The new firm represents a major expansion of the Lee brand, which has proven successful in California, Nevada and Arizona. In 2001, brokers in the Lee & Associates network did nearly 5,000 transactions, including building sales, leases, land sales and consulting assignments with an aggregate value of about $3.4 billion, or an average of $11 million for each broker.
Joining as principals to form Lee & Associates of Illinois are John Sharpe, formerly of CB Richard Ellis; Jeffery J. Janda, and James B. Planey, formerly of Colliers, Bennett & Kahnweiler; Michael J. Androwich and Justin P. Fierz, formerly of Darwin Realty; John T. Cassidy, Kenneth P. Franzese, and David Pals, formerly of Grubb & Ellis; and Christopher P. Lydon, formerly with Trammell Crow. Others are joining as associates and senior associates, and other principals were prepared to link themselves with the new firm, but not ready to make that information public.
The new company is not a coming together of strangers. "We've put the company together with people we knew we wanted to work with six days a week," says James Planey, who has 29 years' experience in commercial real estate, the most of any of the principals. "That isn't typically what happens when you work at a brokerage firm. In that sense, putting together Lee & Associates of Illinois was a unique opportunity for us all."
Which only goes to show that everyone knows everyone else in the brokerage community. "Most of us have had some sort of professional relationship with the others," notes Janda. "It coalesced around a group of guys that knew they would work together well." In some cases, he points out, they had met each other across the negotiating table, or had hired each other in various capacities at other companies.
Though doing business under the Lee brand, the new firm is owned — like all the others under the Lee name — by its local principals, and functions autonomously. Under Lee's corporate structure, all of the principals are owners with significant investments in the firm. Other Lee & Associates principals from other offices also have the opportunity to invest in the Illinois office, though not as owners. Thus far, 78 Lee brokers have done so, which according to the Illinois principals has been a significant help in capitalizing the operation.
"Every principal has an ownership stake, and every associate is hired with the view that he or she will one day be a principal," says Sharpe. "That has several advantages, besides being an incentive to perform. It also helps keep communications open among the principals, and since we'll all be out in the field doing deals, it means that we'll know exactly what resources and tools we need. We won't have to wait for management to provide what we need."
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