GlobeSt.com EXCLUSIVE: TIG Kicks Off Expansion Plan With SVP Hire

Not only did TIG get Christy Means from Kennedy Wilson, but it got the balance of the Beverly Hills, CA-based Cohen Asset Management Inc.'s industrial portfolio in the region with her move. Means, handed a senior vice president's nameplate, has been charged with boosting TIG's portfolio 25% to 35% in the next two years and setting the stage to build her own team within a year, TIG principal John Walsh tells GlobeSt.com.

Means has been regional property manager in Dallas/Fort Worth for the Beverly Hills-headquartered Kennedy Wilson since September 2003. "Christy was a valued, dedicated and well-respected member of Kennedy Wilson DFW," Stan Ford, head of the firm's property management team in Texas, says. "We wish her success with her new endeavor at TIG." Longtime employee Donna Boyd is Kennedy Wilson's new regional property manager.

"It was a very difficult decision to leave Kennedy Wilson," says Means, "but the opportunity was great." The eight-year professional put in 3.5 years at Kennedy Wilson.

Means, who started Monday, takes TIG's property management team to an even dozen, with three each in Memphis and Addison and the balance at the headquarters office in Carrollton. Led by TIG founding partner Ann Anderson and DeLaine Smolik, the group oversees seven million sf of industrial space in Memphis and slightly more than eight million sf in Dallas/Fort Worth, of which 2.5 million sf is suburban office product. Walsh says Means will focus on beefing up the suburban office portfolio.

Walsh says a number of TIG's customers are looking to buy suburban office product in Dallas/Fort Worth. And others, like the Wilton, CT-based Common Fund Realty, are eyeing development prospects. "I don't know of any customer we have, if it fits their investment strategy, wouldn't acquire the right property right now," Walsh says. "Right now, we're trying to put ourselves in a position so when they do acquire properties that we're in a position to be one of the participants in the change."

Meanwhile, Common Fund Realty and TIG are gearing up to break ground in April on the 100,000-sf first phase to Ranch Trail Business Center, a 25-acre development now before Irving's zoning board. Walsh says the site at the corner of LBJ Freeway and Olympus Drive will be built out with 350,000 sf of dock-high industrial space for the 7,500-sf to 15,000-sf crowd and the space folded into the property management portfolio.