Koll Co. Launches Joint Venture to Service Companies Moving to Mexico : Free trade: The new firm functions as a real estate broker and offers construction and property management and relocation assistance.
The Koll Co., which has been developing in Mexico for the past decade, said Monday that it has launched a real estate services firm with Cushman Realty Corp. to draw on the market for companies moving to Mexico.
The new company, Koll/Cushman Realty Mexico, functions as a real estate brokerage and also offers services such as construction and property management and relocation assistance. In addition to a headquarters in Mexico City, the company also opened offices in New York, Newport Beach, Los Angeles, Denver and Houston.
“There’s just a tremendous movement of industry into Mexico,” said James Watson, president of Koll International Commercial in Newport Beach. “This is the conduit to leading them to Mexico. We can build them a manufacturing plant, build houses or rent office space.”
The new company will complement Koll’s construction development in Mexico, which has accelerated since the market for commercial space turned sour in the United States. On the Baja Peninsula, Koll is developing two resorts, including golf courses, hotels, homes and a shopping center.
Among Koll’s Mexico City projects are plans to build a 500,000-square-foot office tower. It also is negotiating a joint venture for a mixed-use office, hotel and retail complex on 50 acres in Mexico City.
In the Mexico City area, industrial space vacancy is “negligible,” Watson said. Although 10% of existing office space is vacant, “there’s crying demand” for newer buildings, he said.
Don Koll, chairman of the Koll Co., and John C. Cushman III, president and chief executive of Los Angeles-based Cushman Realty, will serve as co-chairmen of the firm. Gabriel Robles, former vice president of investment with the resort development agency of the Mexican government, will serve as the firm’s director general, the Mexican equivalent to corporate president.
