Leon

IRVINE, CA-Jones Lang LaSalle has expanded its capital markets capabilities with the hiring of industry veterans Joe Leon, Michelle Schierberl and Charlie McPhee as managing directors. Leon will focus on multifamily, Schierberl on retail and McPhee on industrial.

Leon, with more than 20 years of industry experience, will be based in Irvine and will partner with managing director David Young, under the helm of the firm’s multifamily leader managing director Jubeen Vaghefi, to bolster the firm’s West Coast multifamily investment sales capabilities. Schierberl, another 20-year veteran based in Orange County, will focus on the retail investment sales sector on the West Coast under the direction of managing director and head of retail investment sales practice Kris Cooper. McPhee, a 27-year industry veteran based in Los Angeles, will focus on the industrial investment sales sector on the West Coast under the direction of John Huguenard, managing director and head of national industrial investment sales.

Schierberl

Before joining Jones Lang LaSalle, Leon held senior positions including partner at Hendricks & Partners, SVP at CB Richard Ellis and director of corporate development at Step Ahead Investments. He is responsible for the sale of nearly 20,000 multifamily housing units, the total value of which exceeds $3 billion.

Schierberl, who formerly was an SVP in the institutional capital markets group at Grubb & Ellis, has brokered more than $1.5 billion in sales during her career, primarily in retail investments and commercial land projects. Cooper noted that Schierberl joins JLL at a time when retail investment sales are expected to rise. “Retail Capital Analytics has predicted that retail investment sales volume will reach between $30 and $40 billion in 2011, a number we haven’t seen since 2004,” Cooper said.”

McPhee

McPhee most recently was a senior vice president of development at Santa Monica-based shopping center REIT Macerich, where he was responsible for the oversight of all development and redevelopment activities in that firm’s Arizona portfolio. Before that, he was an EVP at Catellus Development Corp. and continued with the firm following its merger with ProLogis.

Huguenard pointed out that positive net absorption and declining vacancy rates all bode well for the continuing strength of the industrial sector. “The Inland Empire, in particular, has set the bar for strong fundamentals in the industrial sector after finishing 2010 with more than 10 million square feet of positive absorption in that region of the country alone," Heguenard said.