Rappaport named senior managing director of restaurant and retail leasing at Sinvin Real Estate

Sinvin Real Estate has promoted Steve Rappaport from managing director to senior managing director of restaurant and retail leasing. Since joining Sinvin in 2006, he has become a top retail producer. In 2009, with much of the industry dormant, Rappaport closed 13 deals totaling 24,000 s/f, earning him designation as a CoStar Power Broker. In the first half of this year, he completed 10 retail transactions accounting for 22,000 s/f. Most recently, Rappaport positioned a flagship store of 3,900 s/f for one of his exclusive clients, the German bread baker, Landbrot, in a freestanding two-story building at 137 Seventh Ave. South. Satellite spaces for the rollout of this bakery café are currently being negotiated. Rappaport ran two retail businesses of his own in downtown Manhattan: a leather goods business, Original Leather, for 30 years, and an ice cream business, Mary's Dairy, for three years. After completing school, he spent four years on Wall St., working first at the New York Stock Exchange and then as a stock trader at Oppenheimer and Company. He spent the early 1970s traveling in Afghanistan, Crete, and California, and driving a taxi in Manhattan. He opened his first store in 1975.