Newmark & Company opens San Francisco office.

Armed with strong local talent, expansion minded Newmark & Company Real Estate, Inc. has opened a San Francisco office to compete for commercial real estate business not only in the Bay Area but also throughout the northwestern United States.

The company, the country's fastest growing independent real estate services firm, is renting temporary space at One Market but will look for between 6,000 and 10,000 SF for a permanent office and hopes to move within 90 days.

"This is an important step in our westward expansion and the continuing development of a strong national platform for our company," stated Newmark president James D. Kuhn, who said that his firm's San Francisco office would focus on real estate markets throughout northern California, Washington and Oregon. He continued, "If New York is the financial Capital, Washington, D.C. is the political capital and Los Angeles the media and entertainment capital, then San Francisco and Silicon Valley may be the intellectual property and technology capital of the United States."

The move to San Francisco is the latest in an accelerating growth strategy for the full service real estate company that provides both brokerage and corporate advisory services to its many national and international clients. In recent months it has opened new offices in Atlanta, Houston and Dallas and over the past two years has established offices in Washington, D.C., Long Island, Los Angeles and South Bay, Calif.

Equally impressive, during the same period the company has acquired a leading New York-based retail brokerage firm New Spectrum, creating Newmark New Spectrum; purchased an interest in Koeppel Tener Riguardi, a national appraisal, environmental, engineering and due diligence firm now known as KTR Newmark; acquired JGT, the largest independent real estate brokerage firm in New Jersey; and formed a joint venture partnership with London's Nelson Bakewell, forming Newmark Nelson Bakewell.

Newmark's new San Francisco office will be headed by seven top real estate professionals, all formerly with CB Richard Ellis in the Bay Area. Monica Finnegan and Edvard Grammens have been named Managing Principals, William Benton, Lisa Cracknell, Michael Brown and Quentin Knights will serve as Managing Directors while Andrew Kaplan will serve as Associate Director.

"This is a veteran team with a tremendous record of achievement in the commercial real estate and corporate advisory sectors," added Kuhn. "It give us a tremendous nucleus on which to build and expand this office, and we expect to be very aggressive in continuing to seek out additional elite talent in this marketplace."