Simpson and his team were most recently with Cushman &Wakefield's DTLA office. C&W did not respond before deadline to GlobeSt.com's request for comment about the move.

The hiring of the seven-member team further expands Avison Young's rapidly growing Southern California corporate-occupier services business. Chris Cooper, Avison Young's principal and managing director of the Southern California region, tells GlobeSt.com that the new team has “a very good and sophisticated corporate-occupier services practice, and it is not only local but also national and international, so this really is a strategic acquisition for us in that it further expands our national and occupier-services business.”

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Cooper adds that the firm plans to further expand this office and others in the western US. “For this office, I think we'll be looking at several things: we're very keen on adding a robust project-management business as well as property management, and I would anticipate also adding further brokerage in areas such as landlord agency leasing, capital markets and certainly more tenant representation.”

He points out that each market has its own drivers in terms of product, types of clients and service lines, which makes each office's needs unique. “Our West L.A. office has been very strong in the entertainment industry, and we certainly want to build on that. We're also looking to build up some landlord agency business as well as capital markets there. Our L.A. North office does work in Hollywood, and we really want to expand more into the Tri-Cities. There and certainly in Irvine, we really want to begin to build on not only capital markets but also on our landlord/tenant agency representation business quite a bit.”

The firm currently has five offices in the western US, and Cooper says managing them has been “a lot of fun.” Cooper had worked with several of Avison Young's operations executives in the past, including John Ryan in New York and Jim Becker in Detroit. “It's a very special time to be with [Avison Young's president of US operations] Earl Webb and those folks—it's kind of like old times.”

Cooper says to look for more executive announcements as the firm continues to expand. As GlobeSt.com previously reported, in November 2012 Avison Young continued its aggressive Southern California expansion with the opening of a new office at 633 West 5^th St. in Downtown L.A., with Derrick Moore joining as principal. Moore, a retail-industry veteran, was joined by Cooper, who relocated from the company's West Los Angeles office to the DTLA site.

Also, as GlobeSt.com previously reported and tweeted on @GlobeStcom on Twitter and @GlobeStLIVE, veteran commercial real estate broker David Linsmayer joined Avison Young's San Francisco office as principal earlier this month. In that role, he will focus on brokerage services, including the representation of corporate tenants, investors and landlords, as well as capital markets and advisory services transactions in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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