REAL ESTATE : Iliff, Thorn Brokerage Tries Image Shake-Up Amid Shakeout Fears

Sometimes you just can’t catch a break.

A few months ago Iliff, Thorn & Co. was heralding the arrival of a new manager at the commercial real estate broker’s Irvine office, someone who was going to shake up the brokerage.

Now he’s already gone, having taken a job with a company in Los Angeles. And Iliff, Thorn just announced that it’s closing its Orange office in favor of opening a new one in the Ontario/Riverside area.

What happened? A couple of things, suggest competitors. Iliff, Thorn is based in Phoenix and may not have understood the market as well as local brokerages. In fact, Thomas B. Gibson--who will manage the remaining local office, in Irvine--is from Denver. Gibson was brought in last year to pump up the Orange office.

When it opened here in the early 1980s, Iliff, Thorn decided to hire top brokers from other firms rather than train new people. To attract thosekind of people, one of the perks Iliff, Thorn offered was a classier image at its local offices, a “law firm look” that compared quite favorably to the seedy appearance of some brokers’ offices. Of course, it added quite a lot more to overhead too.

Apparently it didn’t work. Competitors say the firm is short-handed and having trouble hiring experienced people. In the Irvine office, for instance, Iliff, Thorn admits a third of the desks were empty and that only by consolidating the two Orange County offices was the Irvine branch brought up to its full complement of brokers.

The market for leasing and selling office and factory space in Orange County is a brisk and lucrative one, but it’s also extremely competitive. Some brokers say this competition can’t go on forever, and when it slows there will be brokerages who will pack it in and leave--or just pack it in.

Still, insists the 38-year-old Gibson, business at Iliff, Thorn is “outstanding.” And George S. Iliff, who started the firm and is now president, is also sanguine. He says: “Lots of brokerages are consolidating offices these days, even big ones.

“It’s not like we’re on our own in doing this.”