MIAMI—Retail commercial real estate guru Anthony Blanco has switched allegiances, leaving his position as co-managing partner of Plaza Advisors to step into a role as director of Investment Sales at the Shopping Center Group.

Blanco tells GlobeSt.com that the Shopping Center Group is the ideal company for his investment team, which includes senior associate Lenard Williams and analyst Mallory Ham. In his new position, Blanco will work in a wider geographic footprint with a third-party leasing and management platform focused on retail real estate only.

“I believe now is a great time for this affiliation since the emphasis is clearly back on understanding the basic driving factors behind retail real estate as opposed to the financial engineering that was prevalent in the mid-2000s,” Blanco says. He has been brokering retail property sales for nearly 15 years and has sold about $800 million worth of retail real estate assets, including the sale of two high profile Publix-anchored shopping centers in Miami in 2010—the West Bird Plaza and Country Walk Plaza.