ORLANDO-The six-year commercial real estate professional will head the Tampa firm's office services division, handling leans and tenant representation. He is a former senior leasing rep at Duke Realty Corp. of Indianapolis, IN.

ATLANTA-Continuing to fill its portfolio with shopping centers in the Southeast, the Oak Brook, IL-based Retail REIT adds its first Alabama center. It pays $69 per sf for the 222,019-sf mall near the University of Alabama, which is 97% leased.

ORLANDO-In the last 14 months, Jim Michalak, senior director in the brokerage's Tampa office, has closed 13 shopping center deals totaling 1.66 million sf valued at $128.4 million and averaging $9.88 million per deal. Cap rates are down and power centers are back in demand, Michalak says.

ORLANDO-In an industry where some of the players are barely hanging on, the locally based, five-year-old hotel investment/development arm of the $5.3 billion CNL Financial Group Inc. of Orlando is starting four or five new development projects a year at average hard costs of $80,000 to $90,000 per unit and average acquisition prices of $33 million per property.