The Seattle-based company, Modern Realty Inc.—parent company of Pacific Housing Advisors and Allied Pacific Development—has changed its name to Vitus Group. With offices in Seattle, New York, San Francisco, Hawaii and San Diego, and more than 60 properties across the country, “Pacific” no longer reflected the true breadth of communities the company impacts, according to a prepared statement. The company now actively develops properties directly nationwide. “While our business model has evolved over the years, our commitment to developing innovative affordable housing remains unchanged,” says managing director Stephen Whyte. “Vitus is a name that represents strength, innovation and tenacity—qualities we have carried with us since we began, and that will remain intact for decades to come while we continue to grow our work.”

Las Vegas

CityCenter, the 67-acre city-within-a-city, is celebrating the opening of Veer Towers, one of the destination’s most architecturally iconic residential buildings, and its model homes. This latest unveiling follows the grand opening of four of CityCenter’s unprecedented offerings—ARIA Resort & Casino; Mandarin Oriental, Las Vegas; Vdara Hotel & Spa and Crystals retail and entertainment district. Designed by architect Helmut Jahn, Veer Towers is CityCenter's only completely residential development. Each Veer Tower is home to approximately 335 contemporary condominium residences ranging from approximately 500 square feet to 3,300 square feet.

Orange County

Voit Real Estate Services has partnered with RealCapitalMarkets.com LLC, which allows its brokers and asset services teams to market, sell and/or auction its investment, loan sales, commercial REO properties and FDIC assets in real time within a highly secure web-based marketing and asset management tool. “Our sales professionals and our real estate asset services team are more competitive by having a highly secure, user-friendly web portal for the marketing and single point of contact asset management for our clients. RCM provides us with instant access to 41,000 qualified investors, obtaining real-time data on property offers,” says Brian Malliet, COO and managing partner of Voit. “In addition, we will have much better knowledge of the true market to share with our clients, as well as increasing the velocity of our results on their behalf.” The Voit/RCM1 integrated property listing engine will include the ability for Voit’s brokers and asset services team to upload any listing of $1 million or more onto the system. Each property, loan or portfolio will have its own website which will link to Voit’s website. In addition, the property listings will include brochure uploads, online confidentiality agreements, Virtual Deal Rooms, online offer submissions, and detailed tracking and reporting of interested parties. “Voit and RCM1 are partnering to create a more sophisticated and exhaustive version of this listing engine than has been available in the past,” notes Steve Alter, RCM1's CEO and founder. “In addition, each broker or asset manager typically pays for this kind of technology themselves. The fact that Voit has made this investment on behalf of its people to ensure that the entire firm is able to offer its clients the most up-to-date service is truly unique in the industry to date.”

Golden State Foods has signed a 10-year, 32,000-square-foot office lease extension and expansion at the Von Karman Towers in Irvine, CA. One of the largest suppliers in the foodservice industry, the company will occupy an additional 6,000 square feet at the class A office building, located at 18301 Von Karmen Ave. The building serves as the organization’s headquarters. The property’s landlord, KBS Realty Advisors Inc., was represented by CB Richard Ellis Inc. Grubb & Ellis Co. represented Golden State Foods.

San Diego

Westfield America LP, has purchased the former 85,758-square-foot Mervyn’s building located at 565 Fletcher Pkwy. in El, Cajon, CA for an undisclosed amount. The seller, DDR MDT MV El Cajon LP, was represented by Cushman & Wakefield retail advisors team. The buyer represented itself. The two-story retail building is part of Westfield’s Parkway Plaza regional mall and features four storefront entrances including an internal mall entrance. The building has a large parking field on three sides and street frontage on Fletcher Parkway.

BH Properties has signed retail tenant Casa Bonita to an 11,000-square-foot lease at 102-104 Second St. in Calexico, CA, immediately adjacent to the pedestrian crossing at the Mexico/USA border. The houseware, gift and novelty merchant will move to the recently renovated property from the company’s previous Calexico location that was damaged in the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that struck the region earlier this spring. The new location for Casa Bonita has been owned by BH Properties since 2001. Shortly after the initial acquisition of the asset, BH Properties embarked on a renovation and retrofit campaign that ultimately resulted in little or no damage from the recent earthquake. “This transaction is indicative of Calexico’s vibrant retail economy, with merchants like Casa Bonita determined to continue successful operations here in spite of the quake’s damage,” says BH Properties EVP Steve Jaffe. The Second Street property is one of two in the Calexico market for BH Properties. The second location, Calexico Commons, located at 2300 North Imperial Ave., is a former Kmart anchored shopping center. Calexico Commons also suffered very minimal quake damage and remained a fully operational retail shopping center. BH Properties and Casa Bonita were both represented in-house.

San Francisco

Meru Networks Inc. has signed a 43,925-square-foot office lease renewal at 894 Ross Dr. here. The company will occupy the entire two-story building in a lease that extends toMarch 31, 2015.

Sushma Malhotra of CresaPartners in San Jose recently represented the tenant, a leader in virtualized wireless LAN solutions for enterprise networking. The landlord, Hines, represented itself. According to a SEC filing, the aggregate minimum lease commitment under the lease is approximately $1.825 million. Hines has provided Meru Networks with a tenant improvement allowance of up to $263,550, according to the filing.

Three and a half years into their partnership, PKF Consulting Inc. and Colliers International revealed that they will further leverage their relationship by co-branding within the US. As part of the co-branding initiative the firm’s three companies will be re-named to Colliers PKF Consulting USA; Colliers PKF Hospitality Research, and Colliers International Hotels (formerly PKF Capital). “Releasing the new names, new look, and combined logos is symbolic of the successful integration of PKF Consulting Inc. into Colliers International that has taken place since 2007,” says Thomas Callahan, chief executive officer of Colliers PKF Consulting USA West. In January of 2007, FirstService Corp. acquired an 80% interest in PKF Consulting Inc. Like PKF Consulting Inc, Colliers International is a subsidiary of FirstService. The senior management of PKFC will continue to operate Colliers PKF Consulting USA on a day-to-day basis and report to Colliers International.

Long term lease renewals remain a dominant feature in the I-680 corridor office market as tenants continue to take advantage of landlords’ willingness to solidify occupancy in their buildings. Jones Lang LaSalle recently completed two additional major office renewals through its Walnut Creek office, bringing to five the number of significant transactions executed by the firm in the I-680 corridor since March of this year. Most recently, Tom Maloney and Kevin Mechelke represented financial services company Travelers in a restructure and extension of its existing lease for 92,844 square feet at 175-225 Lennon Ln. in Walnut Creek, CA. The transaction extends the tenant’s lease for seven years. “Office market conditions in the East Bay continue to offer solid credit tenants the opportunity to fix occupancy costs at attractive rates,” Mechelke says. “Landlords remain willing to discuss early renewals as a way of creating long term stability in their buildings,” he adds. Maloney and Mechelke also represented Giga-tronics Inc., a San Ramon-based instrument manufacturer headquartered at 4650 Norris Canyon Rd. The company made the decision to extend its 47,374-square-foot lease for five years with 21 months remaining on the original lease. In March, the pair closed three renewals totaling more than 60,000 square feet in the north I-680 corridor, including the renewal of the Concord corporate headquarters of Round Table Pizza.