Fort Collins, Denver Sperry Van Ness franchises merging, expanding in Colorado

FORT COLLINS — The Sperry Van Ness commercial real estate franchises in Fort Collins, Denver and Chicago announced Tuesday that they’re partnering to form a new company called Sperry Van Ness/Denver Commercial that will expand the brokerage firm’s presence throughout Colorado.

The deal merges the Denver and Fort Collins franchises and recapitalizes and restructures the ownership of the two previously independent entities. Steve Kawulok, who started the Fort Collins franchise in 2007, will serve as managing broker of the new company and oversee the entire Colorado operation. In addition to Kawulok, Troy Meyer and Kevin Matthews of the Denver office will serve as managing directors, along with Al Stepan, Michael Thanasouras and Scott Maesel from Chicago.

The new company will be based in Denver, with the Fort Collins office serving as the Northern Colorado division. Kawulok said he’ll likely split his time between the two, which are both expected to grow.

Matthews and Meyer had been running a two-man office in Denver focused primarily on investment commercial real estate. That office has grown to seven brokers. Kawulok said the plan is be at 10 brokers in the Denver office by later this fall and add another 10 during 2016.

“We’ve started with (Matthews and Meyer) as a great nucleus, and we’re adding brokers to complement what they were doing,” said Kawulok, who added that the nine-broker Fort Collins office should grow by two or three.

The deal with the Chicago franchise — the top producer in the SVN network — makes the two sister companies that will be able to share resources and clients, and it connects the Colorado operation with capital and investors from the Midwest. Plus, Kawulok said, other SVN franchises from around the country had been asking for an expanded presence on the Front Range.

“We expect to get a fair amount of inbound activity from our colleagues across the nation,” Kawulok said. “Having the Chicago tie-in has already proven beneficial to us in opening doors to new opportunities.”

The Fort Collins SVN office had previously served Larimer, Weld and Boulder counties, while the Denver office was focused on the metro area. The plan now is for the Colorado operation to span south to Colorado Springs, west along the Interstate 70 corridor to the Western Slope, and north to Wyoming.

The new ownership arrangement officially brings to an end the Fort Collins office’s affiliation with The Group Inc., a primarily residential brokerage whose holding company The Group Financial Partners had a 10 percent nonvoting stake in the SVN Fort Collins office. That stake was bought out this summer to pave the way for the Sperry Van Ness/Denver Commercial deal. Craig Hau left Sperry Van Ness/The Group Commercial in the wake of the split and returned to The Group Inc. to serve as senior commercial adviser and partner.

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