Hill, most recently the company's vice president of investment sales and office leasing, has been tapped by Northwest area director Bob Dean to take on the additional role of sales manager, in charge of tripling the number of brokers with the firm to 20 by the end of the year. As part of that plan, Hill this spring is moving G&E's Downtown Seattle office from 3,000 sf in One Union Square to 6,000 sf in Two Union Square. As well, the company is planning to shrink its 3,000-sf Eastside presence to a 1,000-sf satellite office where brokers can plug into the system without having to return all the way to home base in Downtown Seattle.
"The transaction services side of Grubb & Ellis has gone through some trials and tribulations in Seattle, and a decision has been made to grow the Seattle office back to what it was," Hill tells GlobeSt.com. "In the 1980s, we were one of the largest brokerage firms in the Northwest in terms of the number of brokers and the number of transactions."
But in the late 1980s and early 1990s, G&E ran into some financial difficulties and a decision was made to shrink, says Hill. "A lot of people that were Grubb employees at the time are now running their own boutiques in town," says Hill, rattling off the names of firms such as Pacific Real Estate Partners and the Regency Group. "There are a lot of firms that are full of former Grubb agents."
The appointment of Hill to the sales manager position means Joe Steele, the longtime head of the company's corporate services group, can shed the sales manager title he added a couple of years ago and redouble his efforts on the corporate services group, Dean tells GlobeSt.com. "We asked him to take on the added responsibility for a couple of years and now he needs to refocus on growing the corporate services account business," says Dean.
Hill's new position as sales manager means he will be receiving a salary as well as commissions for his brokerage work. In the future, he could also receive a piece of the profits generated by the Seattle office.
"I'm absolutely excited about this," says Hill, who came to Grubb & Ellis several years ago, after spending nearly two decades in the commercial division of Coldwell Banker. "I spent 18 years there, 12 years of which were in corporate services world, traveling all over the country," says Hill. "I moved back to Seattle in 1993, spent a short time with CB there and then came over to Grubb with a friend who had taken over charge of the office."
Hill says what he found was one of the best technology platforms and one of the best referral networks in the business. One of the other reasons Hill says he decided to take on the added responsibility of being a sales manager is that "the people I report to understand the brokerage mentality and are now focused on building that part of the company."
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