CB Richard Ellis' local leader declined to comment on the unrelated exits by Hunter Blanks, a senior vice president, and Frank Ricca, managing director of a Fort Worth office that was launched last August, with post-merger reins being shared by managing director Bob Scully. Blanks has become an executive vice president with Colliers International Inc.'s local team, including a leading role nationally for a specialty group, and Ricca has been named managing director for Jones Lang LaSalle.

Blanks and Ricca stressed it was "opportunity" that lured them and not any issues related to the CBRE-Trammell Crow Co. merger. Blanks, in fact, had put CBRE on notice in December 2006 that he intended to shop the market. Ricca says his chance came up unexpectedly after his JLL friends met with company leaders in Chicago who then came to him with a job. "I really was not looking," Ricca says.

"CB has been very supportive of me in this transition," Blanks says. His future calls for building a tenant rep team dedicated to the legal profession while Ricca is laying the groundwork for a JLL-flagged office in Fort Worth.

Blanks, who's spent 25 years mostly doing law firm work, tells GlobeSt.com that he will be helping to draft a company platform to build teams locally and nationally for the specialty brokerage field. "My intent is over a short of period of time as is possible to help organize people similar to me throughout the Colliers organization," he says.

Blanks is targeting cities like Dallas and Houston filled with AM 100 and AM 200 law firms, the equivalent of being a Fortune 100 or Fortune 500 corporation. The sweet spots to the leases are their terms and the caliber and size of space that they command.

Law firms have kept the Downtown leasing market particularly active in the past year in a traditional deal flow of newcomers, in-town relocations and spin-offs. "We've had a window of pretty strong activity in the past 36 months that I don't think will be duplicated over the next 36 months," Blanks says.

Blanks, who left CBRE after a decade, is being reunited with colleagues from the former Fults Cos., where he spent 16 years in his rise to principal and executive vice president. "Hunter is a premier specialist in legal and general office tenant representation in the region and we are extraordinarily excited for him to join the Colliers team," Mark Noble, managing director in Dallas, says in a press release. Blanks' track record spans more than 200 transactions exceeding more than five million sf, of which half were law firm leases.

Ricca's focus clearly is Fort Worth, Tarrant County and western portions of Dallas--a long-time niche for the well-known tenant rep. "He is perennially an industry 'heavy hitter.' More importantly, Frank is a very experienced businessman who is also an expert in tenant representation for major corporations and professional service firms," David Carroll, JLL's Dallas market director, says in its press release.

Ricca, with more than 22 years in the business, joined CBRE last year after spending his entire career at the Staubach Co. in Dallas. His track record exceeds 15 million sf locally and nationally.