Lee & Associates has expanded further in the Midwest with the opening of its first office in Minnesota.
The office, located at 5353 Gamble Drive, St. Louis Park, is headed by veterans and former Cassidy Turley, Transwestern and Cushman & Wakefield brokers Chris Garcia, Jeff Minea, Duane Poppe, SIOR, CCIM, and Kai Thomsen. They have more than 75 years of CRE experience in the Twin Cities area collectively.
In the last two years, Lee & Associates has opened offices in Pasadena, California, Vancouver, B.C., Eastern Pennsylvania, Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio and Houston, Texas.
Garcia, an industrial specialist with 13 years of experience in the Twin Cities commercial real estate market, spent eight years at Northmarq, which is now Cushman & Wakefield. In 2010, Garcia established his own brokerage firm, CGC Commercial, which had become an important player in the local and regional industrial brokerage market. A graduate of New Mexico State University with a degree in Business Administration, Garcia is a member of the Plymouth Rotary Club, the Latino Economic Development Center and sits on the board for the Midwest Minority Supplier Diversity Council.
“It felt like the time was right to bring a new brokerage model to the Twin Cities metro,” Garcia said. “Lee & Associates offers a strong national brand, local ownership, and the ability to grow quickly by offering more service coverage for our clients.”
Minea, with over 30 years’ experience, spent 23 years with Welsh/Colliers, and five years with Cushman & Wakefield as well as CGC Commercial most recently, focuses on tenant representation with emphasis on industrial and med-tech businesses. While at Cushman & Wakefield, he earned their “Top 5″ producer award, and in 2007 he was honored as one of the “Top 5 Commercial Industrial Agents” in the Twin Cities by The Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal. Earlier in his career, Minea represented landlords in marketing industrial space for lease throughout the Twin Cities and served in a leadership role on several major business park listing assignments from 250,000 to 1,000,000+ square feet of industrial space for lease.
Poppe, who is an industrial specialist with both a CCIM and SIOR designation, specializes in industrial sales and leasing within the North Metro of Minneapolis-St. Paul. He spent the last six years with Transwestern and nine with Cassidy Turley, where he played an active role on the firm’s Corporate Services team as well as the Management Committee and was head of the Industrial Department prior to joining Lee & Associates Minnesota. In 2015 Poppe was recognized as the MNCAR Broker of the Year. Additionally, he currently is the Mayor of Osseo, Minnesota.
Thomsen, who spent 11 years with Cushman & Wakefield, formerly CTMT, prior to that he spent five years at Welsh Companies, now Colliers, is a specialist in office sales and leasing within the West Metro of Minneapolis-St. Paul region. He has represented landlords for more than 2 million square feet of space and has been involved in more than 200 transactions in the last six years. In 2007, he was named the Office Broker of the Year. A member of Minnesota Commercial Association of Real Estate (MNCAR) and the NAIOP, Thomsen graduated from the University of Iowa with a BS in economics and an International Business Certificate.