberry, a civil, structural, and construction engineering firm based in Fairfax, Va., as senior associate and branch manager. The firm also promoted Thomas Fredricks to associate and assistant director of transportation engineering in its New York City office.

Marcy Stein has been named head of marketing and business development at Levien & Co., a New York-based owner’s representative and project management firm.

Seth Landau has joined LCOR Inc., a real estate development, investment, and asset management firm based in New York, as senior vice president and general counsel.

Matthew Snyder has joined Atlantic Development Group, a New York-based residential and mixed-use property developer, as senior project manager in charge of project management, acquisitions, and underwriting in the development and finance division.

PROMOTIONS

Charles Murphy has been promoted to senior vice president and general manager of Turner Construction’s New York operations, where he will lead and manage all business activities of the office.

Gabe Sasso has been promoted to senior vice president at Gale Construction of Roseland, N.J., a subsidiary of Mack-Cali Realty. The firm also promoted Robert Van Schepen and Kevin Herb to vice president; Christos Koutsokoumnis to controller and vice president; John Brucker to project executive; and Sabina Certa Carlin to director of client services.

Vincent Leahy has been promoted to associate engineer at O’Dea, Lynch, Abbattista Consulting Engineers, an M-E-P and energy design and commissioning firm based in Hawthorne, N.Y.

HONORS AND APPOINTMENTS

Betty Chen and Nathan Leventhal have been appointed to serve as members of the City Planning Commission by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York City Council. Alfred Cerullo and Richard Eaddy have been reappointed to the commission.

Carmi Bee, president of New York-based RKT&B Architects, has been awarded the John Hejduk Award from the Cooper Union Alumni Association. The award, established in 2003, is given to an alumnus of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture who has made an outstanding contribution to the theory, teaching, or practice of architecture, and is named for a former Cooper Union architecture school dean.

Gregg Popkin, senior managing director of CB Richard Ellis in New York, and Ted Moudis, senior principal and founding partner of Ted Moudis Associates of New York, recently accepted honors for their contributions to the development of the New York metropolitan area at the Friends of Saint Dominic’s 26th Annual Business and Labor Awards fund-raising dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan. Moudis received the Francis J.P. McHale Memorial Award and Popkin accepted the Victory Award.

COMPANY NEWS

Peckar & Abramson, a construction law firm based in New York, has acquired the practice of New York’s Berman, Paley, Goldstein & Monte, a firm also specializing on construction law. The combined firm now has 100 attorneys and nine offices nationwide.

IBA Consultants, a high-rise building envelope, glass, and glazing consulting firm in Boca Raton, Fla., has opened a New York office to serve the Northeast region. Jon Snyder will head the office as regional vice president.

AWISCO, a distributor of compressed gases, welding, safety equipment, and industrial supplies based in Maspeth, N.Y., has assumed management of Gas Arc Co. of West Orange, N.J., under a new agreement that expands the distribution base of both firms.