GlobeSt.com: How many people have you brought on-board thus far?

Jaccom: I’m only here three months, but I’ve hired six new brokers and two consultants. I’m about to hire an additional three consultants, which will bring my consulting group to roughly about 12. So in the last three months I’ve doubled the consulting group. I have an additional six brokers that are going to be with me, but until I get the new office space, I can’t accommodate them; I’ll need the new phone lines.

GlobeSt.com: How will the culture of the practice change?

Jaccom: We are going to have 25 brokers. We are going to have five senior partners; there are two today, myself and Marcus Rayner. Then we will have 10 senior brokers and then 10 mid-level brokers and we are going to run an open shop where everybody knows what everybody is doing. There will be no silos or people hiding information. It’s going to be a collaborative group where the brokers work in concert with the consultants. Ultimately the brokers are out there doing the transactions, while the consultants are doing the intellectual work: abstracting the leases, abstracting doing the workplace strategy – whatever it takes to execute a deal. And then the broker, in concert with the consultants will execute these transactions. In the past, people used to work with the consultants if they needed them. Today you must work with the consultants under my regime. Also: I don’t have a retail broker in my office, and I will have retail brokers over the next couple of weeks. I don’t have what I consider a strong capital markets group and I’m about to hire a few brokers that do capital markets. After all we don’t represent landlords; we only represent tenants.

GlobeSt.com: What about other new services?

Jaccom: Today around the country we have 60 project managers. Today in New York, I have one project manager. I am going to expand that business over the next year and will add three or four more project managers that will work in concert with all the other project managers across the country. We’ve built an alliance with SRS and we’re going to work closely with them and bring in their people to work with us.

GlobeSt.com: Let’s talk about the market. Where would you say is the next Midtown South?

Jaccom: If you have a major tenant, you have to look at Downtown because Midtown South has grown so rapidly and vacancy has been so low and the prices have been so high. As major companies like Conde Nast go Downtown, and the rumor is Nielsen is going Downtown to 85 Broad, there a lot of companies that must look at Downtown because of the new product, and what’s being built Downtown is pretty darn incredible. What we are seeing is a new phenomenon where there is a lot of tenants from Midtown and the Plaza District that would never consider going south are doing it, not because of costs, because of new buildings, technology and whether they can induce their employees. Today you want to make sure that you have young talent, and young talent lives Downtown, in Brooklyn and Hoboken. You want to make sure you are in a location where you can seduce them to come work for your firm or anywhere you can be in a ‘hip’ spot.

GlobeSt.com: What kinds of tenants are the most active right now?

Jaccom: Law firms are very active, technology companies are very active and nonprofits are very active – there’s a lot of movement. I don’t see the financial institutions or corporate America doing large transactions at this point. There’s a lot of strategic planning going, but I haven’t seen the big corporates rather than Conde Nast, but the current market is still filled with a lot of five and a hundred thousand square feet looking for space, and if you are looking for space, there’s plenty. Today, if you are looking for half a million and above, you don’t have much product ready to go. Most new construction is going to happen Downtown or Hudson Yards. But today if you are a large tenant of a million square feet or larger, you need to study these new markets because you want buildings that are green, more efficient and more eco-friendly. The newer buildings have that where the older ones don’t.

GlobeSt.com: What’s in-store for 2013?

Jaccom: I do believe that when the market does kick up, there will be a race for space and prices are going to start rising. But today, I do believe it is still a tenant’s market where tenants take advantage of the softening going on, and you can make incredible deals also in Midtown and Grand Central because of the migration of tenants going south.