SAN DIEGO—Kearny Real Estate has beefed up its San Diego staff and is looking for opportunistic and value-add properties to acquire Downtown and in Mission Valley as well as to improve upon its third-party management assets, SVP Jeffrey Givens tells GlobeSt.com. The firm recently hired Sonia Miró as director of property management in the San Diego office to oversee its growing local portfolio.

Miró brings more than three decades of experience in the management of commercial office and industrial properties. During her career, she has been responsible for the leasing oversight and financial performance of approximately 20 million square feet of commercial real estate assets in the San Diego area including Emerald Plaza, which was acquired by Kearny in December 2016. Miró will lead the property-management efforts for Kearny's San Diego assets as well as its additional third-party property management assignments. Prior to joining Kearny, Miró was regional director, West Coast property management, for BioMed Realty.

In addition, John DeSantis and Teresa Souris have joined the firm's San Diego team. DeSantis will be responsible for analytical and financial modeling support for current assets and future acquisitions. Additionally, he will support asset and property management efforts at Emerald Plaza, Otay Crossings and Kearny's other third-party management assignments. He joins Kearny from Phase 3 Real Estate Partners.

Souris joins Kearny as property administrator to focus on the firm's Emerald Plaza and Mission Center projects. Previously, she held a similar role for Lincoln Property Co.

We spoke with Givens about the new hires and his firm's strategy moving forward.

GlobeSt.com: What is the reason for all the new hires in this market?

Givens: We see San Diego as an opportunity. For more than 15 years, we have had a presence in San Diego. We had acquired 530 B and repositioned and sold it at the beginning of 2016, and prior to that we had acquired Mission Center, a three-building office complex in Mission Valley, and are in the process of repositioning that asset.

Our largest transaction in this market is acquiring Emerald Plaza in December 2016. With that activity, we wanted to add to our staff and bring on some higher-level talents as we focus on those assets, both from a management standpoint—which is obviously where Sonia comes into play—as well as the financial analysis, which straddles a lot of the different areas of management (asset or property), where John obviously fits. Teresa was our property coordinator at 530B before we sold it to Bosa Group, and we brought her over here to spearhead that effort at Emerald Plaza.

In addition to these assets, we own and operate via our real estate platform, and we also do property management with groups like Morgan Stanley Prime, where we manage some of its assets in Otay and mid-San Diego.

GlobeSt.com: What is your firm's strategy going forward in the San Diego market?

Givens: To dovetail on our hires and add capacity for existing assets, which is secondary to but just as important as our desire to acquire more properties. At this point in the cycle, we are still looking for opportunistic, value-add opportunities we can find in the county, and at this stage, obviously, we're cognizant of where we are at in the real estate cycle. But we still think there are opportunities going forward for well-located assets that maybe have been underutilized or are underperforming, for taking properties that fit that general category and repositioning those and turning them around and making them successful going forward. Given the fact that we've had great success in Downtown San Diego and Mission Valley, we're bullish on those markets and are looking at opportunities as they come up in specific submarkets.

GlobeSt.com: In what other Western markets do you see the potential for growth?

Givens: We are headquartered in Los Angeles—we have 15 people or so up there at this point—and we have a staff of six in San Diego. We also own and operate assets in Orange County; we have the Press—the former L.A. Times printing building in Costa Mesa—and we also have a property in Newport Corporate Plaza, which is a number of office buildings. And we continue to go after the same kinds of projects that I just discussed that are attractive to us here in San Diego County. We also go after those in the Orange County, L.A. and Inland Empire markets as well. We're primarily focused on Southern California.

Instant Insights /

Kearny is Bullish on Downtown, Mission Valley

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