Newmark Promotes Executive To Oversee Southwest, X Team Retail Taps Region Leaders, Colliers Hires Former CBRE Broker in Midwest

Newmark has elevated Nick DiPaolo to executive vice president, regional managing director and Southwest market leader. In his new role, DiPaolo will oversee the operations and performance of 11 offices and nearly 500 professionals across Southern California, Arizona and Nevada, Newmark said. He previously served as Newmark’s market leader for the greater Los Angeles region. In that role, he is credited with making more than a dozen hires in the past 14 months across several specialties including capital markets, office leasing, industrial, debt and structured finance and life science, Newmark said. Key additions made during DiPaolo’s role as greater Los Angeles market leader include Jonathan Firestone, Andrew Jennison, Dan Pickart, Suzanne Lee, Rick Reeder and Brad Tecca. A 17-year industry veteran, DiPaolo previously worked at Cushman & Wakefield, where he oversaw brokerage operations for the brokerage’s Los Angeles region and the San Diego market. Before that he spent 12 years at CBRE in office leasing.

X Team Retail Advisors, an organization with more than 350 retail real estate affiliate specialists in 44 markets across the U.S. and Canada, has tapped James Chung as its new Western regional director and Jeff Townsend as director of its South Central region. Chung, founder and principal of The Econic Co. of Campbell, California, replaced Anthony Johnson of Albuquerque, New Mexico-based Pegasus Group, who had served as Western regional director since 2020. Townsend, co-founder and principal of Austin, Texas-based Rise Commercial Partners, took over from Bryan Cornelius of RetailUnion in Dallas, who had director X Retail’s South Central region for the past two years.

Chung, formerly of Cushman & Wakefield, launched Econic three years ago, At Cushman, where he executed more than $1 billion dollars in total lease consideration and ran the platform for the Western U.S. Econic represents more than 100 national and regional tenants. At Rise Commercial, which works with more than 80 clients, Townsend specializes in retail and restaurant tenant representation. Throughout his more than 25-year commercial real estate career, Townsend has represented several national companies including The TJX Cos., Dick’s Sporting Goods, Five Below, Darden, Snooze, Postino, J. Alexander’s and Sweetgreen.

Colliers has hired John Sheehan as an executive vice president in its occupier services group. Sheehan will work with corporate clients across the U.S., advising them on real estate strategy and lease and sales transactions, Colliers said. He previously worked at CBRE, where he led the pursuit of new portfolio business. In his new role at Colliers, Sheehan will focus on national occupier clients and report to leadership in Chicago leadership.

While at CBRE, Sheehan represented U.S. and global occupiers including Buckingham Strategic Wealth, Caleres and TTM Technologies. In 2023, he worked on transactions with a total value of more than $165.8 million. The deals included including three corporate headquarters relocations. “John focuses on national occupier clients and reports to Chicago leadership,” Colliers spokesperson Beth Atkinson said in an email. “For now, he is working remotely from St. Louis.”

Foundry Commercial has tapped David Bateman, who spent the past four years as a managing director at CBRE, to lead Foundry’s South Florida market brokerage operations. As Foundry’s South Florida market leader and a managing director, he will oversee the firm’s South Florida services business and play a key role as it embarks on its next growth phase in the region, the company said. “Foundry led a very calculated search to find the ideal leader to spearhead our South Florida brokerage business,” and in Bateman it found one that can fuel its expansion, Foundry President Gregg Ickes said in a statement. Foundry manages approximately 10 million square feet of space in South Florida. Last year it expanded its office footprints in Coral Gables and Boca Raton, Florida, where Bateman is based. The company has more than 50 employees combined at its two South Florida locations. Bateman, who has nearly 20 years of experience in commercial real estate, completing over 120 transactions worth a total of more than $100 million in lease value in his first two years in the business. He has leased office, industrial, medical and retail asset properties and representing clients including as Duke Realty, now part of Prologis, DRA Advisors, Clarion, TIAA’s Nuveen and TA Realty, and more.

Stream Realty Partners plans to open a new office in Tampa, Florida, and it tapped former JLL brokers Gary Godsey and Jordan Fogler. Godsey joined Stream as an executive managing director and Fogler as an executive vice president.

The new office, the location of which has yet to be determined, and addition of Godsey and Fogler will be important to Stream’s plans to expand across the Sunshine State, Stream executive managing director Greg Katz said. “Expanding into Tampa is a significant milestone for Stream,” Katz said in a statement.

Godsey has more than two decades of commercial real estate experience. He held several leadership positions when he worked at JLL. As for Fogler, prior to joining JLL in 2016, he served in the U.S. Navy for nearly eight years. During his time with the Navy, he was deployed five times as a Naval flight officer aboard the Navy’s EP-3E aircraft and conducted operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and South America, Stream said. Fogler said in a statement that he and Godsey are ready “to hit the ground running from day one.”

Benenson Capital Partners, a real estate investment, development and asset management firm founded in 1905, has promoted Salvatore Ciaravino, Zakary Katzman and Matthew Butts as the company reorganizes its leadership team. Benenson promoted Ciaravino to senior director of asset management and finance. He previously served as director of real estate. Katzman was elevated to senior director of strategic projects and investment. He previously was an associate. Butts, who formerly served as a property manager, was promoted to director of asset management. Benenson Capital Partners, the management arm of the Benenson group of companies, has a portfolio that contains more than 110 retail, multifamily, industrial, office and hospitality properties. It also includes undeveloped land in 27 states throughout the U.S. and in Canada.

CBRE has added Garrett Benefiel, a healthcare real estate veteran, as a vice president in Atlanta. In his new role, Benefiel will specialize in medical office leasing and work closely with Adam Butler, first vice president of CBRE’s healthcare services group, the brokerage said.

Benefiel spent the past five years at Welltower, a company that provides funding to large healthcare and senior care providers to enable them to develop the healthcare infrastructure. He most recently served as director of leasing and oversaw Welltower’s portfolio in the Central and Southeast regions. Before that, he worked at Skorburg Co., a Dallas-based real estate developer.