People & Projects to Know: Brokers

Anthony Lydon

Managing director

Commercial real estate is a family business for Anthony Lydon, a 30-year veteran in the supply chain industry.

Today, Lydon, who goes by Tony, works as the managing director at JLL. He is proud of his accomplishments, but says he is most proud to see his family follow in his footsteps. Lydon’s daughter works for the private equity development company ViaWest and his son and nephew both work as part of the JLL team. Lydon explains there was never any pressure for his children to enter the business; rather, they all naturally had dispositions that perfectly fit the industry.

“I think you really have to have the right personality to be in various areas of the business,” says Lydon. “You have to be a real people person. When I look at family members who are in the business, they have a passion for people and a passion for helping others, serving others to find an acceptable solution, whatever the objective is.”

Lydon enjoys serving as a role model and mentor for his family and colleagues. He has even more family in the business in his previous home of Chicago, where he graduated from DePaul University with a master’s degree in business administration. He spent the first half of his 30-year career in Chicago, starting out in a local industrial brokerage firm while still in grad school.

Lydon says the transition to the Phoenix market was one of the most exciting and defining periods of his career. He was fascinated to see the way the Phoenix metropolitan area has grown out of the recent recession. “You can just feel and taste the maturation of our marketplace, with all the infill activity that’s going on downtown,” Lydon adds.

He sees the rise in urban developments throughout Phoenix as a great opportunity for his company, saying that e-commerce and the “Amazon boom” have driven up the need for JLL’s type of space. According to Lydon, the buildings that JLL sees coming out of the ground are larger and more sophisticated than they have ever been.

Lydon acknowledges that his company must continue to adapt in the ever-changing Phoenix market, adding that when Phoenix was a much smaller market, it was necessary to be a generalist. However, it is now essential for success to be vertically and geographically focused. “It’s been a good thing for me to focus on just one specific geographic area and product type that I understand, and live, breathe and eat it every day,” he says.

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