CBRE Unveils Retail Services Hub at ICSC

LAS VEGAS-As the world’s largest commercial real estate organization, CB Richard Ellis is no stranger to International Council of Shopping Centers’ Spring Convention. This year, though, the firm will be unveiling something new at the gathering. CBRE has launched its first ever Retail Services Hub, an office in El Segundo, CA that will focus on providing an A-to-Z list of services for retailers and is intended as a prototype for the centralized servicing of multiple-market retailers, investors and developers.

Los Angeles-based CBRE has long been deeply involved in providing a full range of real estate services for corporations, but senior managing director Jim Kruse in the company’s El Segundo office tells GlobeSt.com/Retail that this is the first time the firm has turned its attention to retail in this way. As Kruse explains it, the effort is the result of a sort of “perfect storm” of circumstances. For one, 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.

“Twenty-five years ago, every segment of our business was pretty much geocentric,” Kruse says, with brokers typically specializing in a particular geographic area that was relatively small. Now, he says, the business has shifted from a geographic to an account-oriented focus, so that real estate services firms have got to be thinking “at least regionally,” if not nationally. The new CBRE Retail Hub, for example, is already servicing the likes of Target, Home Depot, Chevron, New York & Co. and Mervyns.