The broker shakeup continues in Los Angeles — this time, with a reunion.
Stephen Algermissen left Cushman & Wakefield in 2011 after 22 years with the brokerage, and became an executive vice president at Colliers International. Now, five years later, Cushman has poached him back, The Real Deal has learned.
As executive director of capital markets, Algermissen, a leading broker of urban retail properties on the West Coast, will operate out of Cushman & Wakefield’s offices in West L.A. and DTLA.
He told TRD he made the move back to Cushman & Wakefield, in part, because his business is more aligned with the company.
“The Cushman platform, for what I’m doing with retail, was more logical,” he said. “There’s a broader reach. Cushman & Wakefield is more of an urban firm — they prioritize it the most. It comes from being a firm that has its origin in New York.”
While he had no negative words to say about Colliers, he conceded the brokerages were quite different, describing Cushman as “a very New York firm of order and method and consistency,” tapped for many luxe dealings, and Colliers as “younger and scrappier.”
“The kind of business I was doing at Colliers, I’m sure they were happy to have me do it, but it was an anomaly — I felt like I was better aligned here,” he said.
At the time he left, Algermissen said Cushman had gone through some changes he didn’t like. He said he thinks the recent mergers have been good for the company.
“I was intrigued by having more of a mandate at Colliers at the time I left,” he said. “You don’t know how good things are until you leave them sometimes. I maintained my friendships [at Cushman] but saw that I could do more if I worked with them, if we worked together.”
While many of Algermissen’s deals have been in Los Angeles — the $60 million sale of the Santa Monica Apple store and the recent sale of the Yamashiro site in Hollywood among them — his territory ranges to San Diego, San Francisco, Chicago and the eastern Seaboard. Algermissen has also been involved with the sale of office properties, including the Sunset Media Tower (twice), the CNN Building (multiple times) and Kodak Campus in Hollywood, the William Morris Agency headquarters in Beverly Hills and the landmark 100 Wilshire office building in Santa Monica.