LOS ANGELES—Avison Young has hired retail specialist Stephanie Skrbin as a principal to focus on institutional retail leasing and investment. The news is part of the brokerage firm's ongoing effort to expand its retail leasing and sales practice. Skrbin will be based in the firm's downtown office and will partner with Avison Young principal Derrick Moore.

“Retail used to be a single stand-alone asset that investors looked at, but today we are seeing a lot of mixed-use projects, both ground-up and in adaptive reuse in Downtown L.A., West L.A. Hollywood and other parts of Southern California,” Chris Cooper, principal and senior managing director at Avison Young, tells GlobeSt.com. “As a result, we are seeing institutions as well as other high net worth individuals making significant investments in this mixed-use arena. We feel that it is very important to have the best and brightest retail talent because retail is what is driving occupancy in the associated or collateral uses of these properties.”

Skrbin joins Avison Young from Lee & Associates L.A. North/Ventura office, where she served as a principal for 12 years with an expertise in retail investment sales, landlord and tenant representation and asset management. At Avison Young, Skrbin will leverage her expertise to focus on the greater L.A. market and the San Fernando Valley, while her partner Moore will continue to focus on the downtown market. “It was extremely important to bring in another principal to take a lot of those opportunities that we have developed over the years in Downtown L.A. and expand them into other markets,” says Cooper. “Stephanie really has tremendous experience in the greater Los Angeles area and in the San Fernando Valley that allows us to expand what Derrick has already done.”

Skrbin echoes Cooper's sentiments, saying that her L.A. market expertise and Moore's downtown expertise was the perfect match for the partnership and to grow the platform. “I had been working on my own for the past few years, and Derrick and I had been talking about teaming up. With my expertise in the greater L.A. area and Derrick's downtown expertise, this was the perfect marriage,” she tells GlobeSt.com. “I have known Derrick and Chris for 10-plus years, so this is kind of like family to me.”

In joining the firm, Skrbin's initial goals are to tackle the institutional business. “We have strategized and one of the things we wanted to do was go after the more institutional-type product,” she explains. “We're going to making a pretty aggressive move for that in the next coming months.”