Woodbridge-based Onyx Equities Expands into Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas

On Feb 27, 2015

Woodbridge-based Onyx Equities, LLC,recently announced that it has opened regional management offices in Crofton, Maryland and Charlotte, North Carolina. Currently, Onyx manages nearly 30 properties in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina – the four states that will be serviced from Onyx’s two new offices.

The Maryland office, which will also service Onyx’s management assets in Virginia, is now under the direction of Jon Lakner. With more than 17 years of industry experience, Lakner has managed nearly 2 million square feet of commercial property. Prior to joining Onyx, Lakner served as a senior property manager at Cassidy Turley where, he oversaw all on-site operations at the 124,000-square-foot Montvale Center in Falls Church, Virginia and the 330,000-square-foot Metro Court I in Hyattsville, Maryland. Before that, he served as a property manager at BECO Management, where he led operations at the 1.2 million-square-foot BECO Park/Washington Business Park in Lanham, Maryland.

Supporting Lakner’s operations in the Carolinas, is senior property manager, Mary Cook who joins the firm from Parmenter Realty.  One of her accomplishments was managing Charlotte’s Fifth Third Center, a 34-floor, class-A office building with a retail concourse and a 10-level parking facility. Cook brings 14 years of experience to the position. Prior to her stint at Parmenter Realty, Cook worked for Behringer Harvard and Trizek Properties. For both companies, she ran the 40-floor Bank of America Plaza in Charlotte. During her time on site, she oversaw major lease renewals, rent recoveries, annual budgets and a major renovation.

“We are very pleased to welcome these professionals to Onyx Equities,” said Onyx co-founder and managing principal, Jonathan Schultz. “We’ve seen tremendous growth in these regions, and we are staffing offices in order to provide the gold standard of service and management that our tenants and clients have come to expect from us.”

Over the course of 2015, the company plans to open several more local offices in order to operate its REO/Receivership platform, which now includes assets in 10 states.  Earlier last year, Onyx brought aboard Wendy Hendrickson, who oversees Onyx’s on-the-ground asset operations in Pennsylvania and Delaware. Hendrickson has been managing property since 1998. She came to Onyx from CBRE, where she managed 1.5 million square feet of REO-assigned and receivership property. Prior to that, she worked for Acorn Development overseeing management of more than 700,000 square feet of commercial assets, including a high-rise office tower.

A principal reason driving the growth of Onyx’s REO/Receivership business is the company’s commitment to what Schultz calls the “Three Ts” of 21^st--century commercial real estate success: talent, technology and team. Onyx’s approach centers on deploying the right talent to the right teams and empowering those teams through technological innovation. This includes the pioneering use of numerous best-of-breed business software applications from which the company has masterminded a seamlessly integrated property management platform.

The Onyx platform allows on-site and regional management teams to streamline every aspect of their operations and communications. Functionalities include a customizable dashboard, management of receivables and payables, cash flow forecasting, tracking of leasing activities, scheduling of maintenance activities, enhanced data analysis and responding to tenant needs.

“The property management professionals who we’ve brought onto our team understand and believe in our collaborative, high-tech approach,” Schultz said. “They realize the critical role that the use of various software applications play in empowering teams and they also understand that the strategic deployment of technology and talent will determine future success in this industry.”

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