Net Lease forum.

NLf: Can you give us a quick history of the company?

Robertson: The company started in 1979. Chris Cole is our CEO. If you go back to the late '70s and early '80s, most of our history is centered in local real estate deals--we did land deals, land entitlement, some value-add. In the mid- to late-'90s we bought mostly multi-tenant retail deals here in Phoenix that we repositioned. If they were 80% occupied, we'd lease them up to 90%, 95% and then sell them on a stabilized basis. So it really was a small firm--Chris, his brother, Scott, and a handful of other people. By about 2002, Chris had established such a great track record and so many relationships in the capital markets that it was a natural progression to raise money on a national level and take the firm in an institutional direction. He increased his focus on the fundraising side of the business in order to build a sound real estate firm with an ability to raise equity in the capital markets. That approach would take our firm from being a local to a national player, and that's what he's done. I came on around 2003, and most of the guys that he hired to take us to a national platform are still here today. But that's how we flew under the radar screen for so long. If you weren't doing deals in the Phoenix area, you probably had never heard of us before 2002.

NLf: The company's focus today is on single-tenant retail properties primarily. When did Cole start to focus on this property type and why is that the focus today?