Climbing the ladder: Russ Sampson

By KYLE PARKS

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 15, 2001

NEW POSITION: Regional director, Insignia/ESG, Tampa

OLD POSITION: Vice president, Echelon, St. Petersburg

Insignia/ESG is one of the country's largest commercial real estate companies, but it has been quiet lately in the Tampa Bay area.

Russ Sampson's job is to change that.

Sampson, 45, is Insignia's new regional director for the Tampa Bay, Orlando and Jacksonville markets. The company hired him to jump-start Insignia's local operations.

"We want to get our name out there more, to get in on more deals and to expand our portfolio of properties we manage," he said.

Sampson comes to Insignia from Echelon, the St. Petersburg company that owns the Carillon office park and a number of office and apartment properties across the country.

As a vice president at Echelon, Sampson completed more than 500,000 square feet of lease and sales transactions in the Tampa Bay area last year. Before joining Echelon, he was branch manager of Cushman & Wakefield's Tampa office, and also worked for Coldwell Banker Commercial Brokerage in Houston, Dallas and New Jersey.

Insignia, a powerhouse in New York, Chicago, Washington, Atlanta and other top-tier markets, has been concentrating on expanding its presence in cities such as Miami, Phoenix and Seattle the past couple of years.

But as the company did that, little attention was paid to the Tampa Bay area.

Sampson plans to add to the Tampa office's staff of seven brokers and to pick up more management contracts, particularly in Tampa's Westshore area. As of now, much of its local management business is centered on the 100 North Tampa and Bank of America Plaza buildings in downtown Tampa.

Insignia originally came into this market through a deal to buy Paragon Group, which developed a number of Tampa buildings, many in the Westshore district. "It's kind of amazing that now we aren't really in Westshore," Sampson said. "We want to fix that."

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