Cushman & Wakefield's Dieter

GlobeSt.com: What prompted you to return to the industry, after a brief stint at retirement?

Dieter: I've been in the industry 35 years now…I don't look like it, though. I ran CBRE's industrial platform throughout the Americas ever since the firm acquired Insignia, where I ran its industrial platform. When the down cycle occurred, my wife said if I don't get out of the corporate world I'm going to die. Then, my son said if you get out of the rat race and don't have the influence and voice and exposure, he said you're going to die. So I was looking at two bad options. I stepped away from the business for what I thought would be three to six months to gather my thoughts. With the down cycle, it seemed like a good time to do it. It's not like the world would pass me by. So I rented a home in Naples, FL for the winter, thinking this is what I would; take stock of the world and myself. But I was very honored and humbled that several different companies reached out to me. Most in the industry were betting money on how long I would stay retired. Along came Cushman & Wakefield, and particularly COO and EVP of the firm's North Central region Joe Harbert, who I worked with at Insignia for many years. He said: Dieter, there's no way you're retiring. Can we talk. What became clear to me was that I could not stay out of the industry—after only 30 days—but also this particularly position was especially intriguing because C&W is one of the most recognizable and distinguished brands in our industry. And building a brand and a name takes many years. So I saw the brand as being one that I've always respected. Couple that with them telling me that they want me to have a similar position as I had in my former company. It was an opportunity I couldn't pass. And especially when I knew that there's an opportunity to put new energy into the platform, new excitement, new ideas, new best practices, all of which I'm confident I can bring to this position. Here, of all places, I think I can make a difference. And that was very important to me.

GlobeSt.com: You mention best practices and new ideas. What is going to be your focus moving forward?

Dieter: If you ask anybody that knows me and has done business me throughout the years, they would likely say that one thing Dieter is all about is collaboration. That's what I like to call sharing, communicating and leveraging the greater enterprise, the greater platform. Not only the industrial platform but the company worldwide. When a client looks to hire a national global firm, like a C&W, their expectation is that the team they are hiring and working with will not only be the best and trusted team on a local and regional basis, but it will also be team that will access the total enterprise of the company. That's something I've always been very passionate about. Far too many times, national and global companies are that way only on paper. They can show dots on a map that they have offices all around the world and that's okay, but only if those offices communicate with one another and leverage their information. First and foremost, I will be driving a culture and a way of doing business that will hopefully become the model at the company that will bring tremendous collaboration throughout the entire enterprise.

GlobeSt.com: Could you talk about trends from both a landlord and tenant perspective?

Dieter: In this downturn, the tenant rep side of the business, what I like to call the occupier side, is of the utmost importance and important for us to have the right structure in place to capture the occupier side of the business. And because the landlord side of the business is very important, we have to find the users first. So there's a great emphasis that our team will be driving to make sure we have the right infrastructure in place on the occupier side of the business and have the right people, the right systems, the right leadership and connecting of the dots throughout the whole country. So that when a team out in the field someplace is looking for significant space someplace in the country, it is our job to ensure that that team has cutting edge resources and structure in place to be offering best-in-class services to that occupier. With that in mind, that tenant rep-side of the business certainly is off from previous years, but not dead. On the ownership side, with institutions, the REITs, the developers who own buildings, they're witnessing some challenges as well because there is tremendous downward pressure on rents. When one of C&W's tenant rep industrial brokers is representing a significant clients, let's say 500,000 square feet along the I-55 corridor in Chicago, for example, well that's a hot commodity when a broker is running with a significant occupier deal like that. And there are lots of different options that the broker and client have and that creates downward pressure on rents b/c of the obvious and that is that the landlords are competing for that business. So there's a two-pronged challenge on the ownership side: the volume of business or the lack thereof and then when business is found, the downward pressure on rent.

GlobeSt.com: Do you think the industrial market will start to pick up in 2010 or do you think it will be similar to 2000?

Dieter: We're hearing that demand has a bit of an upward trend. Not dramatically or significant, but I'm hearing that there is some positive activity. Our export market and export ports are starting to see some business pick up. Our import ports like LA Long Beach are more challenged than others, but the seaports like Savannah and Newark are actually reporting a bit of growth on the export side of the business. That all translates to general industrial activity that is starting to go the right way.

GlobeSt.com: What needs to happen in order for a full recovery in the industrial sector to take place?

Dieter: It's jobs and retail activity. Throughout the years, the primary absorber of big-box industrial space has been the retail users—from the IKEAs to the Home Depots to the Lowes to Best Buy—those big retail box users has really driven a large percentage of the absorption of the big distribution business. When the retail business really went soft, it affected the demand on the big box distribution space. So retail needs to bounce back for distribution to bounce back. When distribution bounces back then these buildings will start to get leased. The housing market….so many companies in this country are related to the housing market. Companies who make bathroom sinks rent industrial warehouses to store their product, companies who make kitchen cabinets will need warehouse space to distribute their product. The same thing with a car…all the components, there are companies who make those and then warehouse and distribute them. So when the auto and housing markets become more healthy and when jobs start to get recreated and when the retail business gets healthy again, you will then see a significant improvement on the industrial side of the market.