Stirek is getting his biggest assignment to date from Trammell Crow--one of the biggest the company has to offer--and if he performs like he has in the past for the Dallas-based commercial real estate services company, everybody is going to end up better off.

Stirek, who grew up in Lake Oswego and recently built a house there a few blocks from his parents, has been named chief operating officer of the publicly traded company's new Global Services Group. The Group, created in the company's recently angounced company-wide reorganization of its business, encompasses approximately 7,000 employees serving corporate and institutional customers with management, brokerage and transaction services.

Prior to the reorganization, Stirek was on the other side of the real estate fence as national director of Trammell Crow's development and investment services division. He did the job while based here in the company's Portland office, the very office that launched his career as a Trammell Crow executive and earned him the national director post.

The year was 1991, and Stirek, who had been with the company since 1986, was sent down from the Seattle office to right a ship that had been victim to a retirement and a mutiny in a matter of four weeks. In the spring of 1991, the company's top local dealmaker and partner retired. Adding insult to injury, his replacement defected three weeks later and lured half the staff to join him in a rival firm. To boot, an ex-Japanese client of the Portland office filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the company to recoup a disputed real estate commission.

Stirek, a Harvard Business School grad in his early 30s, settled the lawsuit without giving away any of the company's cash, and quickly began filling gaps in his staff and vacancies in a major client's local business park. To boot, amidst a cold lending climate, Stirek orchestrated the redevelopment of a vacant warehouse on Swan Island with very little upfront cash.

A few years later, in the space of six months, Stirek produced four big office and industrial development deals, all financed by pension fund manager Kennedy Associates Real Estate Counsel, the client with the business park Sterik helped shore up back in 1991. The deals included a new headquarters for Norm Thompson Outfitters Inc. in Hillsboro, a major expansion at Commerce Park-Tualatin, a new industrial park in Clackamas and the first of several planned buildings at the airport.

In 1997, after having positioned the company to capitalize on the region's attraction to the semiconductor industry, Stirek was tapped for the national director job. Stirek did the job--presumably quite well, based on the new assignment..

Stirek tells GlobeSt.com there are very few things that would take him from Portland, and being COO of a major public company is one of them. "It's a great opportunity for me that comes after really keeping my head down," Stirek says "I think I will be a better business person because of it; it's a rounding out of my skill sets."

Stirek left for Dallas earlier this week, but will be back and forth until this summer when his kids are out of school and the real move can take place. After that, his trips to Portland will become less frequent--to see his folks and check up on the house he's not selling--until he finds a way to get back to the region permanently. "Portland's not much of a headquarters town," says Stirek, joking, "Maybe I can be COO of Nike next."