Scott Moe, vice president of leasing and development for CSM Corp.

Twin Cities commercial real estate veteran Scott Moe, 56, has joined Minneapolis-based CSM Corp. as vice president of leasing and development. He will oversee the leasing of the company's 8-million-square-foot commercial real estate portfolio. He also will look to expand the portfolio by pursuing build-to-suit developments and assessing the viability of office and industrial speculative development.

Moe will report to Andy Deckas, CSM's president of commercial properties and executive vice president, who came on board in August. Before joining CSM, Moe was vice president of office and leasing at Indianapolis-based Duke Realty's Twin Cities office. He also had stints at United Properties, Towle Real Estate Co. and Hoyt Development. The southern Minnesota native got his start in the real estate business in 1986.

Q: What are you most looking forward to in your new role?

A: I have a lot more people responsibilities. I'm real excited about the people management part of the business. … And I'm really looking forward to the financial horsepower that we have at CSM and the desire to grow and do creative real estate projects.

Q: How will this position differ from your ­position at Duke?

A: Duke is significantly larger with 150 million square feet in about 20 markets, but Minneapolis is a satellite office with about 3 million square feet. … Now I'm at CSM's headquarters facility. It's fun to be where the action is. I'm in meetings with Gary Holmes — CSM's owner and CEO — and Andy Deckas on a daily basis. I'm right in the middle of where the decisions are getting made and they're leaning heavily on my expertise in the leasing and development areas. I've been given the keys to the Ferrari, if you will, and we're going to see how fast we can drive it.

Q: Does CSM have industrial developments planned?

A: We've got some vacant land we need to get into production. We're chasing some build-to-suit opportunities that are exciting, and we're thinking and talking about speculative industrial development. We're on the hunt. So we're kicking the tires on it, but we've got a lot of work to do on our existing portfolio.

Q: What kind of work and what's your ­strategy?

A: We need to get some leasing activity generated, and I'm hiring a lot of outside brokers to help. I'm extremely pro-broker and pro-listing. I plan to spend a lot of time procuring my relationships with those brokers and we're leaning on them to bring us opportunities. … The brokerage community is going to be much more involved from a listing standpoint in our portfolio than in the past. It's a big change and a very big part of our business model going forward.

Liz Wolf is an Eagan-based freelance writer. She can be reached at wolfliz99@aol.com