The Rockefeller Group has lured a major executive away from the largest owner of industrial properties in the United States.

Rockefeller has hired Mark Shearer as senior vice president and regional development officer in charge of the company's New Jersey and Pennsylvania industrial real estate, the company announced in a press release. Shearer had previously served in a similar role for Prologis, overseeing the company's New York and New Jersey portfolio. Before then, he was in charge of the Mid-Atlantic region for Prologis.

Shearer will be based in Rockefeller's Morristown, New Jersey, office, overseeing projects in Edison, Florham Park, Piscataway and Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley. Among the most high-profile projects under Shearer's purview will be the Rockefeller Group Logistics Center in Piscataway, which will contain 2.2M SF of distribution centers at full build-out. Pre-leasing kicked off with Best Buy signing on for a 725K SF facility in January.

The Piscataway center is a mix of speculative and build-to-suit development on a more ambitious scale than Rockefeller has undertaken before, which Regional Director Heath Abramsohn said fits with the company's aggressive outlook.

“We’re taking more risk and going into areas we hadn’t necessarily focused on," Abramsohn said at Bisnow's State of New Jersey Industrial event in August. "We’re going to more infill and urban locations, as well as west into the Lehigh Valley, where we’ve been for some time.”

Rockefeller added office furniture retailer Humanscale to the Piscataway project on a 155K SF lease in September. In early October, Rockefeller broke ground on a 1.3M SF distribution center in the Lehigh Valley's Allen Township as part of a joint venture with PCCP, which is also a partner at Rockefeller Group Logistics Center.

In April, Rockefeller elevated Daniel Moore to the position of president and CEO. Outside of industrial real estate, the company has extensive holdings in office on both coasts, most notably at 1271 Sixth Ave. in Manhattan.