South Florida Commercial Real Estate
January brought about the grand opening of our office in Ft. Lauderdale servicing the Palm Beach, Broward and Miami Dade Counties. While this is a new venture for Ciminelli, the personnel that have formed the base of operations have been working in the South Florida commercial real estate world for quite some time. This office is headed by Mara Porras and Marty Busekrus, which combined have nearly 50 years of commercial real estate experience. In terms of deal volume, they have managed over 2M square feet with transactional volumes in excess of $800M.
The decision to open a South Florida commercial real estate office has been a long time in the making. Marty Busekrus and Tom McGeachy, principal for our Tampa office, have developed a trusted and working relationship for over 15 years. Prior to opening the South Florida office, Marty spent 15 years in the capital markets arena working for national and international firms including NAI, CBRE, and most recently HFF. The extensive background in capital markets transactions (investment sales, equity/debt placement) is the backbone of the Ft. Lauderdale Ciminelli office. The third-party leasing and management platform takes a capital markets approach, and value for owners is driven by this constant focus on proactive leasing activities, as well as extremely efficient and professional asset/property management functions.
South Florida Property Management
The South Florida office opened its doors with roughly 500,000 square feet of assets under management thanks to the acquisition of Mara Porras’s company, Commercial Property Management Group (CPMG). Mara and her property management/ accounting staff have had a presence in South Florida for many years and their reputation for efficiency and attention to third-party clients is unparalleled. The balance of the management team is rounded out by Elias Porras, Margaret Stevens, and Linda Galla in addition to their maintenance/building technicians.
The proactive leasing assignments are spearheaded by Valerie Mason who also has a capital markets mindset and background. The ability to understand what truly drives value for a building allows her and her team to structure leases accordingly. The proactive approach they take is different for each property depending on that building’s specific needs and positioning within the market. In short, they don’t put up a sign and wait for the phone to ring. This has proven true through their newly expanded portfolio of over 95,000 additional square feet in leasing and management services for Northpoint Corporate Center.
Ciminelli’s focus is on pro-active leasing and asset/property management of office, industrial, and retail buildings for all of our clients no matter the location. We are proud to now offer the same quality of service to the South Florida market.
To get a better understanding of how we can help drive value for your assets in South Florida, please call (954) 900-5436.
Contributed from our Fort Lauderdale, Florida office.