As Amazon has built up the largest portfolio of industrial real estate of any company in the U.S. over the past few years, it has had a silent partner negotiating deals for it every step of the way: Seattle-based real estate services firm KBC Advisors. But KBC, which was founded in 2016, is no longer just a handful of deal-makers working out of a WeWork near Amazon’s South Lake Union headquarters, quietly tasked with growing the e-commerce giant's distribution network. The secretive firm has hired scores of high-level real estate professionals across the country, signaling that its ambitions are to become something much greater than just Amazon’s broker of choice. 
Five years ago, KBC had a headcount of roughly a dozen people based in one city, but today it has more than 130 employees. It has hired more than 115 people since the start of 2019 alone, according to a Bisnow analysis of employee LinkedIn pages. It opened offices in…  Read the full story here. | 
