Global corporate real estate advisory firm Mohr Partners has added to its real estate team in Arizona, with a new statewide market leader and two senior-level executives in Phoenix, as part of a national expansion that mirrors the locations of professional football franchises.
The Dallas-based firm hired Wally Hale, a veteran of Avison Young, JLL and Vestian Global Workplace Services, who will be based in Phoenix as managing partner and market leader for Arizona. Hale is joined by Todd Linde, who had worked at Vestian, Citywide Commercial and Cresa, as well as former Colliers and Vestian veteran Kyle York, as senior executives. The Phoenix team includes Emily Carden, a senior associate who has worked for Mohr Partners for less than a year.
The addition of the three-member team is the latest move across the U.S. as the firm looks to double its client-facing executive team in the next three to five years. Chairman and CEO Robert "Bob" Shibuya is overseeing the effort he calls "Project Gridiron" to expand the firm's presence to all 30 cities hosting National Football League teams.
"We are in 20 or so of these cities, but we have more to go," Shibuya told CoStar News in an interview.
With about 200 multimarket corporate service clients throughout the United States, Shibuya said Mohr Partners is following client demand into these cities, seeking to put "boots on the ground" rather than rely on partnerships with outside firms. Mohr Partners has roughly 100 client-facing executives throughout the United States.
In the next three to five years, Shibuya said he wants to "organically" double the team by adding one or a couple of players at a time. Admittedly, he said, it's a big undertaking.
It has the longtime real estate executive mapping out markets and thinking about the real estate sector that needs to be tackled first by an in-market broker in each city. For Las Vegas, a city that's home to the Raiders, Shibuya is seeking to add a senior industrial tenant representation broker. In Detroit, where the NFL's Lions play, Mohr Partners recently named Mike Sabatini as managing partner and Detroit market leader. Other cities, including San Diego, Tampa and Jacksonville, are also at the top of Shibuya's list.
The timing of Project Gridiron comes as Shibuya said he's noticed that Mohr Partners has found that "sweet spot" when it comes to real estate service offerings. It's a national firm that only represents tenants, eliminating any potential conflicts that might arise when a brokerage represents both sides of a deal. At the same time, Mohr Partners is still a big enough shop to have a national and global reach, he said.
"It all starts with culture," he added. "People really want to have a seat at the table and that's something we give them. They have direct access to the CEO and that's something they don't have at the other firms."
This isn't Shibuya's first time recruiting for a national real estate firm, with Trammell Crow Co. having tasked him with a similar endeavor decades ago when he led the firm's corporate advisory services and capital markets team from 2003 to 2007. During that time, he still remembers hiring about 200 executives — a feat he's ready to tackle once again.
He's starting with the business network he's built over his 40-year career in real estate. For example, Shibuya previously worked with Hale, Mohr Partners' newly hired Arizona leader, at Trammell Crow Co. To date, Shibuya said there are a handful of brokers who are part of this "boomerang club" of executives with whom he's previously worked in some capacity.
"I'm putting the band back together and it's working," Shibuya added.