Colliers continues role as major commercial real estate player
Small Business Spotlight for The Memphis Daily News
Aug. 17, 2013
Wilkinson & Snowden Inc. helped lead the industrial warehouse revolution in Memphis at a prescient time.
It was the 1960s when the commercial real estate firm founded by Russell Wilkinson and Robert Snowden began developing Airport Industrial Park. The firm was the brokerage arm of the development, and it was just before the founding of a company called Federal Express.
“With the advent of FedEx, the entire business began to change more and more, and it gained momentum as the years went on because of the FedEx factor,” said Gene Woods, president of the modern-day Memphis company.
In 1991, Wilkinson & Snowden partnered with a global real estate concern to become Colliers Wilkinson & Snowden and, in 2010, became Colliers International.
These days, the company of 50 employees is broken into two distinct offices – Asset Services and Brokerage Services. Though they work closely together, they keep two physical addresses, separated in East Memphis by the wide moat of Poplar Avenue.
“It’s a good way for our customers to see the differentiation between our two business types,” said Andy Cates, executive vice president of Brokerage Services, while emphasizing the synergy within the company, “but I would imagine that I talk to the guys in that office (Asset Services) 10 to 12 times a day about deals I’m working on, what they’re doing, the market and everything else.”
On the other side of that six-lane, asphalt fissure is Brad Kornegay, president of Asset Services, representing the institutional ownership and landlords of warehouse, office and retail spaces.
When Kornegay made the move to Colliers from Trammell Crow in 2004, it was with assets of 9 million square feet in tow. Today, he and his team lease or manage approximately 35 million square feet encompassing nearly 300 buildings and 477 tenants. The vast majority of that property is industrial warehousing and distribution . . . (read more)