By Joshua Burd
Cresa, the largest tenant-only commercial real estate brokerage, has expanded its team in New Jersey with five new hires over the past year and plans to continue hiring in the months ahead.
The firm recently announced the five new additions in its Rutherford office:
- Lisa Murray, who was hired as business manager to run day-to-day operations
- Tom Kim, an Army veteran who now serves as a Cresa vice president and East Bergen County business development specialist
- Glenn DiGiacomo, a 20-year commercial real estate industry veteran, as vice president
- The project management team of Len and Justin Eagle to assist clients in budgeting and construction projects.
“The additions bolster the largest tenant rep-only firm as they continue to increase deal flow and gain market share in a very competitive New Jersey corporate real estate market,” Cresa said in its announcement, later adding: “The New Jersey office is continuing its search for top talent and plans to hire two more experienced brokers in the near future.”
The brokerage firm said it has “more than exceeded growth expectations” over the past year and is on pace for a strong 2018, led by managing principals Dennis Gralla and James Scancarella and Principal Jonathan Marks. Cresa put the new management team in place in New Jersey in early 2017, following the departure of two principals and an overall team of seven to Avison Young.
Gralla, Scancarella and Marks now oversee an office that serves 21 primary submarkets between New York City and Princeton, providing corporate real estate services to industries such as technology, legal, pharmaceutical, biotech and insurance. Over the past year, the team says it has closed 18 deals exceeding 710,000 square feet with a transactional value of $89 million.
Cresa did not identify the names or the addresses of its clients, but listed deals including:
- A corporate headquarters lease for 90,050 square feet, in what it described as the largest 2017 office deal in Bergen County
- A mixed-used, 101,967-square-foot educational training facility in Essex County
- Four industrial deals exceeding 440,000 square feet
- Multiple medical deals for Cresa’s growing medical practice group, including two 9,000-square-foot ambulatory surgery centers, four multispecialty practice leases totaling 25,304 square feet, with another 66,000 square feet of medical space for medical groups and hospital systems
“The brokerage additions of Tom and Glenn will be a great addition to an already successful market expansion,” the firm said in its announcement. “Cresa New Jersey is well positioned for the future and aggressively expanding its footprint in Bergen County, on the Hudson County waterfront and the industrial Turnpike corridor.”
