Kevin Beaudry named SIOR Canada's Office Broker of the Year in GTA

Industry veteran captures prestigious award in first year with Avison Young

MISSISSAUGA, ON, Dec. 21, 2011 /CNW/ - Martin Dockrill, Avison Young Principal and Managing Director of the company's Mississauga office, announced today that industry veteran Kevin M. Beaudry has been named SIOR (Society of Industrial and Office Realtors) Canada's Greater Toronto Area (GTA) Office Broker of the Year for 2011.

Beaudry was presented with the award December 13 during SIOR Canada's annual Leaders & Legends dinner at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in downtown Toronto. He received the honour after joining Avison Young less than four months ago as a Principal and Senior Vice-President, focusing on corporate real estate advisory in the GTA West market and Ottawa. He is based in Avison Young's Mississauga office.

"Avison Young salutes Kevin for capturing this prestigious award in his first year with our company," comments Dockrill. "The award is a testament to Kevin's professionalism, dedication to his clients and superior knowledge of the GTA commercial real estate market. Kevin continues to serve as a positive role model for many of our young and emerging brokers as we carry out a rapid expansion program in Canada and the U.S. while looking to Europe and Asia."

Beaudry joined Avison Young in August 2011 after spending the previous six months with TrueNorth Real Estate Advisors in Mississauga. Prior to that, he was a 20-plus-year veteran with DTZ Barnicke Limited.

Beaudry was selected for the award by a committee of peers comprising GTA brokerages, landlords and developers. The criteria for the award focuses around the impact the broker has in the market, his or her reputation in the industry, and community/industry involvement.

Based in Washington, DC, SIOR is the world's leading professional commercial and industrial real estate association. With more than 3,000 members in 580 cities in 26 countries, SIOR represents today's most knowledgeable, experienced and successful commercial real estate brokerage specialists.

Beaudry garnered the award on the basis of his role in completing several significant transactions in the GTA. Beaudry's recent sale of the former Nortel Carling Campus in Ottawa to Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) was also a watershed deal for the Ottawa region.

The Nortel Carling Campus was a 2.3-million-square-foot (msf) master planned area of 11 interconnected office and laboratory buildings situated on 350 acres of land in Kanata, located in suburban Ottawa. At the time of the sale, the Nortel campus was leased to 800,000 square feet (sf) of technology companies representing the divested business that Nortel sold as part of its global divestiture program. The federal government will be taking vacant possession of the campus over time, and it is anticipated that the site will eventually be modified and retrofitted to accommodate more than 10,000 Department of National Defence employees. This transaction has spawned an immediate-term office demand spike from the existing 800,000 sf of in-place tenants such as Ericsson, Ciena, Avaya and Genband, who have all had to expedite relocation programs out of the campus and into new facilities in the Kanata, Ontario region.

"This is a great honor for me and I am very pleased to be recognized by my peers in this way, especially given the number of great submissions," says Beaudry. "Nortel Carling Campus represented one of Nortel's final transactions and as such was a bittersweet victory for me because the transaction capped both the end of a global real estate legacy and also the end of some great long-term working relationships we had within the Nortel global real estate team."

Beaudry adds: "I was extremely fortunate to be part of a first-class team that included support from Ogilvy Renault (now Norton Rose), BMO Capital Markets, and Price Waterhouse Coopers. It was definitely a challenging and complex assignment that was executed perfectly by our team within an uncertain political and economic time. In the end, I can say that many people are delighted that Kanata has finally secured a major building block out of the federal government's massive Capital Region footprint."

Throughout his career, Beaudry has specialized in the sale and leasing of office facilities, industrial properties, land and design-build projects across Canada. He has been involved in more than 25 msf of office and industrial transactions across 35 municipalities, representing many large internationally-recognized brands such as Nortel, Anixter, Ryder Logistics, Mitsubishi, Pratt & Whitney, Smurfit-MBI, Campbell Soup, McKesson, Loblaws, Rogers, National Bank, MTS Allstream and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Beaudry was recently re-elected as President of the SIOR Central Canadian Chapter for 2012. He was also recently appointed as a Trustee to the Washington-based organization's SIOR Foundation (SIORF). SIORF is a non-profit organization engaged in expanding, educating and enriching the commercial real estate community. Future plans include creating a $10-million endowment fund. In 2010 the foundation issued more than $160,000 in funds within Canada and the U.S. for scholarships and educational initiatives.

Founded in 1978, Avison Young is Canada's largest independently-owned commercial real estate services company. Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Avison Young is also the largest Canadian-owned, principal-managed commercial real estate brokerage firm in North America. Comprising more than 800 real estate professionals in 26 offices across Canada and the U.S., the full-service commercial real estate company provides value-added, client-centric investment sales, leasing, advisory, management, financing and mortgage placement services to owners and occupiers of office, retail, industrial and multi-residential properties.

• Editors/Reporters: please click on link to view and download photo of award presentation
http://www.avisonyoung.com/library/pdf/Media_Releases/Temp/Kevin_Beaudry_Broker_of_the_Year_SIOR[1].JPG

Photo caption: Geoff Kreusser, President of SIOR , presents Avison Young's Kevin Beaudry with SIOR Canada's 2011 Greater Toronto Area (GTA) Office Broker of the Year Award

For further information:

For further information/comment/photos:

• Sherry Quan, National Director of Communications & Media Relations, Avison Young: [phone]; cell: [phone]
  
  
• Martin Dockrill, Principal and Managing Director, Mississauga, Avison Young: [phone]
  
  
• Kevin M. Beaudry, Principal, Avison Young: [phone]

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