Transwestern President on Latest Expansion Plans

Bisnow has exclusively learned that Transwestern is about to tack on a mystery (TBA) market, upping its count to 35. Here's more.

President of Americas Chip Clarke spilled the news during his firm's ULI kickoff party this week at the swanky Dirty Habit restaurant downtown. He tells us this will be the firm's best year yet. The hot topic at ULI is how markets are improving everywhere, he adds.

He feels bullish about the industry as a whole, he says. Transwestern's office is moving to bigger digs at 101 2nd. (HFF also just moved their offices there for more room.) S.F. is a market where their clients want to be, he says. "We have a bull's-eye on the Bay Area to do more work for a number of things." Here is Chip with S.F.-based colleague and SVP David Ford and Al Diaz, head of Americas real estate asset management at Deutsche Asset and Wealth Management out of Chicago.

This year the firm announced plans to move longtime exec Rob Bagguley (here at his daughter's wedding) to S.F. in an effort to spur some growth in the area. Chip's oldest son is a senior software engineer at Uber in S.F., so chances are his visits will be frequent. The night of the opening ULI party the Transwestern crew went to eat at Italian hot spot Cotogna, one of S.F.'s hardest reservations to score.

Here Chip is flanked by Walnut Creek-based director of investment sales Michael Cisternino and Transwestern newcomer Rolf Jorgensen, who spent years marketing Bishop Ranch Office Park, a 9M SF office complex about 35 miles outside S.F. Chip admits his HQ base in Houston is going through a lull, thanks to the energy industry being the driver. But Transwestern's life sciences practice in Boston has never been better; he credits the 2013 purchase of Richards Barry Joyce & Partners in Boston to that fact, which is big in that sector.