CBRE Launches Retail Services Unit

EL SEGUNDO, CA-CB Richard Ellis has launched its first-ever “retail services hub office,” an 8,000-sf office that houses a staff of 25 that is headed by top retail brokers and is the company’s first concerted effort to provide the same depth and breadth of corporate services to retailers as it does to other corporate clients. Jim Kruse, senior managing director in the company’s El Segundo office, tells GlobeSt.com that the new office is intended as a prototype for the centralized servicing of multiple-market retailers, investors and developers.

Kruse’s post as chief of CBRE’s LA South region includes oversight of the new retail services hub office, at 2041 Rosecrans Ave. Heading the staff of professionals, account managers and support personnel in the hub office are executive vice president Richard Rizika, first vice president Stan McElroy and vice president Greg Whitney, all of them longtime retail specialists.

Kruse tells GlobeSt.com that CBRE, which will be unveiling the new retail services hub at next week’s annual spring gathering at ICSC, came up with the idea for the retail hub as the the result of a sort of “perfect storm” of circumstances. One element of that perfect storm is that the retail industry has changed dramatically in recent years, with a growing number of national retailers who have requirements for a broad range of services in multiple markets.