Parkway Property hires Duncan as development director

Parkway Property Investments LLC has hired a veteran Orlando commercial real estate developer and land broker to head its development division.

Whit Duncan comes to Orlando-based Parkway from Bishop Beale Duncan, a commercial real estate brokerage firm where he was a principal since joining the operation in October 2018.

As Managing Director of Development at Parkway, Duncan is expected to oversee work on a planned five million-square-foot industrial and business park in Lakeland, which would be the company’s first industrial project in Florida.

Parkway and Silverpeak Real Estate Partners, a New York-based firm formed in 2010 that has acquired more than $19 billion in assets, acquired a 730-acre tract in Lakeland for the planned development for $10 million late last year.

Development on the industrial hub is expected to begin before the close of the first half of 2020, according to a Parkway statement.

“His strong development experience and expertise, as well as track record in the real estate industry, will be instrumental to supporting Parkway’s existing and future development projects,” Parkway CEO James Heistand says in a statement regarding Duncan.

Prior to Bishop Beale, Duncan was president of the commercial business division at Crescent Communities, where he developed more than two dozen office buildings containing more than six million square feet of space in the Primera Office Park; Altamonte Gateway, Orlando Research Park and in Tampa. He also oversaw development of a trio of industrial buildings with more than 900,000 square feet.

In all, Duncan has participated in transactions totaling more than $2.1 billion. In 1999, he was named “Developer of the Year” by a Florida chapter of the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA).

Duncan will remain a principal at Bishop Beale, which Parkway has retained to lease a forthcoming 80,000-square-foot office building in Winter Park.

Parkway has about $3.2 billion in assets under management and operates or services nearly 22 million square feet of commercial space in Florida and six other states.

Last year, the company teamed with Swiss-based Partners Group to buy a handful of Tampa office buildings with more than 750,000 square feet, including the 19-story WeWork Place building downtown, for $157.1 million.