Cushman & Wakefield poaches NKF’s top Chicago retail broker

Cushman & Wakefield hired Newmark Knight Frank’s top retail broker in Chicago to lead its Midwest retail operations.

Gregory Kirsch will be charged with growing the Chicago-based brokerage’s retail services across the region and recruiting a retail team to be based in Chicago, the firm said in a press release.

As executive managing director and Midwest retail leader, Kirsch will be part of Cushman’s national retail team and will be based in Chicago. He will work with its property management and capital markets teams and focus on both tenant and landlord clients, the firm said.

Kirsch was the top retail broker in NKF’s Chicago office for the last decade, according to Cushman’s release. He was named Retail Broker of the Year by the Chicago Association of Realtors in 2009, and has represented tenants including Starbucks, FedEx Office, Under Armour, Vans and The North Face.

Vicki Noonan, Cushman’s Chicago managing principal, said the firm was excited about “the dynamic his leadership will bring to our Chicago office.”

Kirsch said the new position will allow him to once again help build a retail operation from the ground up. Cushman’s entire Chicago retail team in early 2018 left the company to join rival CBRE, Crain’s reported at the time, leaving a void in the brokerage’s operations that Kirsch will be tasked with filling.

“I get to repeat what I did at Newmark,” he said Wednesday. “What are the odds I get a second shot to do that?

“I’m 100 percent lucky to land at a company this good in a market this important and chart a new course,” he said.