Hurtuk tells GlobeSt.com that when the development company he was working for decided to relocate its headquarters to Florida, he opted to stay in the city. After he hooked up with CBRE and started calling on key contacts. Of course, one of those contacts was Forest City, and it just so happened the company was in the midst of deciding whether to replace an in-house leasing agent or hire the services of an outside brokerage firm that could throw more bodies at the task of filling the aforementioned holes in its portfolio.

"I think part of it is they have a very small in-house department with responsibilities all over the country, and while its one thing to take care of existing tenants it's quite another to create a lot of traffic in your buildings in order to fill big holes," says Hurtuk. "And Cleveland has always been a broker-driven market."

Aside from the Higbee Building, which will be a tough task in and of itself due to abnormally large floor plates, Lott says the biggest holes in Forest City's Downtown portfolio are in the 412,000-sf Halle Building (built 1914/renovated 1986) and the 464,000-sf MK-Ferguson Building (built 1930/renovated 1990). The Halle Building recently saw one tenant declare bankruptcy and another move to the suburbs. At the MK-Ferguson Building, a tenant contracted significantly opening up 200,000 sf in the building, of which only 50,000 sf has been reabsorbed.

The MK-Ferguson Building is one of three Forest City-owned office buildings that are part of the mixed-use Tower City Complex off Public Square in Downtown. The other two buildings are the Skylight Office Tower, a 320,000-sf class A office tower built in 1991, and Terminal Tower, a 580,000-sf building that was built in 1930 and renovated in 1990. The city's second tallest building and the centerpiece of the complex, a public observation deck on the 42nd floor of Terminal Tower provides views of the entire metropolitan area. Tower City Center is the remodeled concourse of the Terminal Tower and contains restaurants, hotels, and movie theaters. All told, the Tower City Complex contains more than 6.5 million sf of office and retail space, including the local Ritz Carlton, which Forest City also owns.

In addition to the Downtown leasing assignment, Hurtuk and company also gained the management assignment for two of Forest City's buildings: One International Place, the building Hurtuk owns in partnership with Forest City, and the Halle Building, which is located in Playhouse Square, the city's theater district. Dave Browning, CBRE's local managing director, tells GlobeSt.com they won the assignments because they are away from most of Forest City's other managed properties.

As for the leasing assignment, Browning describes the contractual arrangement as a standard one-year agreement, with the procuring brokers earning a commission that starts at 5% of the lease value up to $1 million and falls toward 1% per $1 million of consideration. The house takes half. Working with Hurtuk on the leasing assignment are Doug Leary, Bryan Kagel, Jen Scavone and Matthew Brudner.