LOS ANGELES—JLL is investing long-term in the retail market. In an earlier story, GlobeSt.com reported that the leading brokerage firm acquired Wilson Retail Group, a leading retail agency-leasing firm in the Southern California region. JLL purchased the firm as part of a strategic move to focus more on the retail market, especially in the Southwestern region.

“This is one of our key strategic growth mandates across the country and in particular in this region,” Peter Belisle, market director for JLL's Southwest region, tells GlobeSt.com. “We currently are doing retail, but not at the scale that we want to and not at the scale that our client base is looking for; so, having the leadership of Chris and Scott to both work with and grow our existing client base is a great fit.” Wilson Retail Group founder and principal Chris Wilson and president Scott Burns will join JLL as market leaders—Wilson for the Southwest region and Burns for Los Angeles—and both will report to Belisle. 

Although the retail market is booming at the moment, with national vacancy rates hitting all-time lows, JLL's focus is more about long term growth rather than the current market conditions. “This play for us is a long-term play. So, while it is fantastic that consumer spending is up and we are in a great economic cycle, and we probably will have that for several years to come, we look at this from a strategic perspective as a long-term play,” says Belisle. “It is not necessarily where we are in the retail cycle, but really a longer vision for what we want to do with the growth of our business in this region.”

That vision includes recruiting a quality team and continuing to be experts in the market. “One of the things that is really important to us as a full-service real estate platform is that we have the full range of services, both for our occupier clients and our investor clients,” Belisle adds. “The other piece that is important is geographic coverage, so having that dispersion across the country is really important to us.”

Want to continue reading?
Become a Free ALM Digital Reader.

Once you are an ALM Digital Member, you’ll receive:

  • Breaking commercial real estate news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical coverage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.

Kelsi Maree Borland

Kelsi Maree Borland is a freelance journalist and magazine writer based in Los Angeles, California. For more than 5 years, she has extensively reported on the commercial real estate industry, covering major deals across all commercial asset classes, investment strategy and capital markets trends, market commentary, economic trends and new technologies disrupting and revolutionizing the industry. Her work appears daily on GlobeSt.com and regularly in Real Estate Forum Magazine. As a magazine writer, she covers lifestyle and travel trends. Her work has appeared in Angeleno, Los Angeles Magazine, Travel and Leisure and more.