Williams RE announces international ventures - Williams Real Estate Company Inc.'s Williams International Property Advisors involved in France, Mexico

Real Estate Weekly, Nov 18, 1992 by Therese Fitzgerald

The 37,000-acre Marne-la-Vailee area of France, a new urban center located 15 miles east of Paris, will be marketed by the international division of Williams Real Estate.

Williams International Property Advisors (WIPA) has been tapped as exclusive agent in North America by EPAFRANCE and EPAMARINE, two French governmental development agencies.

WIPA also announced the formation of an alliance with a Mexican real estate advisory firm to assist American companies that want to establish-offices there.

According to Stuart Eisenkraft, director of WIPA, Marne-la-Valle, conceived in 1970 and now considered the western hub of commercial development in Europe, has 300,000 square feet of built space available for lease or purchase and 15,000 hectares of vacant land available for sale.

Eisenkraft said they will focus their marketing efforts on major U.S. companies particularly those that deal in consumer goods and those that will provide infrastructure service to Europe's unified economic community (EC). Developers of speculative office space, he said, are not on the hit list.

"They would really only consider it with an anchor tenant," he said.

Corporations that have already set up shop there include: Honda, IBM, Kodak-Pathe, Bristol-Meyers, and Nestle. The Marne-la-Valle includes EuroDisneyland at its eastern-most section.

The area, Eisenkraft said, already has its infrastructure and transportation in place. It is accessible, he said, from all major auto routes and by the RER, the train that begins in Paris and leads to outlying areas. In 1994, it will be reached by the TGV high-speed train.

According to Eisenkraft, housing, shopping and infrastructure at Marnela-Valle were all built simultaneously.

"The French are actually much more sophisticated than we are in urban planning," he said.

Eisenkraft said they will be duplicating the full range of real estate advisory services they offer in the United States.

Mexican Venture

In Mexico, WIPA has formed a joint venture with Corporation Mexicana de Inmuebles (CMI), a major real estate advisory firm. With the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement, it is anticipated that the needs of U.S. companies in Mexico will increase rapidly.

The new venture, Eisenkraft said, will benefit from the guidance of Williams broker Leon Manoff, who was born and raised in Mexico City and has 16 years New York brokerage experience.

The French and Mexican ventures will use the International Commercial Realty Services (ICRS), an alliance of real estate firms in 24 U.S. cities that completed deals last year worth $2.5 billion in aggregate transaction value. Williams is one of the founding members of ICRS.