Arsenault Joins Avison Young to Head New England Retail Practice

Jeffrey Arsenault, principal, Avison Young

BOSTON—Avison Young reports that former CBRE executive and retail real estate brokerage specialist Jeffrey Arsenault has joined the firm as a principal. Arsenault will head Avison Young’s newly launched New England retail practice group based in Boston. The 30-year real estate veteran comes to Avison Young from CBRE New England in Boston where he most recently served as vice president. He worked at CBRE for about six years. “We are extremely pleased to have Jeff join our leadership team,” says Michael Smith, Avison Young principal and managing director of the company’s Boston office. “His proven track record of success in identifying and executing the best opportunities for his clients makes him a valuable asset to our growing Boston office. We are thrilled that Jeff has come on board and will assist Avison Young in expanding its retail capabilities throughout New England.” Arsenault says a chief reason why he made the switch to Avison Young was in order to take advantage of the opportunity “to work collaboratively with our offices in North America and Europe and bring a retail group to Boston, which they (Avison Young) were lacking.” Noting that while Avison Young has a pretty healthy retail presence in North America and Europe, Arsenault says the international real estate services firm needs to bolster its retail operations in New England. He says that Avison Young envisions the New England retail practice to include three to five professionals, which will likely include hires from outside of Avison Young, as well as professionals currently working in other areas of practice within the firm. Arsenault began his real estate career in 1986 at Fafard Companies, where he served as an asset manager for a portfolio of mixed-used properties. He then held a leadership position at Konover & Associates, where he managed a 1-million-square-foot retail portfolio in Connecticut, before moving on to become a founding partner at Summit Realty Partners. The firm operated out of Lexington, MA for approximately 14 years. During his career, Arsenault has completed more than 650 lease and sale transactions involving more than 9 million square feet. In 2015, he was nominated for the Retail Deal of the Year award by the Greater Boston Real Estate Board for his work on the Boston Wax Museum lease deal at One Washington Mall near City Hall. The new Avison Young executive is very bullish on the retail market in both Greater Boston and the suburbs. “I like the prospects for retail over the next four to five years,” he says. “I think we have seen a really nice healthy bounce from 2008 and I think that will continue for the foreseeable future. I think we have a lot interesting restaurants and retail looking to locate in these urban markets.” He says that activity in the region has been strong for the past five years led by restaurants and boutique fitness facilities, he notes. With a retail vacancy rate of about 5% in Boston, he says that many of the new mixed-use development projects in Downtown Boston, in the Seaport and in Cambridge, whether they be commercial office or multifamily, are including an “amenity based retail” component.