Newmark Knight Frank (NKF) is pleased to announce the addition of real estate visionary Christopher Crooks to the Las Vegas office. Joining as senior managing director, Crooks will build his tenant representation practice, with a focus on delivering strategic real estate services and enhancing workplace environments.
Hailing from the East Coast, Crooks has spent the past 26 years involved in brokerage at Cresa in Boston and Washington D.C., where he specialized in providing customized tenant representation services for users and tenants of office and industrial assets. His clients include CDMSmith, FusionStorm, Kaman, Lionbridge Technologies, TrueMotion, Veracode and Zipcar.
“NKF is very fortunate to have Chris Crooks relocate to Las Vegas from the East Coast,” noted NKF Executive Vice President and Southwest Region Market Leader Greg May. “Chris already has great familiarity with this market — both his kids were here working in the hospitality industry — and he understands the growth opportunities available in Las Vegas with our high quality of life, relatively low cost of living, growing, world-class industries and enviable position as a destination city. Not to mention the warmer weather! Chris’ initial focus will be building a robust tenant representation practice for the Las Vegas community, and I am eager to see where his imagination and experience takes him as he settles in.”
With broad experience in all aspects of commercial real estate, Crooks’ specialties include portfolio strategic planning, site selection, local and national corporate real estate, build-to-suit projects and international real estate acquisitions and dispositions. In his vision to expand specialty tenant representation services, Crooks spearheaded numerous company initiatives while at Cresa, including co-founding the Armed Forces Practice Group in 2016 as well as an educational and culture platform for the company’s national Board of Directors, which he was elected to in 2014.
“I am very proud of my work at Cresa and so thrilled at the opportunities here for me at NKF,” commented Crooks. “Between NKF’s reputation for savvy leadership, its best-in-class full-service platform and notable service line growth — especially in the last six years factored in with the incredible draw of Las Vegas, and that my kids had already moved here, it’s crystal clear that this is the right time and place for my family and me.”
Crooks is a sustaining Member of the Association of the United States Army and also Chairman and CEO of REC4AF, a non-profit organization that dedicates itself to hiring veterans and their families into the real estate industry. “It’s very important to me to foster veteran-owned companies as well as companies that support the Armed Forces in their real estate needs and this focus was part of my inspiration for the Armed Forces Practice Group,” noted Crooks, who added he expects to keep his non-profit running on the side while he grows his Las Vegas network.
“NKF’s Las Vegas operation has been actively growing its footprint in the last two years, adding specialists in valuation and advisory, capital markets, multifamily, property management and tenant representation. Chris is a welcome addition to our outstanding team,” concluded May.
