Meet the Team
Commercial One Real Estate
Commercial One Real Estate is a diversified commercial real estate company, specializing in brokerage, development, property management, consulting, construction management and supervision. Commercial One Real Estate was formed in 1993 by its two principals Todd Phillips and Gregory Harkness.
Greg Harkness
Greg began his real estate career with the Safeway Stores, Inc. (Safeway) Real Estate Department in 1975. At Safeway Greg was responsible for new store development. This included site acquisition and lease negotiation on behalf of Safeway. Greg was also responsible for identifying new store locations and then leasing or purchasing the location for more than fifty (50) Safeway stores.
Greg joined Stanley J. Williams Development Company in 1980 as Executive Vice President of Real Estate and Development. During his tenure with Stanley J. Williams Development Company Greg put together a team that located, developed and leased twenty two (22) grocery anchored shopping centers.
In 1984 Greg entered the real estate brokerage community by listing, marketing and disposing of fifty four (54) closed Safeway facilities. In mid 1993 Mr. Harkness joined Commercial One Real Estate and was engaged by Arthur Gochman, owner of Academy Sports and Outdoors. While with Academy Sports and Outdoors, Greg obtained twenty four (24) new locations.
Todd Phillips
In 1993 Todd Phillips and Greg Harkness came together to form Commercial One Real Estate. Later that same year Safeway’s Real Estate Department sought out Commercial One Real Estate to assist them in leasing, managing, and disposing of twenty five (25) closed grocery facilities. Working together for the next two years Greg and Todd provided the property management and leasing for all twenty five (25) of these Safeway closed facilities.
In late 1998 Safeway purchased Houston based Randall’s-Tom Thumb Grocery Company. Shortly after the purchase Safeway closed twenty eight (28) of the stores located in Texas. All twenty eight (28) Randall’s-Tom Thumb stores plus an additional nine other Safeway facilities were leased or sold to national retailers by Commercial One Real Estate (Greg and Todd) by the end of 2005.
In 2006 Safeway closed thirty one (31) more stores in its Texas division of Randall’s -Tom Thumb. Safeway engaged Commercial One Real Estate to review and evaluate each closing property. Commercial One Real Estate participated in structuring a transaction that disposed of all 31 properties from the Safeway portfolio.