by Sean McManus
Staff Writer
About twice a year, Richard Shaffer, head of research for CB Richard Ellis, writes and publishes a glossy, 12-page newsletter called “Jacksonville: A City of Growth on Florida’s First Coast,” a snapshot of life here from the perspective of the people who buy and sell much of the commercial real estate.
The newsletter, which also appears on the company’s website, highlights topics like transportation, population, income levels, employment, key industries, taxes, quality of life, climate, housing, and education. There’s a brief paragraph on entertainment, it mentions beautiful golf courses, the “pro-business” environment, and casually in the introduction, the newsletter charts the First Coast’s population changes, which grew an average of 31 percent a decade since 1970.
And the research that CB Richard Ellis, and other local commercial real estate firms, conducts plays a pivotal role in the overall economic development efforts of Jacksonville.
“We aggregate data from property appraisers, corporations themselves, Hoovers [an online business resource] and other primary sources to make sure we have the most current and accurate data we can get,” said Shaffer, whose training in military intelligence and work doing background checks for the police department led him to a career in real estate research. “When you do it yourself, you know it’s right.”
Doug Blair, research head for Colliers Dickinson, called the relationship commercial real estate firms have with the City “cooperative and collaborative,” noting that they are all working toward the same end — to attract companies to Jacksonville. Blair, who publishes two quarterly reports — one that is fed to Colliers International as part of their firm-wide analysis and one for the local market — said that often the City will rely on data from his firm to guide decisions ranging from incentives to infrastructure.
“They know our data is honest and accurate,” said Blair. “Since we handle a lot of clients who are developers, we know the logistics of what’s going on and where, sometimes very early.”
Kirk Wendland, executive director of the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission, said he depends on the efforts of local commercial real estate firms to supply his organization with data which saves him from having to buy it.
“We need to know this stuff so that we can do our job,” said Wendland, “and many local firms are very generous with the information they give us.”
Wendland said when he and other members of the JEDC are out in the field talking to corporations about Jacksonville, they need hard facts to back up what they already know — that Jacksonville is a growing market that is ripe for major growth.
“We stay away from talking about individual parcels,” said Wendland, “but generally, we can talk about what areas are moving and what is available for specific companies.”
Blair added that sometimes information has to be kept confidential, especially in situations where a company can’t yet disclose to employees that it is moving.
In addition to Shaffer’s City of Growth newsletter, CB Richard Ellis also publishes two quarterly market index briefs — one for office space and one for industrial space — as well as an annual retail market index. All three contain detailed accounts of the real estate landscape and commentary on the market’s potential for expansion. The reports dissect vacancy rates, net absorption (the change in occupied square feet from one period to the next), lease rates and construction activity.
“The news is not always great,” said Shaffer, “Jacksonville is not immune to fluctuations in the national economy. But consistently, we’re doing better than other markets.”
Shaffer’s research is not completely altruistic. Much of his work revolves around providing the firm’s brokers with the tools they need to land big accounts.
“Brokers need to know everything about a company when they go in for a pitch,” said Shaffer. “We give brokers data and maps to help them convince companies that Jacksonville is where they need to be.”
Much of what Shaffer does is a general mapping process — breaking down Jacksonville into markets and sub-markets — to illustrate where the activity in commercial properties is and where it is going.
“Brokers and their clients like to compare and contrast areas of town between time periods and between each other,” said Shaffer. “We can generate maps that show population movements, economic trends and all sorts of other indicators of where the growth is.”
Shaffer customizes his research to serve each individual client. Call centers, for example, want property in an area where the demographics indicate a younger population, retail firms need density of rooftops, technology companies need people who went to college and high-end restaurants want people with money. The reason why the Southside is such a growth area, Shaffer said, is because it contains all of those elements.
There are also key indicators that alert Shaffer that a particular area of Jacksonville may be up-and-coming. One big one is a new roadway.
“You saw what happened with 9A [J. Turner Butler Boulevard],” said Shaffer. “It completely opened up that whole area of town that used to be nothing.”
And CB Richard Ellis also invests in real estate. That means that Shaffer’s research can be used to advise his own firm on the smartest buys.
“Often you’ll be doing research on one subject and something else will come up,” he said. “That’s when I walk into the managing director’s office and say, ‘You should really check this out.’ ” The managing director of CB Richard Ellis is Jim Citrano, who is also the chairman of the Downtown Development Authority.
Shaffer and CB Richard Ellis work with the City’s Planning and Development Department, Cornerstone, the economic development arm of the Chamber, the DDA and the JEDC to ensure that the data they are presenting to the public — and potential clients — is accurate, consistent, and current.
And, of course, brokers sometimes don’t like what they hear from their research guys; they want the picture to always be rosy.
“When I tell them the numbers don’t look that good, they give me these looks like, ‘Can’t we change it?’ But then we all finally accept the fact that the numbers are what they are. That’s our saying — they are what they are,” said Blair.