MIAMI—Jones Lang LaSalle has made its move, repositioning its US-based Ports
Airport and Global Infrastructure desk from California to the East Coast. Rising levels of port-centric industrial real estate developments along the Atlantic seaboard prompted the move.

John Carver, who heads this industrial real estate group, has relocated from Los Angeles to South Florida. He plans to grow the practice and serve the firm’s clients throughout the Gulf and East Coast, Latin America and the Caribbean.

“Long Beach was a great place to build a practice because a lot of the demand drivers started there, but most of our activity growth migrated has to the east coast so it made a lot of business sense for us to move to the Atlantic,” Carver tells GlobeSt.com. “After looking at different locations, Miami ended up being the most natural place for us, in part because of the expansion of the Panama Canal and also the Latin trade underway.”

A recent JLL win in Panama also inspired the move. The brokerage was named development advisor for a $600 million trans-shipment terminal the Panama Maritime Authority has planned in Colon, Panama. The 92-acre terminal is scheduled to open when the Panama Canal’s $5.2 billion widening project wraps up in late 2014. Carver calls it JLL’s flagship project and says being headquartered on Brickell Avenue in Miami will give him better access to the project.

“On the East Coast, there’s lot of growth in not only the ports themselves but in the inland ports and the logistics zones and the cold storage facilities—and all the real state that is complementary to the growing ports here,” Carver says. “Florida has more ports than any state in the country, but my concentration extends all the way up to Norfolk.”