Trio Leaves CushWake to Launch New CRE Firm

MIAMI—

Jon Blunk, Laurel Oswald (pictured), and Cristina Glaria—three of South Florida’s top commercial real estate brokers—have left Cushman & Wakefield to start their own firm.

The trio has launched Tower Commercial Real Estate and will specialize in agency leasing for class A office assets in South Florida urban cores. “After many years of working within large national real estate firms, we felt that we had accomplished everything we had set out to achieve, also with all the recent consolidations of real estate firms and with more likely on the horizon, we felt that this was the opportune time to launch a firm which allows us the ability to be more client-centric,” Oswald tells GlobeSt.com. “Our primary focus is on meeting the goals an objective of our clients. We now also have the ability to avoid any potential conflicts that can arise from other internal competing assets and teams that can often occur within large consolidated platforms.” With 20 years in the field, Blunk serves as president of the new firm. Oswald, a 16-year veteran, serves as executive director. Glaria is director. Joody Andre came on board as marketing director. All told, the brokers represent a portfolio of about 3 million square feet of class A office sets already. Consistently outpacing the market, Blunk, Oswald and Glaria last year alone teamed to close 71 transactions, leasing nearly 560,000 square feet, valued at more than $230 million. That performance recently earned them NAIOP South Florida’s 2015 Office Brokerage Team of the Year. Transactions included two of the market’s largest leases, Citigroup’s 122,678-square-foot lease and Shook Hardy’s 60,000-square-foot lease renewal, both at Citigroup Center. “We’ve been fortunate over the span of our careers to work with some of the most sophisticated institutional owners of commercial real estate and we plan on expanding those relationship with existing and future real estate opportunities,” Oswald says. “Domestic and international investors continue to be very focused on South Florida and we plan on leveraging our 40-plus years of experience in the market to assist them with investment opportunities and asset value creation.” For his part, Blunk previously served as senior director for Cushman & Wakefield, leading agency leasing in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. Previously, he served as senior vice president and director of Leasing at Boca Raton-based real estate investment firm  Crocker Partners , one of South Florida’s largest owners of class A office properties. Before moving to South Florida, he was director of leasing for Trizec Properties in Chicago, where he leased Trizec’s 6 million square-foot portfolio, including the Sears Tower. Oswald   has over 16 years of leasing experience for the South Florida market on behalf of institutional owners and investors. Before joining Cushman & Wakefield, she served as senior vice president for Transwestern. She currently serves on the board of directors and the executive committee of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance and chair of their Corporate Council. Glaria has extensive agency leasing experience representing Tier 1 trophy assets in South Florida’s Central Business Districts. She graduated from the University of Florida,  cum laude  with a Bachelor’s degree in Finance and a minor in real estate . She currently serves on the board of directors of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Miami’s Young Professionals, and is an active member of CREW Miami, the South Florida Office Brokers Association and NAIOP South Florida. Andre was previously with Cushman & Wakefield for 6 years and specializes in the creation of best in class marketing materials and the implementation of complex marketing strategies. “While currently overseeing over 3 million square feet of top tier assets throughout South Florida, we have plans to expand our team,” Oswald says. “One of the benefits of starting our firm is that it allows us the benefit of strategically growing our full service real estate platform. We will add key team members that will best service the growth and objectives of our clients in each market.”