REBNY winner Patrick Smith leaves SRS Real Estate for JLL

Hire is first of several to come as firm increases retail presence

Patrick Smith and Phil Palmer
Patrick Smith and Phil Palmer

Veteran retail broker and past “Ingenious” award recipient Patrick Smith is departing SRS Real Estate Partners for suddenly retail-hungry JLL.

After more than 15 years with SRS, Smith will join JLL on Wednesday as vice chairman, the New York Observer reported.

“We’ve had a gap here,” Phil Palmer, director of office and retail brokerage in New York for JLL, told the newspaper. “Seven retail brokers is not a large team of retail brokers.”




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Palmer added that the firm is looking to hire five to 10 more retail brokers within the next 12 months. It’s not clear if Smith’s current clients, which include Duane Reade and Walgreens, will move to JLL with Smith.

Smith, along with SRS colleague Matt Ogle, took the second-place prize at the Real Estate Board of New York’s annual Ingenious Deal awards in the summer. The duo brokered a handful of deals that totaled 160,000 square feet of retail space at a trio of Equity Office Properties buildings near Bryant Park.

SRS Real Estate ranked 10th in The Real Deal’s analysis of Manhattan’s top retail brokerages in 2013, with 110,566 square feet worth of new leases or renewals signed. JLL did not make the list. [NYO]Rich Bockmann