Bret Hardy leaves Colliers, joins Kevin Shannon’s team at NGKF

Bret Hardy, one of the most prolific industrial investment brokers on the West Coast, has jumped ship from Colliers to Newmark Grubb Knight Frank.

He is now an executive managing director in the West Coast capital markets team led by Kevin Shannon, where he will focus on building NGKF’s industrial clout.

“Newmark has traditionally not been in the industrial space so this is an incredible opportunity for me to build it,” Hardy told The Real Deal. “I came [to NGKF], first and foremost, to work with the Kevin Shannon team, literally one of the best service organizations that exist in our business.”

Hardy was at Colliers for more than 16 years. As a managing director of the shop’s industrial service group, he competed with other industrial bigwigs, including the Darla Longo and Barbara Emmons team at CBRE; the Jay Borzi and Stephen Silk team at Eastdil Secured; the Bo Mills and Mark Detmer team at JLL; and the Jeff Cole and Jeff Chiate team at Cushman & Wakefield. His role at NGKF — where the capital markets division has focused primarily on office sales —  is to grow the company’s industrial reach to compete with those other players.

Hardy’s niche is “national single-tenant” work, he said, though he will be more squarely focused on the West Coast for NGKF, and will work from the brokerage’s Downtown Los Angeles and El Segundo offices. Over the past six years, he brokered the sale of six industrial single-tenant net lease portfolios totaling 120 properties, worth just over $1 billion, he said.

His dealbook includes the sale of the 3,724-acre Marine Corps Air Station El Toro in Orange County; the 600,000-square-foot Santa Fe Springs Logistics Center; the 500,000-square-foot North County Corporate Center in San Diego; and the 23-acre Chevron land site in La Mirada.

Newmark’s L.A. poaching spree, which kicked into gear with the hiring of Shannon and his team from CBRE, will not be slowing down, Hardy said.

“This is just the beginning — there is a real emphasis on bringing in the best talent across the country,” he said. “The [Kevin Shannon] team will continue to fill gaps across the region.”

A representative of Colliers declined to comment.