"We feel that Buckhead is the heart of the commercial realestate market as it relates to Atlanta and the Southeast," BrianLinnihan, vice president of sales and finance, tells GlobeSt.com."If you look at the companies we do business with, includingnumerous brokerages, they're all located here and it gives us anopportunity to be closer to the real estate professionals weinteract with every day."

A move to Buckhead has been in the works for the last 12 to 15months, says Linnihan, about the same time frame that the newexecutive team for the corporate office was taking shape with thehire of Hunter Barrier, Opus South president and CEO who overseesoperations at the Atlanta and five Florida offices. MartinMcFarland, VP of the Atlanta office and R. Duane Wood, VP ofindustrial development were on board with the firm before theremainder of the team was compiled over the last year. That teamconsists of Linnihan, Kevin Polston, VP of retail development, AnneMarie Solberg, VP general counsel, Howard Zoromsky, senior VP ofconstruction and most recently hired John Bell, VP of multifamilydevelopment, Stephanie Lipp, director of retail leasing and JeffRoyce, director of real estate.

"The commercial real estate business is going to be a lotdifferent over the next two to three years and hiring at theexecutive level was part of our strategy to make sure we have theright team in place," says Linnihan. "Opportunities might be scare,but we want to be able to capitalize on them once the market doesturn. We don't know that bottom has hit yet, but we have our eyeson a bunch of sites so our goal is to be there once the prices havedipped down to where there is enough distress to buy."