Colliers Macaulay Nicolls Int'l -- Real Estate Firm Gives Its Clients `Window On World'

COLLIERS MACAULAY NICOLLS INTERNATIONAL

-- Business: Selling, leasing commercial real estate.

-- Headquarters: Vancouver, B.C.

-- Local management: Robert Larsen, Jim Bowles, vice presidents/general managers, Seattle, Bellevue, respectively.

-- 1989 gross sales: $115 million (both offices).

-- Major clients: Security Pacific Bank of Washington, The Koll Co., West Coast Hotels, Park Properties Development Co.

-- Competitors: Coldwell Banker Commercial Real Estate, Cushman & Wakefield, Liebsohn Boguch & Co.

-- Strategy: Provide ``unsurpassed'' service to enhance long-established global relationships and bring in new local clients.

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Robert Larsen and Jim Bowles have commercial real estate contacts throughout the world.

But, as managers of the Seattle and Bellevue offices, respectively, of Colliers Macaulay Nicolls International for only two years, they don't necessarily have a broad base of local real estate relationships.

While other well-established companies here try to become global, Larsen and Bowles' strategy is to build more local contacts, using a mentor, so they can develop business here that can use their global network.

Their international ties are in more than 90 offices in 14 countries linked to Colliers' home base in Vancouver, B.C.

``We are getting ready to give our local and national clients a window to the world,'' said Bowles, vice president/manager of the 19-agent Bellevue office.

Larsen, who has the same title and responsibilities, in the larger, 37-agent Seattle office, said they want to meld the company's successful international network with established relationships here to meet clients' needs.

``John McLernon, our chairman, says we must be ready for the future - the globalization of the economy and real estate in the Pacific Northwest,'' Larsen said. ``We know this growth is coming.''

The global approach reaches two ways.

``We're helping to facilitate investment in our area and assisting local investors buy in other areas,'' Bowles said.

Canadian and Asian investors have been buying multifamily complexes here recently, he said. Locals represented by Colliers also are looking at apartments in Canada and other areas. Many here are looking for business relationships overseas, Bowles said.

Colliers also has helped Boeing buy properties in Toronto, where its deHavilland of Canada division is headquartered, and has relocated local people in Tokyo, he said.

``We want to give local and national clients a window to the world, but we want to answer the needs here at the same time,'' Larsen said. Bowles said the team is ``trying to position itself to have contact with all investors and bring them to the table to take advantage of whatever is available.''

He said the company anticipates putting together many joint ventures using foreign money and local developers. Because financing is more difficult to get now in the restricted bank-investment climate, people will be looking for more outside investors, Bowles said.

Because Larsen and Bowles haven't had a lot of long-term contacts with the local business community, they asked Fred Weiss, former executive in the local Coldwell Banker office and an active civic leader, to help, Larsen said.

Weiss joined the company as an outside director last summer. An investor with his own downtown office building, he doesn't have an office at Colliers' headquarters in the Seafirst Fifth Avenue Plaza but visits nearly every day and consults by telephone.

He participates in many local civic groups, including the Downtown Seattle Association, the Chamber of Commerce and the Convention & Visitors Bureau, and is a Seattle University regent.

Weiss said Colliers, with no operations manual and less structure than other companies, has an entrepreneurial flavor.

``It is like Coldwell Banker and Cushman Wakefield (national firms and competitors) were 20 years ago, and it gives them more flexibility. People now are demanding and need personal attention and flexibility in this business. These guys have a sense of humor and are getting back to `hands-on' service.''

Bowles said the company is virtually unstructured. ``We have no goals for profits, but we have a team attitude to be innovative and to have fun.''

Weiss said he first met Bowles at a hospital where Bowles was bringing flowers to a competitor - one of Weiss' brokers at Coldwell Banker.

``I liked that and I wrote him a note thanking him for his kindness,'' Weiss said.

Larsen and Bowles were brokers with Cushman & Wakefield before joining Colliers two years ago as managers. Larsen, who had worked mainly in the South End as a broker, decided he needed Weiss to help him get to know the downtown community.

McLernon, the Vancouver, B.C.-based entrepreneur behind Colliers, visits the local staff at least once a month and is described as ``very accessible'' for consulting. Stock in the private company is owned by brokers and support staff. When people leave Colliers, they must sell back their stock.

Frank Friedman is one of four brokers who broke away from Coldwell Banker in 1981 to form a Seattle joint venture with Colliers and who bought stock when the company became employee-owned four years ago. The 27-year veteran said the new approach is ``progressing beautifully,'' describing Larsen and Bowles as good managers who are bringing in and training good people.

Friedman also believes Colliers' international potential is promising.

``Our position in the Far East is strong and getting more so all the time. We plan to tap the wealth of the area beyond Hong Kong and bring those investors here.''

Colliers is building a computerized information base about local real estate and soon will be issuing research reports. There are some other niche specialties in its portfolio, as well.

One is hotel and resort development and sales. Craig Schaffer heads a new division, started here, which now has offices here and in Toronto, Vancouver, B.C., and San Francisco.

A new focus for attracting basic new business locally is in the North End, the area from Northgate to Everett.

``We see opportunity for a lot of growth there and others are not pursuing business there,'' Bowles said.

Strategies appears weekly in the Business Monday section of The Seattle Times.