We also chatted with Jerry Keeney (with sons Liam, 10, and Sean, 8, at the Miramar Air Show), who heads Avison Young's newly opened San Diego office as a principal, joining the firmfrom Cassidy Turley.He's been in the CRE biz for 25 years--15 of those years in San Diego, where he started his career at CBRE. (He must remember a time when nobody in the office told the boss how ugly his mullet was.) The new office is AY's first here and sixth in SoCal. Jerry says San Diego's an intelligent city with top-producing universities, lots of biotech companies, and Big Pharma--thewhole "scientific research group of companies that lease a lot of spaceand need help" with real estate. (The defense industry is pretty big here, too, he notes.) The office handles office/industrial leasing and investment/user sales, but will look to expand into retail andmultifamily as it grows.
AY has opened shop at 4225 Executive Square in La Jolla. Jerry also has worked in Hong Kong with then-named Jones Lang Wootton and John Buck Co, doingtenant rep and development primarily on behalf of American multinational companies. He also worked with landowners planning high-rise office and mixed-use projects throughout Asia. He credits theirsuccess to understanding how American companies wanted to lease space and trying to "bring some of the more tenant-friendly terms to Asia, which was typically a landlord market." (Luckily, most of the leases and other docs were in English.) He's also a dad of four who coaches both of his boys' baseball teams.
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