Hennessey Plays to Cassidy Turley’s Strengths

NEW YORK CITY-To Peter Hennessy, who joined Cassidy Turley earlier this month as president of the New York tri-state region, the mandate of his new job is pretty clear: to build on the company’s strengths while raising its game. Doing that, he believes, means an emphasis on teamwork.

“This organization has functioned and performed at very reasonable levels over the past few years,” Hennessy tells GlobeSt.com. But, he adds, the leadership at what was formerly Colliers ABR intends to create “a performance-based culture: an organization that’s focused on delivering the highest level of service to our client base, providing the proper environment for all of our people to develop and grow their skills, in a collaborative environment that basically takes the powers of each individual and multiplies them by the combination of the entire group.”

He looks at the main competitors for the New York region of Cassidy Turley, which formally launched its brand less than six months ago. “You have Jones Lang LaSalle, CB Richard Ellis, Cushman & Wakefield,” says Hennessy. “On sheer numbers, we can’t compete with them. So in order for us to succeed at a higher level, it’s going to require collaborating as a team, communicating clearly with one another and not in any way working at cross purposes.”

Hennessy’s other mandate is growing the tri-state business in terms of both its client base and talent pool, a responsibility in which he has considerable experience. Prior to the Staubach Co.’s merger with JLL, he was president of its New York region, leading the group to compounded annual revenue growth of 22% over a 10-year period.

“In most good real estate services firms, the tip of the spear comes from the sales side,” Hennessy says. Therefore, Cassidy Turley will focus on growing the brokerage ranks, “on the project leasing side, the tenant rep side and the capital markets side.”

Historically, what is now Cassidy Turley’s tri-state operation has had “a very good project leasing team,” says Hennessy. “We think there’s a greater need for a more in-depth, more robust tenant rep group. Having spent 12 years of my career building and growing a tenant-rep business, I’ve got some ideas on how that might work.” He adds, though, that growing this aspect of the business won’t be to the exclusion of other areas that the region’s leaders—which also include Mark Boisi, chairman of the tri-state region, and executive vice chairman Richard Bernstein—consider important.

“We think this is the best time” to build a business. “With the market at or close to the bottom, we think the opportunities clearly are there for us to grow those sectors of the business now, versus later,” Hennessy says.

As to when the market will pick itself up from the bottom, Hennessy thinks that won’t happen “deeply, across the board until we see job growth. And we fundamentally haven’t seen any,” although there have been “pockets here and there.” He adds, “I would hope that we would start to see that in the second or third quarter of next year, but there’s nothing that’s given us any indication, so it’s more hope than it is certainty.”

Taking on his new role at Cassidy Turley meant leaving JLL, where he’s been the New York-based international director of JLL Americas since the Staubach merger in June 2008. “This was probably the most difficult decision I’ve made in my business career: to leave an organization that I believe is one of the leaders in the industry and to leave a lot of friends behind,” says Hennessy. “But it was one I made because I believe the culture and the ownership structure of the organization here provided a unique opportunity to take a very talented group of individuals and raise the bar and take it to a different level. And that’s exciting to me.”