Realty firm seeks sales in ‘Class B' — for ‘billion'
Realty firm seeks sales in 'Class B' for 'billion'

By Richard Mize

Published: February 1, 2008

With $1 billion in annual sales within sight, owners are reorganizing CB Richard Ellis-Oklahoma, the state's largest commercial real estate firm, and are looking nationally for a managing director to help get them there, two main principals said.

Tom O'Brien, president, who works from Tulsa, said that contrary to rumors, he plans to go nowhere — except back to business development and industrial property brokerage, his specialties.

William Forrest, first vice president and an apartment investment specialist who works from Oklahoma City, said bringing on a managing director and making organizational changes will help CB Richard Ellis-Oklahoma rise to its growing sales numbers.

The firm, which has 175 people in Oklahoma City and Tulsa — 47 of them brokers, who are independent contractors — aims to have a managing director in place by June 1. The firm has 48 staff and 18 brokers in Oklahoma City with the rest in Tulsa.

CB Richard Ellis-Oklahoma brought on Accelerate Learning & Development Inc., a California-based business development specialist, to advise it through 2008 and help it reorganize — and "morph.”

Accelerate is big on "transforming” and "morphing,” Forrest said.

Accelerate explains on its Web page: "We approach each challenge by morphing our company, our products, and our services, to create the exact solution you need. We do this by utilizing a core of expertise and configurable components to rapidly prototype solutions for the problems you face.”

CB Richard Ellis-Oklahoma faces good problems, O'Brien said, the kind that come with success. CB Richard Ellis-Oklahoma saw almost $720 million in brokerage sales in 2007, which represented a five-year increase of almost 300 percent, O'Brien said.

The firm's Oklahoma City and Tulsa offices handled a combined 800 transactions last year, counting property purchase transactions and leasing, he said. CB Richard Ellis-Oklahoma formed in late 1999 with the merger of Tulsa Properties Inc. and the CB Richard Ellis office in Oklahoma City.

With growth has come "some growth pains,” O'Brien said.

O'Brien said the need to reorganize and bring in a manager was only partly a result of last year's global merger of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.'s $1.8 billion merger with Trammell Crow Co.

In Oklahoma, the merger resulted in Trammell Crow's property management division being shifted to CB Richard Ellis-Oklahoma — 16.5 million square feet of space, 71 properties and 31 employees.

Transaction growth was occurring before the merger, however, O'Brien said. The firm's 2007 stats "are significant for Oklahoma,” he said.

The 800 transactions represented 15.4 million square feet of built space, 1,030 acres of land, plus about 4,300 apartment units, O'Brien said.

"We want to continue to provide the level of service we've had in the past and enhance that a little bit, keep things fun around here, enhance our training and keep an entrepreneurial spirit,” he said. "We don't want to become a corporate company. We're still owned by a bunch of Oklahomans.”

An executive committee from the firm's 13 principals makes strategic decisions, O'Brien said, but "we manage by hallway meetings.”

Forrest said bringing in someone to run the firm will allow him, O'Brien and the other principals to concentrate on their brokerage or management specialties.

Comments