Cushman & Wakefield's Leading Edge Now Vice Chairman

DALLAS-Texas is being “held prisoner by its past,” asserts Robert T. Edge, new vice chairman of Cushman & Wakefield Inc. who holds the distinction of opening the firm’s first real estate office in Dallas some 26 years ago.

Edge is considered the anchor for Cushman & Wakefield’s Dallas-Ft. Worth presence, says Arthur J. Mirante II, the firm’s president and CEO. “He established the benchmark by which we measure our performance and our success in North Texas,” says Mirante.

Edge is one of the most active tenant representation brokers in the nation, with insight to Texas’ current conditions that have several cities strapped by a lack of space, particularly in the office sector. The problem, says Edge, is that lenders are requiring significant pre-leasing of projects, a product of the real estate crash of the 1980s. “The lenders today remember that disastrous period,” Edge tells GlobeSt.com. “The lenders have good memories. I don’t think any other state or metropolitan city is being held to this extreme.” The pre-leasing clampdown had started about three years ago in Texas and has gotten considerably tighter in the past 18 months. “It’s well beyond the norm because of that gluttony,” he says.