The merger with Colliers Macauley Nicolls of Toronto, owner of 80 of Colliers' 247 offices in 53 countries, means a name change on Corrigan's side of the table and a restructuring of CMN's Dallas operation. For the past year, the Dallas/Fort Worth brokerage community has talked about a merger, but fingers were pointed elsewhere.

The Colliers-Corrigan marriage, in a near 50-50% arrangement, has been at the negotiating table for nine months, Mark Noble, the new managing director and principal of Colliers International's Dallas office, tells GlobeSt.com. "No money was transacted. We stuck the two entities together and divided the interest," he says. "It's a fairly simple merger that creates a very comprehensive group of service providers even though we let the Corrigan name go." Both companies gain new services with little, if any, overlap.

Corrigan's real estate remains with the brother-sister owners, David and Catherine Corrigan, heirs to a legacy that built the Hong Kong Hilton on a handshake deal with the landowner on the Far East streets. Under the agreement, David Corrigan has held onto a percentage share of the new firm.

All but one of the Colliers' team will move in June when the lease expires on a decade-long address at 9400 N. Central Expressway. They head to Corrigan's headquarters on the fourth floor of the Hampton Court Office Building at 4311 Oak Lawn Ave., where an extra 5,300 sf is now being built out.

Colliers' John Aldrich, who stepped aside as the Dallas office's president two years ago, has decided to strike out on his own after 25 years with the team, which sold half interest in 1997 to CMN and the balance in 2000. Aldrich tells GlobeSt.com that he's been mulling over the prospect of starting an independent operation for some time. "If ever there was a time to do it, this is the right time," he says. "The impetus was the merger. There's no sense in moving twice."

Aldrich, not ready to go into full detail, says he in the process of incorporating and setting up an office in Dallas. His last day at Colliers is May 14.

Former principals Pete Baldwin and Buzz Franklin will move with the rest of the team, doing business as before in an office-only arrangement. Under the new alignment, Allen Gump, Aldrich's replacement as head of Colliers in Dallas, is the new firm's executive vice president and director of the industrial division.

Gump, who first approached Noble with the prospect, says other companies around town asked for the chance to fly the Colliers' banner. "But the Corrigan deal always felt like the right deal to do," he says.

Aldrich says the Colliers-Corrigan match-up was attempted once before. Then, Gump knocked again on Corrigan's door when word came down from the top that it was time to grow the Dallas office. "Compared to the typical Colliers office, we were very small. The intent was to grow, but it just never happened," Gump says. "The merger is just the beginning of what we want to accomplish."

In a press release, Douglas Frye, president and CEO of Colliers CMN, said "Dallas/Fort Worth is a very important real estate market in the world economy and we believe the Corrigan leadership will create the environment for Colliers to flourish in this marketplace."

The new firm's senior leadership team will consist of Corrigan's Greg Pierce, David English, David Glasscock along with Colliers' Mary Stoner and Benton Rutledge. Gump's plan is to build an industrial division, eventually rolling in property management. The team's first addition is Cary Krier, who left the Bradford Cos. and started 10 days ago at Colliers.

The union also brings a change for the Burns & Noble Commercial Real Estate Co. in Tyler, which will add the Colliers name to signs and letterhead. The Tyler firm, founded in 1991, merged with Corrigan in 1998, but held fast to a mainstay name in an East Texas town with a high percentage of high net-worth individuals from the oil and gas heyday...until now.

Colliers' Dallas office has focused on corporate brokerage, but the change immediately adds property management, fueled by Corrigan's 4.2-million-sf portfolio, and investment sales possibly by year's end. Noble says he's already talked to a couple investment sales pros about leading the initiative.

"We are going to become the very best commercial real estate company in the metroplex," Noble vows of an office starting out with 40 in Dallas and 25 in Tyler. "The entire Colliers system is very dedicated to helping us to build the best company we can...to make the Dallas/Fort Worth office what it should be."