ROSEMONT, IL-Cushman & Wakefield of Illinois Inc. has hired two new brokers as a new industrial brokerage team for the region. Joe Strening, associate, comes from Lee & Associates in Newport Beach, CA and Tim Gallagher, director, closed up his own Gallagher Realty firm.

The new team will work for industry icon Jim Dieter, EVP and head of C&W’s US industrial practice. Gallagher, who has had 30 years in the business with such firms as First Industrial Realty Trust, said he’s intrigued by Dieter’s team concept. “I’ve personally been a believer of working as an individual, that you eat what you kill as a broker,” Gallagher tells GlobeSt.com. “But it really is one big team here, there’s a lot of referral business back and forth. And, in this day, it’s almost impossible to survive as an individual, you have to have a group that can find business as well as take care of the customer.”

Strening, 29, is from the Chicago area. “I thought after five years out West that it was time to come home to family and friends,” he tells GlobeSt.com. Gallagher says there will likely be one more hire, a middle-level person such as a vice president, for the team.

He says he’s encouraged by activity in the market, and he believes manufacturing isn’t dead in Chicagoland. “A fair amount of manufacturing is starting to come back to the area. The foreign firms either can’t make it quickly enough for orders, or can’t make the product to the specifications required,” he says. “We’re starting to see some good size deals going on. It’s a slow, steady thing, and we’re thinking the glass is at least half-full right now.”