Barovick explains that the new enterprise--which includes many of the senior executives with Barovick during his tenure at Grubb--is a 50/50 joint venture with JH Cohn, one of the world's largest accounting and consulting firms. The half not owned by Cohn is owned by Barovick, COO Elizabeth S. Kulik and Sr. EVP Michael Berne.

Barovick explains that the JV provides the startup with the infrastructure necessary "so we didn't have to focus on the noise of administration while getting our business up and running." It also provides a more than 600-person worldwide employee base so the 13 core executives of Cohn Real Estate have the wherewithal to take on clients such as AmEx.

According to Kulik, Cohn's mission is to take "an integrated service platform based on our knowledge of specific industries and deliver that real estate expertise throughout the life cycle of clients' assets."

Those specific industries include health care (managed by Berne); professional services (supervised by Berne and Barovick); sports/entertainment/leisure (managed by Bart Oates); and government-sector activities (the bailiwick of John Butterazzi in Washington, DC). Bill Whitlow, stationed in Cohn's San Francisco office, will focus on institutional activity while Ed Lubeniecki in the firm's L.A. office will supervise advisory services. In addition to his specific market focus, Berne overseas all industry services. In its first year of business, Barovick projects that the team should turn in roughly $10 million in revenues.

Helping the team hit that goal is a series of alliances Cohn has forged with various industry providers, agreements geared to provide more services to the Cohn client base. Barovick refers to a "significant" but unnamed partner that provides construction, engineering and architectural services as well as a debt-and-equity partner. Two of the assignments currently in the firm's pipeline are debt and equity plays, he adds. Certainly, the integrated-service platform is not new to Cohn. It was the model Barovick tried to implement when he helmed Grubb, and comparisons to his current initiative are unavoidable.

"I am committed to the C-Suite," he tells GlobeSt.com, "and I'm convinced that this is the way to go. The difference is that Grubb was focused on chasing deals. Our focus now is serving the client. We will not chase deals. We're business-process focused, and real estate is the same as human resources or technology within an organization. We're focused on our clients' revenues not just on cost-reduction."

While he would not go on the record with other assignments, he did state that the Cohn pipeline is already "huge."