Lauren Gilchrist, Executive Vice President & Greater Philadelphia Region Market Leader, Newmark

In an interview with Invest:, Lauren Gilchrist, Executive Vice President & Greater Philadelphia Region Market Leader at Newmark, shares how the firm is leveraging emerging technologies, expanding into alternative asset classes and advising clients across a dynamic industrial and office landscape throughout the region.

How has client demand for Newmark’s services in the Greater Philadelphia region shifted over the past 12 months?

Over the last year, we have remained focused on strategic growth, expanding our regional presence through key hires and platform investments. We’ve welcomed several top producers and rising brokerage talent across leasing and capital markets, reinforcing our position as a market leader. We continue to see meaningful opportunities across asset classes, and our pipeline remains active with additional recruiting efforts underway.

Client demand has remained steady, particularly among long-standing relationships that value Newmark’s depth of expertise and national reach. Our teams have led some of the region’s most significant transactions, a testament to the strength of our platform and the trusted advice we deliver. Despite macroeconomic headwinds, elevated interest rates, evolving workplace dynamics, and shifting global trade, we continue to see consistent activity across our core service lines.

Newmark has also been a leader in navigating the adaptive reuse of underutilized office assets. In Greater Philadelphia, we’ve advised on numerous conversions that transform obsolete office buildings into vibrant residential or hospitality offerings. We’ve supported these efforts with comprehensive advisory, valuation, and debt and structured finance solutions. As vacancy remains elevated, these creative outcomes are vital to reactivating urban cores and rebalancing the market.

How is Newmark integrating technology more deeply into its operations to better serve clients?

Technology is central to how we serve our clients today. Across the Newmark platform, we’re leveraging AI and data science to deliver faster, sharper insights and streamlining how we process market data, underwrite deals, and evaluate portfolio strategies in real time. Our in-house development teams are building tools that enhance both internal workflows and client-facing deliverables.

These advancements empower our clients to make more informed decisions. Whether visualizing active leasing trends or mapping exposure across submarkets, our digital solutions are designed to increase transparency and drive outcomes. We believe the firms that embrace innovation will be best positioned to meet client demands, and we’re proud to be at the forefront of that evolution.

With continued market uncertainty, how is Newmark positioning itself to expand in alternative asset classes like medical office, self-storage, and life sciences?

Newmark has long been an early mover in alternative sectors. While traditional food groups — office, industrial, multifamily, and retail — remain foundational, we’ve made strategic investments in specialized asset classes that are attracting greater investor attention in today’s yield-driven environment.

Our national medical office capital markets practice, for example, is partially based in Philadelphia, giving our region direct access to some of the top professionals in that space. Life sciences has faced recent headwinds tied to broader capital markets volatility and venture capital pullback, but we remain optimistic about its long-term fundamentals and continue to support clients with sector-specific expertise.

Data centers, another fast-growing asset class, are being fueled by rising demand from AI and enterprise cloud platforms. These facilities are capital-intensive, power-dependent, and often leased long-term, requiring a sophisticated understanding of infrastructure and operations. Newmark’s teams are well-positioned to support investors navigating this evolving landscape.

As distressed office assets come to market, how is Newmark advising investors and owners?

We’re supporting stakeholders across the capital stack—landlords, tenants, lenders, and special servicers. Newmark’s platform includes extensive leasing, valuation, and receivership expertise, allowing us to step in at every stage of the asset lifecycle. Our receivership practice has grown significantly, particularly in office, multifamily, and hospitality, where we’re seeing more assets in transition or distress.

While the workout process remains complex and often slow-moving, our team’s ability to assess repositioning strategies, attract capital, and re-engage tenancy has proven critical. In this environment, owners and lenders alike are turning to firms with the scale, relationships, and creativity to unlock value.

What policy changes or initiatives would you like to see at the local or state level to better support commercial real estate investment and revitalization efforts in Greater Philadelphia?

We’ve been actively engaged with policymakers to identify tools that can help reposition Philadelphia’s office market and attract long-term investment. In my role as Chair of NAIOP’s Government Affairs Committee, we’ve advocated for policies such as tax abatement extensions, municipal bond funds for adaptive reuse, and reevaluating property tax approaches to encourage reinvestment.

Philadelphia’s future success depends on a shared public-private vision for economic growth. I’m optimistic that with the right policy solutions in place, we can revitalize outdated assets, support job creation, and strengthen the region’s competitiveness.

You previously mentioned continued opportunities in industrial real estate. Has this trend continued to grow in the region, or what new industry trends have you noticed lately?

The industrial market remains one of the region’s most resilient sectors. While we’ve seen a modest slowdown in new construction starts, leasing and investment activity remain robust, particularly for well-located, infill product. Demand drivers for e-commerce, logistics, and cold storage are still very active, and we’re seeing tenant leverage improve slightly as the market rebalances.

Data centers are also an important subcategory of industrial, though their unique infrastructure demands, particularly power and connectivity, require a different playbook. As demand for AI accelerates, these specialized facilities will continue to influence industrial development patterns and capital flows across the sector.