ORLANDO, FL-Jones Lang LaSalle is making major Florida market moves. On the heels of its Jacksonville office opening, the company has poached two real estate stars from other firms. JLL snatched Yvonne Baker and Aaron Gray to serve in its Orlando office one day and promoted Steve Medwin to head of brokerage in South Florida the next.
Baker will lead the landlord leasing team, and Gray will specialize in tenant representation. Further South, Medwin’s new role includes managing the landlord and tenant representation teams for office and industrial real estate in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale and Boca Raton. Medwin will also sit on JLL’s national brokerage leadership council.
“Aaron is what I would classify as a super sophomore. He is one of those guys who has paid his freshman dues. It’s just a matter of time before he becomes a super senior,” Mark Stratman, managing director at JLL, tells GlobeSt.com. “Yvonne is a seasoned veteran. Yvonne will help me get landlord business. We don’t have much of an agency leasing side presence here.”
Baker brings 25 years of commercial real estate experience to JLL with specialized knowledge in landlord office leasing. She was responsible for a leasing volume in excess of $275 million and 2.2 million square feet over the last 15 years. She joins JLL from Highwoods Properties.
Gray is an office tenant representative specialist bringing 10 years of experience to the team. He joins from Grubb & Ellis. Gray tells GlobeSt.com that he was waiting for an opportunity to work with Jones Lang LaSalle. “In my mind, as a broker there’s Jones Lang LaSalle, CBRE and then there’s everybody else,” Gray says. “It seems like some brokerages are just hiring people to add warm bodies. I don’t want to be surrounded by 30 people that aren’t capable.”
Medwin, for one, is capable. Medwin and his team recently brokered the largest industrial lease in South Florida in the last two years. Representing landlord Morgan Stanley Real Estate, they completed a 342,750- square-foot long-term lease to Bel Inc. at Lincoln Logistics Park in Medley.
A 20-year industry veteran, Medwin has completed more than 500 commercial real estate transactions valued in excess of $1 billion and has sourced more than $150 million worth of acquisition and development opportunities for his previous employer, Lincoln Property Company.
“Revenues are going to go up,” Stratman says. “We are going to continue to grow the platform in the state of Florida. As far as I am concerned, the runway is very long and very open for us to grow this business in Florida. CB has been the major player in Florida for a long time. They have the depth and bench strength. CB is the big green machine. We can compete and will compete.”
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