Colorado Real Estate Journal - December 16, 2015
Jim McGrath only represents tenants, but he doesn’t consider himself to be a tenant rep broker. He’s a tenant advocate. “I think what makes our practice different is that we are intimately involved in every step of the process, from needs analysis to market analysis, due diligence and through lease or purchase contract negotiations. We advocate for our client's best interests and provide a level of consulting that makes a significant difference in the final outcome,” said McGrath, executive managing director at Newmark Grubb Knight Frank. “Tenants now are looking at the way space impacts their business – their people, their culture, their clients, how they can utilize real estate to help their business really flourish and profit. I like the aspect of being a consultant to help them figure that out and then be able to help them negotiate the best transaction.” McGrath and partner Tom Pappas, both veterans of Denver’s commercial real estate market, recently moved their team to NGKF because they saw opportunity there amidst the changing commercial real estate landscape. “The commercial real estate industry has gone through a tremendous consolidation in the last five years, and companies are getting bigger. They’re offering more and more services. Newmark wanted to grow their tenant representation platform, and I thought it was an opportunity for me to potentially offer more services to our clients, to collaborate more with other professionals in our office and really help everybody grow their business.” Among McGrath’s list of national and international companies are Kutak Rock, National CineMedia, Rio Tinto and Red Robin. It’s a diverse mix of industries – something McGrath has appreciated since starting his professional career as an auditor at PwC after college. “We get to work with a lot of different kinds of companies. I enjoy working with an industry that I may not have that much knowledge about, and we can learn about that pretty quickly.” While his accounting degree from the University of Delaware and his work as an auditor have paid dividends in commercial real estate, a career as a controller or chief financial officer didn’t resonate with McGrath. A friend extolled the merits of commercial real estate, which led McGrath to a job with Cushman & Wakefield in his hometown of Philadelphia. He did landlord representation and land sales, and found his niche in representing tenants. He was working at Studley when he and his wife, Susie, chose to move to Colorado. “It was just one of those moves that it felt like I had to make. There’s an incredible combination of lifestyle, people – and by people, I mean just attitudes of people, and openness – and there are all these recreational opportunities. People seem to combine all that. They work hard and they play hard, and that’s always been attractive to me.” Since there was no Studley office in Denver at that time, he joined the “de-facto” affiliate in Denver, Liberty Partners, later moving to The Staubach Co. and, eventually, Savills Studley. He and his team completed a 200,000-square-foot build-to-suit for CSG Systems in Omaha – a project he said the company initially didn’t think it could afford – and, more recently, a 66,000-sf build-to-suit, vs. a lease renewal, for Mikron in Dove Valley Business Park in Centennial. “It was obvious to me when I walked into their building they needed to do something. So to help them go through the process, convince their board, provide all the due diligence that enabled them to make that decision and then to go into their facility when it was done and see how happy and proud they are, and how that’s dramatically affected them – those are really rewarding assignments,” McGrath said. Teambuilding is a huge part of the business, both externally and internally. “It’s never been about me. It’s been about the team and having people who have multiple skill sets to support what we’re trying to do,” he said. Besides the incredibly competitive nature of the business, McGrath’s biggest challenge is convincing clients to take time to consider real estate strategies long before decisions have to be made. “Most tenants underestimate the time it takes to do this. When you have time, time is your ally. You can put your foot on the gas and you can take your foot off the gas. You’re in complete control. When you run out of time, time is now your enemy and you don’t have that same luxury. We really like to advocate for our clients to be in a position of strength and make smart decisions,” he said. “I think if I were to try to distill down what makes us different, it is helping clients really think through all of these issues, helping them make really smart decisions about their real estate and then helping them negotiate really, really effective transactions, not only from a cost standpoint, but also from a flexibility standpoint.” A resident of the Ken Caryl area, 55-year-old McGrath is a skier, bicyclist, fly-fisherman, husband, and father to daughter Kelly and son Jamey. His personal and professional lives often intersect. “We tend to work with clients on any one transaction for, on average, probably two years. So you form relationships, you become friends, and that is rewarding,” he said. “I enjoy working with companies where the principals truly appreciate the value of what we provide. That, to me, is the best relationship you can have.”