For the past 11 years, Van Amburgh has been president of Koll's corporate development division, building it from the ground up "into one of the company's most active and profitable divisions," says Don Koll, who will remain as board chairman for the development company and Koll's four affiliates. Executive vice president Tobin C. Grove will step into Van Amburgh's role as regional president for Dallas, with no other management changes in motion for the Koll hierarchy, according to an inside source.

Van Amburgh had been out of town yesterday when the announcement was made. In a prepared statement, he says the goal is to attain a 50-50 mix in the development portfolio between speculative and build-to-suits in viable markets where equity is available. Van Amburgh, who founded Koll's Dallas development office, has accrued more than 10 million sf and 14,000 acres in real estate development experience in his career. Van Amburgh also orchestrated the same kind of build-to-suit success in the mid-1980s for Southland Investment Properties, now Las Colinas Corp., spending nine years helping to structure the premier development.

Koll has speculative and corporate projects under way in most of its major growth markets. In addition to its homeport, Koll has offices in Phoenix, Denver, Detroit, Newport Beach, CA, San Diego and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area. Bryan McGowan, Koll's executive vice president and CFO, says the strategy is to leverage Van Amburgh's reputation in all seven markets, "even though we will continue to pursue market driven, properly underwritten, and properly executed speculative commercial development projects."

By balancing the portfolio, McGowan says it maximizes resources and enables senior management to have a more "hands-on involvement" with customers and equity partners. Koll has 49 commercial projects under development nationwide with more than nine million sf of space that are worth in excess of $1 billion.

Under Van Amburgh's leadership Koll's corporate division has become one of the largest corporate facility providers in the US, building more than seven million sf for clients such as Nortel, Nokia, Lacerte Software, Citigroup (the Associates), FedEx, Omnicom, CentrePort Venture and EDS. Two years ago, the firm had been named developer of the year in the Southwest by NAIOP.

Don Koll founded the firm in 1962 as a general construction business. Today, it's one of the nation's development leaders, with some 85 million sf of commercial, office and industrial under its belt in the US, Mexico and the Pacific Rim. In addition to his role with Koll Development, he also is a partner in Koll Center Travel and Koll Bren Realty Advisors, manager of about $2.5 billion in assets. He presently serves on the board of directors for CB Richard Ellis, the Irvine Co. and Fidelity National Title.