Grubb taps Staubach vet for new data center team
Jim Kerrigan
(Crain’s) — Grubb & Ellis Co. has hired local tenant rep Jim Kerrigan from Staubach Co. to lead its newly formed national data center practice.
With the launch of the niche brokerage group, Santa Ana, Calif.-based Grubb & Ellis will try to capitalize on a small but expanding market sector that collapsed earlier this decade amid the dot-com crash.
As a senior vice-president and director of the practice, Mr. Kerrigan, 39, will manage a team of brokers and handle leasing and acquisition for landlords and tenants, including Internet companies and trading firms.
Mr. Kerrigan, who started this week in Grubb & Ellis' Chicago office, will be based here but expects to travel a lot until the practice grows to where the company has data center brokers in various cities.
Other firms have data center teams, but they aren't common. Grubb & Ellis wouldn't have formed a national data center practice without Mr. Kerrigan, says Jack Van Berkel, president and chief operating officer of transaction services at Grubb & Ellis.
"We think he's the best real estate data center guy in the business," Mr. Van Berkel says.
Previously, Mr. Kerrigan was a principal at Dallas-based Staubach Co., where he negotiated deals involving about 1.7 million square feet of Chicago-area data center space in the past four years. There’s about 3 million square feet of data center space in the Chicago area, up from about 1 million square feet a decade ago, Mr. Kerrigan says.
He says his decision to join rival Grubb & Ellis had nothing to do with the recent acquisition of his former employer by Chicago-based Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., which also has a data center practice. Instead, he was lured largely by the opportunity to head up his own group.
Data centers, which house computer systems and other technology, are equipped with fiber optic networks, and sophisticated electrical and cooling systems that keep racks of computer servers from crashing. Demand for these facilities has grown in recent years as more companies rely on servers to store data and process Internet transactions.
Grubb & Ellis’ group now has two people: Mr. Kerrigan and David Horowitz, 26, an associate vice-president who also comes from Staubach. Mr. Kerrigan doesn't know how many brokers he will eventually hire. Mr. Van Berkel says it will depend on how big the business grows.
Mr. Kerrigan, who grew up in the suburbs of Darien and Hinsdale, studied economics at the University of Illinois. After graduating in 1991, he worked for two years as a research director at the Chicago office of Studley Inc. He worked briefly as a senior associate at Galbreath Co. before jumping in 1994 to Tanguay Burke Stratton, which became Staubach’s Chicago office in 1999.
For brokers who deal with data center clients, understanding the technology is as important as knowing how to negotiate a deal, says Howard Horowitz, vice-president of global real estate at California-based data center operator and developer Equinix Inc., which Mr. Kerrigan has represented in site selection.
Mr. Kerrigan admits he didn't know the first thing about data centers in the late 1990s when he leased 80,000 square feet for a client at Chicago’s Lakeside Technology Center, 350 E. Cermak Road, which Equinix operates.
"There were guys asking for fiber and I didn't know what fiber was," he says.
But since then, Mr. Kerrigan has developed into "one of the most proficient and knowledgeable data center brokers in the country," says Hossein Fateh, president and CEO of Washington, D.C.-based data center developer DuPont Fabros Technology Inc. Mr. Kerrigan also has represented DuPont, which opened a data center this summer in northwest suburban Elk Grove Village.
Says Mr. Fateh: He understands "it's about location, power and fiber.”
