CB Richard Ellis Group Inc., the largest commercial real estate brokerage and property manager in the county, is changing its local leadership.
Senior Managing Director Sherry Bower, a 25-year CB Richard Ellis veteran and one of the most powerful women in local real estate, said this month she is retiring from the Los Angeles-based company.
Jeff Moore, senior managing director for CB’s Inland Empire region and a former Orange County broker, is taking Bower’s spot at the Newport Beach office.
The change takes effect in September.
It’s a return home for Moore, who started at the company’s Newport Beach office in 1987 as a broker handling shopping centers.
Bower “has been a mentor to me, she got me to transition from the brokerage business to a leadership role,” Moore said.
Bower said she wants to devote more time to her chief causes, wildlife preservation and environmental conservation. She plans to serve as a consultant for CB after stepping down.
She has held managing director roles in Anaheim, Riverside and Newport Beach and took on the senior managing director role in 2004.
Moved Up Ranks
Moore moved up the ranks locally, eventually taking over as managing director of the company’s Anaheim office.
In 2005, he was named to the top spot of the company’s Inland Empire region. His replacement in Anaheim, Todd Frye, since has moved to the company’s Los Angeles region.
Bower and Barry Katz, managing director of the company’s asset services group in OC, have co-run the Anaheim office for the past year after Frye’s departure.
CB plans to hire a new, full-time managing director for the Anaheim office in the near future, Moore said.
A replacement for Moore in the Inland Empire hasn’t been named yet. The company is looking at people inside and outside the company, he said.
The Newport Beach office, where Moore will be based, did about $1.8 billion in sales and lease transactions last year. CB’s Anaheim office did another $1 billion, according to Business Journal figures. Together the two offices make CB the largest brokerage business operating in the county.
The company’s property management group also is the county’s largest, with an estimated 59 million square feet of space managed here last year.
CB has about 450 people in its OC offices, including roughly 100 brokers.
Eyeing Retail
Moore said he’s looking to grow the company’s work brokering deals for shopping centers and other retail space as the county becomes more urban. He also wants to continue to take advantage of the strong office market, he said.
The “brokerage (industry) now is brokerage on steroids,” he said. “The days of just going out and making deals,those days are gone.”
The switch in top management is the latest local change at CB.
The company’s $2.2 billion buy of Dallas-based Trammell Crow Co. last December had some big local ramifications,it resulted in about a third of its local workers being shifted out of state.
Some 200 jobs in the Newport Beach office, part of CB’s shared services division,including accounting positions that handle the company’s individual and corporate clients,were moved to central and Midwest states, according to company officials.
A number of former Trammell Crow brokers also ended up moving to competing firms in the county after the deal.
