"The whole point of our $500-million disposition program is to recycle capital into higher yielding assets," says Brennan. "The aim is to increase the returns from our portfolio."

To accomplish this, Brennan has embarked on an aggressive disposition program to exit markets where returns have been unacceptable. The cash from these dispositions will be recycled into new markets across the country, the most important of which are Los Angeles, Dallas, Denver, Chicago, Northern New Jersey and Atlanta, according to Brennan. The latest disposition was announced earlier this month, a big sale of First Industrial's entire Long Island portfolio to an undisclosed buyer.

"It looks like they are going to pretty much have the dispositions taken care of by the end of the year," says Louis Taylor, real estate analyst at Prudential Securities. "Brennan is improving the quality of the asset base, improving returns and leveraging their core competence, which is owning and managing properties and doing developments for large corporate clients." Taylor just raised his recommendation on First Industrial to "Strong Buy" from "Accumulate".