| Smart100 SmartCEO / 3.10 |
| Moving ahead Baltimore Business Journal / 8.14.09 |
| Corridor Reznick to merge with Hearn real estate firm Baltimore Business Journal / 7.17.09 |
Smart100
SmartCEO
March 2010
Former Baltimore Ravens’ coach Brian Billick kicked off the 2010 Smart100 event held in Baltimore. A Smart100 CEO spans many industries from IT and government contracting, to staffing and public relations. With programs in Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia, together, the Smart100 represent an elite group of CEOs - the thought leaders of today’s businesses.
Hearn Burkley recently joined the SmartCEO program, which recognizes 100 CEOs based on their leadership, strategic vision and character in running a business.
For more information on Smart100 click here.
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Moving ahead
Real estate exec positions firm for growth
Baltimore Business Journal
August 14, 2009
by Wesley DeBerry Staff
Timothy R. Hearn is a fourth-generation Baltimore real estate broker. His father and uncle still work in the industry.
But the CEO of Hearn Burkley long ago stepped out of his family’s shadow to make his own mark on the local real estate industry. He is trying hard these days to seize opportunities in a downturn that has forced many real estate firms to change the way they do business.
His latest endeavor is his firm’s merger with Corridor Reznick LLC, one of Baltimore’s largest real estate brokerage firms. Corridor President Robert Freedman and about 10 other employees joined Hearn’s brokerage and property management firm. The company manages more than 11 million square feet of commercial space.
The Baltimore Business Journal caught up with Tim Hearn to talk commercial real estate, his career and life.
BBJ: What has been the hardest part of combining personnel in the merger?
Hearn: It’s actually been very complementary. It’s almost like you took football players from two different teams and put them together on the same team. Once everyone is on the same team they start thinking the same way and working together.
BBJ: If you could own any piece of commercial real estate in the world, where would it be?
Hearn: Sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Ave. [The White House] It’s got tremendous demographics, it’s got great foot traffic. It gets a new tenant every four to eight years and it has an unlimited capital budget. Those are pretty good things for starters.
BBJ: What challenges does commercial real estate face with the economic downturn?
Hearn: Any property owner that made acquisitions from 2004 to 2008 or financed debt based on evaluations from that time is having to recognize a decline in their property value anywhere from 10 percent to 40 percent. The challenge is that the historic banking relationship has changed because the bank is on the sidelines because of its own capital needs.
BBJ: Are you seeing signs of recovery in the commercial real estate industry?
Hearn: I think that there is recovery in areas that have benefited from federal government stimulus money.
BBJ: What has been the lowest point of your career?
Hearn: The recession of the early 1990s. It was crippling and it caused a lot of heartbreak and financial agony for people who we did business with. Having barely survived the low point of the early 1990s, we feel like we have positioned ourselves well going into the next cycle.
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Corridor Reznick to merge with Hearn real estate firm
Deal combines two of region’s largest brokerages
Baltimore Business Journal
July 17, 2009
by Daniel J. Sernovitz Staff
Corridor Reznick LLC, one of Baltimore’s largest real estate brokerage firms, will merge later this summer with another firm founded by former KLNB Management LLC President Timothy R. Hearn.
Corridor President Robert Freedman and about 10 other employees will join Hearn’s brokerage and property management firm, Hearn Burkley, and will work out of that firm’s Joh Avenue offices in Southwest Baltimore. No money changed hands in the deal. Details, including what the firm will be named after the merger is completed, have not been worked out.
“The intention is really to put the two firms together and hope one and one make three,” said Freedman, who will be a principal in the new firm.
CEO Neil Katz will not be part of the new firm but will be an affiliated broker. Katz said he will play a role with the new firm, including servicing his Corridor clients, but wanted to focus less on brokerage and more on investment sales.
“We were not forced [by the recession], in any way, to make this decision,” Katz said. “But because of the economy it made us sit back and try to reflect on what we had and what we wanted going forward.”
The Reznick Group will sever it relationship with Corridor and remain a separate entity in its offices at 500 E. Pratt St.
Meanwhile, Corridor already has listed its 5,000-square-foot waterfront office space at 500 E. Pratt St. for sublease.
Freedman and Hearn said they began discussing the alliance about two months ago. The move helps beef up Hearn Burkley’s brokerage business, which was started as an outgrowth of the property management company Hearn formed after splitting from KLNB LLC in December 2007. Hearn Burkley has about 11.5 million square feet under management.
Corridor is ranked 11th among the Baltimore Business Journal’s List of largest commercial brokerages, with a portfolio of about 5.3 million square feet. The firm was founded as Corridor Commercial Real Estate Group Inc. in 1989 by Katz.
Joining Freedman at Hearn Burkley, the region’s fourth-largest property management firm, are: Corridor brokers Mordy Itzkowitz, Lindsay McClory and Brian Siegel. Chairman Michael Glick and principal C. James Silfee III will work as affiliated brokers for the firm and continue to represent their clients through the new entity. Other brokers have not yet decided whether to join the new firm.
The merger is the latest reshuffling of downtown Baltimore’s power brokers, and it’s the most significant since Cushman & Wakefield of New York severed its ties with MacKenzie Commercial Real Estate Services LLC of Lutherville in January 2007.
The brokerage and development community has been abuzz about changes at Corridor for the past several months, shocking many real estate experts because of Corridor’s history and depth of experience.
“When I first heard of it, I was a little surprised because they have a group of experienced, seasoned professionals, and they’ve been around for a fairly long time,” said Gerard J. Wit, a senior vice president of marketing for St. John Properties. He said the combination of Corridor’s brokerage team and Hearn Burkley’s property management businesses could be a good fit for both.
Among its notable deals, Corridor represented Raytheon Solipsys in its headquarters lease of 44,000 square feet in Fulton in October 2006.
Other deals included:
• Representing Peter Angelos’ real estate portfolio, including One Charles Center in downtown Baltimore;
• Representing Howard County in its lease of 106,000 square feet of temporary office space in Columbia;
• Representing Ulma Formworks in its lease of 107,000 square feet in Jessup.
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