And, Byrne tells GlobeSt.com, there are more headed to the fold. He is anticipating the membership effort will add upward of another 300 by year's end. There are 1,700 NTCAR members at last count, representing 70% to 80% of the total number of commercial real estate professionals in North Texas, according to Byrne.

The marketing effort has resulted in record crowds at NTCAR events. Meetings are now attracting some 400 professionals in comparison to 120 in prior years. And Friday's spring brokers tour, which usually draws about 80, had 142 showing up, forcing NTCAR to happily schedule a third bus. On a recent industrial properties tour, 128 professionals had jumped on board. "We are experiencing significant growth and there's a great enthusiasm," Byrne says.

The spring brokers tour had started off at Hall Office Park in Frisco, which is the fastest-growing city in the state and second in the nation. The office park is just a short driving distance from nearly three million sf of retail space in two regional malls, one that had delivered last year and another that's coming to market soon. In 20 years, it's predicted that 20 million sf of office space will carry Frisco addresses.

Frisco's unprecedented growth has taken it from a population of 6,500 in 1990 to 34,000 in the 2000 count. Today, the population stands at 40,000, with projections of 86,000 by 2005, according to Frisco officials. "Every place you see dirt, there is a project," Bill Hayes, president of the Frisco Chamber of Commerce, tells GlobeSt.com. Hayes isn't exaggerating as Friday's daylong tour had proven.

Tour buses made their way from Frisco into the opposite fringes of the Platinum Corridor and along Texas 190, where class-A office construction is a common sight. Many building owners are cutting deals via free-rent incentives, but it's definitely not a sign of deja vu of the disastrous late 1980s, say the brokers. In fact, most incentives are headed only to quality credit tenants and those who can provide letters of credit so as not to sting the owner or the broker.

Throughout the tour, brokers willing provided their buildings' stats to others on the buses, discussed some pending deals as wells as planned move-outs. Optimism reigned for the market, including pipeline talk about possible sales. One of the more interesting "for sale" signs is hanging on excess land of JCPenney's Legacy Park headquarters. Not the building, the brokers emphasize, just the excess land.