Grubb Ellis Co

Venerable commercial real estate brokerage Grubb & Ellis Co. will sell its assets to the parent company of rival Newmark Knight Frank as part of a prepackaged bankruptcy, the firms said Tuesday. BGC Partners Inc., a New York financial services firm that acquired Newmark Knight Frank in October, agreed to buy essentially all the assets of Santa Ana-based Grubb & Ellis for an undisclosed price. Grubb & Ellis will conduct its asset sale under Section 363 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code and has commenced Chapter 11 proceedings in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

Ten top executives at Grubb & Ellis Co., the nation's biggest independent commercial brokerage firm, have taken a 15% pay cut, The Times has learned. Linda Greenlee, vice president of corporate communications for the San Francisco-based firm, said the officials--including Hal Ellis, the company's chairman and chief executive officer whose compensation package last year was worth $257,000--took the cuts voluntarily "to demonstrate their concern over the company's financial situation."

Harold "Hal" A. Ellis Jr., a founder of real estate services firm Grubb & Ellis Co. and one of the best known figures in U.S. real estate, died Monday of metastatic melanoma at his home in Piedmont, Calif. He was 77. Ellis built a small Oakland brokerage into a powerhouse whose circular yellow and black signs dot thousands of stores, offices, factories and other commercial properties for sale or lease across the country.

After a dismal 1991, slightly higher demand for office, retail and industrial space should stabilize Southern California's beleaguered commercial real estate market this year, according to an optimistic report released Thursday by Grubb & Ellis Co. "In 1991 we were on the deathbed," said Robert O. Bach, director of research for the San Francisco-based commercial real estate brokerage firm. "We're sitting up now, and we're conscious."

Fewer vacancies and higher rents marked Ventura County's commercial real estate market in 1995, and more of the same--plus a boom in retail construction--is expected in the new year, real estate analysts said Wednesday. Although the market stalled for a few months while the fate of the Point Mugu naval base hung in the balance, the office, shopping and industrial sectors overall showed signs of growth, said officials with Grubb & Ellis Co. in the company's latest analysis of property trends.

As an international economic crisis dumps widespread woe on the commercial real estate industry, Los Angeles-based giant CB Richard Ellis Inc. is bracing for trouble. For decades, it has been the big-dog deal maker and property manager helping hammer together the office core of the nation's downtowns, its far-flung industrial parks and vast shopping districts.