From health-care to mining to engineering positions, it seems Arizona's economy is on the move. After three years of losses, the state has gained jobs for the past three months, and about 10,800 so far this year. More good news: The unemployment rate fell in April to 9.3 percent, from 9.5 percent.

GPE Commercial Advisors - 10 jobs

David Genovese admits that his commercial-real-estate firm is taking a bit of a gamble by expanding its staff and moving into a bigger office during one of the worst commercial-real-estate slumps on record.

But Genovese, president of Scottsdale-based GPE Commercial Advisors, said he is looking beyond the downturn and employment crunch and positioning his company to be at the top of its game when the metro Phoenix economy recovers.

GPE Commercial, a locally owned company founded in 1973, already has expanded its relatively lean staff of brokers and property managers by 20 percent in recent months.

Genovese said he doesn't buy into the notion of commercial real estate as a good-old-boys network. He is building a diverse, high-quality staff of experienced brokers and managers.

His plan is to add at least 10 more employees to the current staff of about 40, which will mean moving into a larger space when the lease on its office, near Scottsdale and Camelback roads, expires in September.

"Right now we are maxed to capacity," Genovese said about the current location.

Several commercial-brokerage firms in the Phoenix area have added property-management staff over the past two years to pick up more business at a time when relatively few sale or lease transactions were taking place.

Genovese said GPE Commercial is doing the opposite, expanding its historical role as a boutique firm specializing in health-care-property management by beefing up the brokerage side of the business and expanding it to all types of commercial property.

"We wanted to grow," he said. "We made a concentrated effort to expand both our property-management company and our brokerage company."

So far, the expansion plan has been a success, Genovese said. The company has expanded the square footage of commercial space under its management to 10 million from 7 million, and its client base has grown by about 40 percent, he said.

Genovese admitted that there are still a lot of problems with the commercial-real-estate market, but that it had reached a necessary first step toward recovery. "People have accepted what's going on out there, and things have started to pick up," he said.

-- J. Craig Anderson, The Arizona Republic - May 29, 2011