SRS CEO and president Clay Smith says the combination of his company's national retailer connections and leasing network with Cypress Equities' development and asset management experience will enable the two companies to provide a service not generally available to the type of clients it has targeted. "By bringing together Cypress Equities and SRS Real Estate Partners, Managed Services will be able to leverage the core competencies of each group while creating a real estate synergy unlike anything in the marketplace," he says.

According to Scott Harrington, a Cypress partner who oversees the firm's Southeast region from his office in Atlanta, the new venture foresees its client consisting largely of private investors, equity sources, banks and other financial institutions that have taken back struggling retail and mixed-use projects due to the failure of their owners or developers to keep up with payments.

"We think there's going to be a lot of people with the responsibility to manage and fix retail properties who aren't accustomed to being on that side of the business," he tells GlobeSt.com. "They're going to have the need for a service provider that has the experience, connections and market knowledge they don't have."Cypress--which has a portfolio worth more than $2 billion and totaling over six million square feet--develops, operates, manages and invests in destination-class retail, residential, mixed-use and resort properties in the US and abroad. SRS is the nation's largest retail real estate services firm with over 300 dedicated retail real estate specialists.