Inside View: Josh Budish, Duke Realty

Vice president of leasing and development for Duke Realty's Minneapolis office

Josh Budish, 32, is the new vice president of leasing and development for the Minneapolis office of Duke Realty Corp. The 12-year commercial real estate veteran is in charge of leasing for Duke's local portfolio and will identify new development and investment opportunities. The position opened up when Pat Mascia, who led Duke's Minneapolis office for the past decade, stepped down to return to practice real estate law.

Duke owns, manages and leases more than 4 million square feet of industrial properties and the Shops at West End, a retail center in St. Louis Park. Duke also owns 130 acres of sites around the Twin Cities slated for future development. Before joining Duke, Budish was director of leasing for Liberty Property Trust in Eden Prairie. One of his biggest assignments was leasing Liberty Industrial Park at Diamond Lake, a 750,000-square-foot industrial park in Rogers. The Edina native got his start in real estate at CBRE in Minneapolis in 2002.

Q: What opportunities do you see at Duke?

A: The main attractions were the opportunities to work on a great industrial portfolio, have some land for industrial development, and I think the opportunity to be a leader of an office was also appealing and something I hadn't done before.

Q: I understand that Duke recently sold most of its office properties, including Norman Pointe I and II in Bloomington, to concentrate more on industrial real estate.

A: Yes. Duke has restructured its Minneapolis office as well as its company to be more focused on industrial. They sold off most of their office and flex assets but are going very strong in the industrial sector.

A: We have four land positions. One is a ­master-planned industrial park in Otsego, north of Rogers. Duke just landed a 300,000-square-foot, build-to-suit [property] with Ruan [Transportation Management Systems] there. In Bloomington, we own an office land site at Norman Pointe. We have another site at West End for more retail or a hotel or office as part of the master plan, and we own 12 acres in Plymouth.

Q: What are some challenges in this new role?

A: The biggest challenge … is we're rebranding ourselves as a pure industrial player. We're one of the largest industrial real estate investment trusts in the country. I think people in this market — especially the brokers — know that, but Duke has been a little quiet in recent years. I think the biggest challenge is to get the word out that we're not just here to stay, but we're growing.