Transwestern Commercial Shifts Leaders, Headquarters

HOUSTON-Transwestern Commercial Services is coming home, effective Sept. 1. The Texas-grown real estate firm isn’t shutting down its Chicago port, but is shifting the epicenter to where it got its start 25 years ago.

The headquarters return to Houston brings new titles to its seasoned corps of vets. Taking over as CEO is Larry Heard, now the Southwest regional president. After 16 months as CEO for Transwestern Commercial Services, Steven Bandolik slides into the COO’s role for Transwestern Investment Co., a six-year-old division that started in Chicago and will stay there. Mark Doran in Dallas goes from CFO to COO. Chicago’s chief administrative officer Chuck Hagen assumes extra duties as CFO while Chip Clarke, Denver’s executive vice president, is named president of a restructured Southwest division that will include his Mountain Region stomping grounds. Clarke is the only one in the group who will be changing cities as he heads to Houston to be with the rest of the TCS executive gang.

“We anticipate no scale-backs in space or employees,” Heard stresses to GlobeSt.com. He says this year’s personnel changes did not lower the head count, which stands at 1,400 employees in 23 US cities. The Wacker Drive office in Chicago will be not shrinking nor will space be tossed onto the sublease market due to the changes, according to Heard. “Chicago will remain a key city as will Dallas, San Francisco, Washington, DC, New York and Atlanta,” he adds.

Instead, the changes, then and now, have positioned Transwestern “for significant growth for all cities, in a thoughtful way.” The plan in hand has been gamed out for the next three years, but the headquarters city move and the shifting titles are all the news available for the short term.

Houston, with a staff of 240, is the largest office in the operation, partly because it held onto the finance and IT departments when Transwestern headed north. Even chairman Robert Duncan remained in Houston. And those elements helped sway the decision to go home. “It really fits our leadership team given our roots and heritage in Houston,” Heard adds.