Colliers International's growth plan includes a pair of office moves

Jeremy Jacobs began his career as an attorney for the U.S. Army serving for five years including a deployment to Iraq in 2008 after which he was awarded a Bronze Star.

Jacobs said the lessons he learned from a young age as a ROTC recruit through his time in Baghdad where he oversaw a small group of soldiers, helped prepare him for his latest post as managing director and market leader of brokerage at Colliers International's Minneapolis-St. Paul office. He now helps oversee a team of about 60 real estate brokers.

"The sense that no one is an island and no man can do it alone I think is very important," Jacobs said. "And in my role I'm not responsible for creating teams; I'm responsible for creating the conditions for good teams to thrive …. I think about that every day, the teams I was part of and what it meant to focus on something bigger than myself."

Jacobs is part of a leadership team that Colliers MSP Chief Executive Jean Kane has assembled to grow the real estate services firm. Jacobs and Kane got to know each other through their shared volunteering with the Urban Land Institute. Jacobs, who is less than a year in his role at Colliers, previously worked at Mortenson and Ryan Cos. in development.

"He is coming at the business from the lens of a client. … There's an energy and enthusiasm [to him]," she said.

Toronto-based Colliers solidified its presence in the Twin Cities when it purchased several divisions of Kane's Welsh Cos. in 2017 after years of Welsh's brokerage and real estate management divisions operating as Colliers' local affiliates. Welsh Construction still carries the Welsh name, but it is a separate company.

"The opportunity that I saw to join forces with Colliers several years ago is still bigger and brighter than when I first started looking at it. … Even though they are a global, publicly traded company, there is still this enterprising spirit to them," Kane said. "And that's really important to our culture and who we are here in Minneapolis."

Kane said she thought there were areas to grow in niche industries as well like the specialty health care innovation and life science practice group the company has formed which encompasses not only brokers but other business lines. After the Colliers purchase, the company acquired Minneapolis-based S2 Enterprises, whose project management team specialized in health care.

"We are bullish on health care. … We think life science plays well in our state," Kane said, alluding to the region's high concentration of health and life science companies.

Colliers MSP has had 4% compound annual revenue growth (CAGR) from 2016 through 2019.

As part of its continued efforts to dig its foothold in the local commercial real estate market, Colliers MSP will soon move its main headquarters and its downtown Minneapolis location into new offices.

"We finally present as Colliers in a way that we haven't before and sort of take on the mantle," Jacob said.

The current Minnetonka headquarters, located southeast of the interchange of Interstate 494 and Minnesota 7, was designed and built by Welsh Co. back in 2008.

"We were a different company at the time," Kane said, about Welsh Cos. "We did some development. We were a construction company. The building in Minnetonka really was a showcase of who we were."

The new offices stood out because of their locations close to amenities and modern workplace design, Kane said, speaking on the excitement of the moves.

"From a branding and people perspective … It's a different kind of look and feel."

Nicole Norfleet • 612-673-4495