Altus Group Property Tax US helps its commercial real estate clients navigate and manage often-complex tax matters, so it’s a good sign the company has high praise for the City of Keller for helping them solve its own real-estate matter: consolidating a few offices into a single, desirable location – on a tight deadline and in the middle of a pandemic.
“Altus is a conglomerate of multiple companies primarily in the CRE industry. We focus on property tax, locations, and incentives, unclaimed property tax,” said Trey Beazley. He serves as president of Altus Group Property Tax US, leading more than 180 professionals across ten offices. “We also own a company called ARGUS, which is the platform on which most real estate companies run their cash-flow programs and manage their assets. We also have another group called RVA, which is under our Altus Analytics and does portfolio valuations for big pension funds. Everything we do is tied to real estate, from consulting and software product development. We gather a lot of data. We are a data aggregator, and we use this in our business operations.”
When he began looking to consolidate a couple of local offices, he got in touch with developer Terry Wilkinson, who ultimately led them to a property adjacent to an event venue in Keller, The Bowden. The deal included acquiring the land in front of the venue and providing some community cross parking that would benefit events held at the venue by the city and community groups.
Armed with some must-haves like the ease of access off FM 1709 and room to expand, Wilkinson identified the site and went to work with the City of Keller, who he credits with being fast, friendly, and helpful in educating him on the nuances of developing in the community. Wilkinson says while he’s completed several projects in northeast Tarrant County, this experience in Keller was a first and couldn’t have gone more smoothly.
“Trey’s leases on his other buildings were coming due, so there was a timeline that we needed to meet. That’s where the city really stepped in to help. What in other communities could have taken six months we got done in 45 days here with the help of staff,” Wilkinson says.
Beazley echoes that sentiment and adds that the community atmosphere of Keller sealed the deal.
“One, we wanted a community feel. We wanted more of a household feel. We didn’t want to be in a big corporate campus or a big corporate office location. We wanted to be somewhere where our employees could live close, they have good schools in the area, they have good shopping in the area, good retail, good hotels. All of that is available here,” Beazley says. “Part of the reason behind this was I had lived in this region for the last 25-plus years and loved the community aspect of it - the friendliness of it, the people. It was very dynamic when we started to bring other people in, employees from other locations, some from California, and they just fell in love with the community nature of everything here. That was really key for us because we don’t operate from the standpoint of [wearing] a coat-and-tie every day. We are here where people are a family, and they feel it not just in the office but also in the community. And that was very important for us. Our retention of our employees is second to none. We have a long history of employees. I have had people with me for 25-plus years. We sold our company to Altus in 2013, and every person that was with me then is still with me today, and that was because of the community feel and family feel of being in a rural community.”
Hear more about how transparency, relationships, and reciprocity brought commercial real estate consulting and software conglomerate the Altus Group to Keller, Texas, in this episode of Gone to Texas, the official podcast of Texas Economic Development Connection.
Special thanks to our sponsor for this episode, the City of Keller Economic Development
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