When Stephen Silverstein, a managing director at Avison Young, heard that a project management veteran who had left the firm three years ago for a startup might be interested in returning, he set up a meeting.
Silverstein, managing principal of U.S. project management services at Avison Young, and Adam Wright, who had worked at the brokerage from 2014 to 2019, got together for breakfast in early March to discuss future work. Five months after their breakfast meeting at Paul's Family Diner in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, Wright rejoined Avison Young, and he brought teammates Brian Veneri and Chris Megnin with him.
In their new roles at Avison Young, the trio will serve as the anchor of the firm's land development services business in the Northeast and will be available to help in other regions as well. They'll work with clients to secure entitlements and necessary regulatory approvals to get their land ready for development. The team also will consult on what would be the best use for the development sites.
Based in Avison Young's Morristown, New Jersey, office, Wright spearheads the group as director and a principal. Veneri serves as a senior lead. Megnin is a senior project manager.
"It was always the intent to boomerang back around," Wright said in an interview. "I left Avison Young three years ago for an opportunity, a very unique opportunity. And the time to come back came to fruition a few months ago, and I'm very excited to be back in, doing something new in our new service vertical for Avison Young that we're trying to grow and support nationally and regionally."
Wright left Avison Young in August 2019 for food delivery startup Wonder. Veneri and Megnin joined him at Wonder in 2020. Together, the trio oversaw its real estate expansion and managed construction for last-mile vehicle hubs, cold storage warehouses and food production facilities.
As brokerage firms work to grow revenue beyond commissions and property management fees and deepen relationships with clients, several are expanding their peripheral professional services offerings such as project management. Over the past year, Avison Young has aggressively grown its project management division via acquisitions and hiring.
In January, the brokerage added more than 30 interior designers and project managers to its Morristown office when it acquired Studio Eagle, a firm specializing in space planning, interior design and construction management services. Silverstein’s first priority will be to integrate Studio Eagle and the firm's project management teams in New York's tri-state region.
Also this year, Avison Young acquired Boston-based project management firm Dowling Houy, a boutique firm that specializes in the life science sector. On the hiring front, the firm added Arlene Dedier in Toronto as leader of its project management services practice in Canada and Silverstein, who splits his time between Avison Young's offices in Irvine, California, and Morristown.
In addition to the Northeast, Wright and his team plan to work closely with land development colleagues across the country, including Lee Shain in the Carolinas.
"Land development is a strategic component of where we wanted to take the organization," Silverstein said in an interview. "We've already won a big project taking over a Milliken Mill [property in South Carolina] and repurposing it with apartments and hospital and retail and other things. So we're now building on our strategy to be in the land development business."
Avison Young is expanding its land development services as its occupier, owner and investor "clients face increasingly complex business imperatives ... as they evaluate real estate for their service needs and identify their capital investment requirements,” Jeff Heller, a principal and managing director of the New Jersey market, said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Silverstein still looks back on his meal in March with Wright as a fruitful and tasty one. "It was a great breakfast," he said. "It was scrambled eggs and sweet potato fries, grilled, not with oil."