The location for Dermalogica's new worldwide headquarters in Los Angeles was secured by Divaris Real Estate.

Trust is the Foundation of DRE's Corporate Services

VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA -- No greater compliment can be paid to Michael Divaris, president of Divaris Real Estate, Inc., than to have a client invite him and his team into the inner workings of their market expansion program or property purchase proceedings.  It’s a level of respect that not all companies have the know-how to earn.

“Corporate services is a relatively new science, a new niche in the market that has taken off within the past 15 years.  As corporations have evolved towards more scrutiny over the bottom-line, with the necessity to evaluate each department’s needs and job functions, a trend emerged for companies to retain outside expertise for real estate services.  Also there is more appreciation for negotiations to be fair to both parties,” says Divaris.

            At Divaris Real Estate, however, corporate real estate services was the natural evolution of a concept the company already employed—when representing a client, all that matters is that the client’s expectations are fulfilled and their confidence is won.  Divaris points to the creation of personal relationships between Divaris' agents and their clients’ senior representatives.  This is then built upon by unbiased, objective market research.  A fair result comes when all parties understand the local market conditions.

It’s these concepts that have kept core corporate clients such as Dermalogica, Inc. and Hayes, Seay, Mattern & Mattern, Inc. (HSMM) coming back for DRE’s services over several years.

            Headquartered in Los Angeles, Dermalogica, Inc. is a multinational, skin care manufacturer with distributors in more than 35 countries, on five continents.  Over the past five years, DRE has worked with Dermalogica to open offices in 16 cities across the United States and Canada, including Boston, Mass., Miami, Denver, Colo., Toronto, Canada and, most recently, the relocation of its headquarters to a 145,000-square-foot office and distribution center in Carson, Calif.  

Each transaction comes with its own set of expectations from the client.  The new corporate office was a project three years in the making.  It began with Dermalogica’s desire to combine their Los Angeles facilities into one location.   The headquarters needed to not only accommodate corporate executives, but also to serve as a facility for product development, training of the professional skin care therapists of The International Dermal Institute, and as a distribution facility as well.

In anticipation of a possible lengthy search, a short term extension of the existing lease was renegotiated so the company could continue business throughout the search process.

DRE selected regional real estate firm The Klabin Company as their local resource partner.   “We conducted our interview process with five leading commercial real estate firms in the South Bay area,” Divaris said. “The Klabin Company had superior knowledge of the market.”

Existing sites and build-to-suit opportunities in Torrance, El Segundo and Culver City were considered. After research into Dermalogica’s employee commute patterns and the review of Best and Final Offers from four developers, a build-to-suit site was selected in The Dominguez Technology Center in Carson.

Together, DRE and Klabin negotiated a long-term lease for a shell building that would comprise the corporate offices, the Institute, a product development department and the worldwide distribution facility.  Construction began in the second quarter of 2004 and was completed in the summer of 2005.

            Dermalogica is one of the select Corporate Real Estate clients serviced by Divaris Real Estate.  Another company, Hayes Seay Mattern & Mattern, and one of its divisions, Watershed Concepts, have grown exponentially in the five years the group has been represented by DRE.  HSMM is one of the largest architectural and engineering design firms on the East Coast, doing business since 1947 from 17 offices. Watershed Concepts’ lease in Greensboro, N.C. was one of nine transactions completed by Divaris for HSMM in the past 12 months.  The division provides engineering and geographic information systems (GIS) for governmental clients on large, water resource projects. 

In addition, HSMM recently combined two existing offices and expanded into a new, 17,000-square-foot executive office building in Roanoke, Va. 

            When servicing clients such as these, Divaris understands that there’s no hard and fast rule; each client has its own criteria.  “It comes down to the quality of service,” he said. “If the quality drops, the client goes elsewhere.  How do we add value to the client?  We’re constantly using our market knowledge and negotiation expertise to review existing leases and to accommodate the client’s overall real estate needs in every situation. And we work very hard at doing it right!”

The firm works with the “best-in-class” service provider in markets where it does not have a presence.  DRE is a principal member of CORE, a network of mid-sized commercial real estate firms that provide a full line of services to clients in over 70 major markets across the country.

Divaris’ Corporate Services Division currently manages six corporate clients’ real estate departments.  This includes lease administration, site selection, and lease negotiations in 57 locations across the country.   The total portfolio of real estate of DRE’s Corporate Services clients exceeds 500,000 square feet.