Jones Lang LaSalle looks to expand property management practice
June 16, 2010 | Mark Thomton | Print Article | Email this Article
An Interview with Brenda Crisp, Senior Vice President and leader of the Jones Lang LaSalle’s Midwest Industrial Property Management Group. Crisp was recently named to this position and will focus on expanding the firm’s Midwest industrial property management platform as well as continue to enhance its full-service solutions for clients across the Midwest.
Q: What are some of your immediate goals for this position?
To go out into our Midwest regional markets and meet our local teams alongside Keith Stauber, Regional Managing Director of Jones Lang LaSalle’s Midwest Industrial Services practice, and John Huguenard, Managing Director of Corporate Capital Markets in Chicago. Our Midwest regional offices are currently in Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Minneapolis. To that end, we will be meeting with our clients to understand their needs within those markets as well as making connections with our national groups on our clients’ behalf.
From the property management standpoint, I ’m finding that where we provide office property management, we can easily translate that to management of our clients’ industrial portfolios as well.
We have tremendously talented property management teams in place already in each market, with a Minneapolis team emerging soon. Our managers look at each of our assets from an owner or asset manager perspective with a focus on smart marketing and consistently building value. If you are going to have vacancy, you should have the best vacancy in the market and team with your leasing agents on creative ways to complete transactions such as alternative ways of repurposing space. Our managers have to be committed to lowering operating costs for new transactions as well as doing whatever we can to retain valuable tenants.
Q: Has sustainability played a larger role in your property management services?
You have tenants that are looking at any way to lower operating expenses, and one way is through contracted energy. Aggressive purchasing of energy can reduce operating expenses in industrial buildings by 20-to-30 percent and can be maintained through sustainable energy practices. We also use two proprietary systems – Launch Audits and Green Globes Assessments - as an initial review of our facilities. Also, all of our managers are LEED certified. At Jones Lang LaSalle, this is a standard rule not the exception.
Q: Where do you see the market right now?
As we talk with our clients across the country, there is a resounding theme that there is more activity in the marketplace and more movement on the investment sales side. We are seeing more foot traffic through our facilities, and this is very encouraging after sitting through a flat market.
Q: You believe that there is a growing demand for comprehensive services. How can your property management division provide this?
To have such a full-service platform available for our industrial practice group, I feel like a kid in a candy store. All of our services and all of our technology is very transferable and available on behalf of our industrial clients and their assets. We can provide the same services for our industrial clients that we can for our office clients. It is a very succinct process. We have the ability to consolidate accounting and cash management services, which is especially critical now for industrial properties.
I like to think of our industrial practice group as a niche firm within a large company of unparalleled resources. We provide the same due care for our industrial assets that we do for our office assets and that’s reassuring in a changing world of increasing complexity and unpredictability.
Tags | Jones Lang LaSalle, Q&A
