Thursday, June 18, 2015

Veteran brokers lead Pa. expansion for California real estate firm



Three veteran commercial real estate brokers are leading the charge to make California-based Lee & Associates a major player in Pennsylvania.

The nation's largest broker-owned commercial real estate firm has opened its first commonwealth office in Lower Allen Township.


Led by former brokers and agents from NAI CIR and Jones Lang LaSalle, including Brian Knowles, Jack Shepley and John Van Buskirk, Lee & Associates of Eastern Pennsylvania LLC is a full-service firm that will cover the Philadelphia region, which includes eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and the state of Delaware.

The three men have more than 75 years of collective commercial real estate experience in the Philadelphia and Harrisburg submarkets. Shepley and Van Buskirk are the two founding partners of the Industrial Properties Group at NAI CIR.

Building on their well-established connections, the industrial market will be an early focus for Lee & Associates of Eastern Pennsylvania.

"Eastern Pennsylvania has always been an important link with the development of our overall strategy in national expansion, and this office provides us with another key foothold in the East," CEO Jeffrey Rinkov said of the company's growth, which has been in high gear since 2011.

During the last three years, Lee & Associates has added offices in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas.

The company has about 800 brokers nationwide.

The Cumberland County office is at 1104 Fernwood Ave., near the Capital City Mall.

With that office up and running, the managing partners said the plan is to continue adding staff — it will be up to eight by the end of the month — and open a second office in suburban Philadelphia.

The latter move could be made by the end of the year, Van Buskirk said.

"Our goal is to form a full-service commercial real estate firm that competes as a tier 1 player in eastern Pennsylvania across all asset classes," Knowles said.

For more on this story, read this week's print edition.

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