MINNEAPOLIS—JLL has been in the Twin Cities for years, but it was only recently that the company began putting a special emphasis on boosting its property management business. And in just 24 months, it expanded its portfolio under management from 400,000-square-feet to 2.9-million-square-feet. The expansion means that the property management division can now play a key role in developing business contacts, much like the more-established JLL sections in Minnesota like tenant representation, capital markets and others, and puts the company in position for even more growth.
“We share a lot of information back and forth,” Todd R. Balsiger, senior vice president, property management at JLL, tells GlobeSt.com. “Those groups opened the door for us, and property management is the final leg of the stool.”
“We've spent considerable time and effort travelling and networking to let our national clients know that we now had a property management group in Minneapolis,” he adds. “That resulted in some significant momentum coming into 2014.”
In fact, in the last 65 days the division has taken on 10 properties that total about 2-million-square-feet. The new collection includes a five-building office portfolio with more than 861,000-square-feet owned by an undisclosed local investor; a three-building, 666,242-square-foot industrial portfolio owned by STAG Industrial; and a 144,000-square-foot tech center owned by Onward Investors. In addition to these multi-tenant buildings, JLL also manages an additional 5.9-million-square-feet of owner-occupied corporate facilities in the Twin Cities region.
To handle the explosive growth, JLL has expanded the property management staff from three to twelve, including the addition of a general manager and an assistant general manager, three property administrators and four engineers.
And Balsiger certainly hopes for more growth in the future. “JLL is a very collegial company and we always try to leverage the relationships we have with national clients,” many of which have significant operations in the Twin Cities. In the short-term, he does not expect these companies to disrupt existing relationships with their current providers just because JLL has established a property management group. However, “if they purchase new portfolios they may not want to put all of their eggs in one basket and that would give JLL opportunities.”
“I don't have a number in mind about where we'd like to be in two or three years,” he adds, mainly because growing the platform depends a lot on timing and when building owners' contracts with their present managers expire. But “we are currently pursuing several portfolios that range from 500,000-square-feet to 1.5-million-square-feet. It's a matter of continuing to have dialogue with these owners.”
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
