Rowley cites the recent sale, by IDI, of four out of the six buildings at the 1.1-million-square-foot Weston Business Center in Weston, Florida for $65 million, or $96 per square foot, a few weeks ago, as a reason to be optimistic about the industrial real estate market today. "I've heard that when the property was put up for sale, 25 buyers showed up," he says. "This is the first transaction that says 'we're back,'" says Rowley, referring to what he sees as a reinvigorated industrial market.

Rowley's goal for his own company is to, in essence, reconstitute Codina Realty Services, the brokerage and property management arm of the Coral Gables-based Codina Group, before Codina merged with Flagler in 2006.

The group of brokers and property managers who once worked at Codina Realty Services is pretty much the same group which operates out of Flagler Real Estate Services today, says Rowley, but he wants to do more than just re-assemble former Codina people. Rather, he wants to recreate the dominant position of Codina Realty Services, which, he says, was number one in brokerage and property management for office and industrial real estate. The entity had the largest dollar volume of transactions, on the brokerage side, for all three South Florida counties for several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, says Rowley. "We've already regained the number one status in property management, in terms of the square footage that the company manages," he says.

"I want to fill the slots in which we don't have a strong presence," says Rowley. "We have 22 brokers in South Florida and we are especially strong in office and industrial brokerage and property management in Miami-Dade," he says. But he wants to expand the number of office and industrial brokers in Broward and Palm Beach Counties.

To make his company stronger, Rowley is recruiting brokers from other companies, such as Greg Martin, a former Cushman & Wakefield broker in Broward County, who, in early May, joined FRES as an office broker. During his eight years at Cushman, he assembled a portfolio of business representing more than two million square feet of office space in Broward and Palm Beach Counties. His client roster included TIAA-CREF and ING. Martin was named NAIOP "broker of the year" in 2004.

Rowley also wants to expand into more corporate real estate work. FRES belongs to a network called ONCOR International, which has 50 offices worldwide. Through this system, says Rowley, his company already has a couple of corporate real estate assignments. "We have no aspirations to open offices outside of Florida, but with the ONCOR system, we can take assignments outside the state," he says. FRES has been with ONCOR since the mid-1990s when the entity was Codina Realty Services.

Another important initiative for Flagler, says Rowley, is to expand the company by opening offices in Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville in the next 24 months. The Flagler development company has offices in those cities already and has substantial real estate holdings there, although no third-party brokerage and property management operations as yet, says Rowley. He looks forward to filling that gap.