Realtors rebrand former parks branch
[attach]847[/attach]At a Sept. 22 cocktail party and celebration at Alley Katz on Yonge St., a sound system blared REO Speedwagon’s “Roll With the Changes” as a slideshow flashed pictures of employees across the screen.
This wasn’t an exercise in corporate downsizing — rather the opposite.
Amid glass clinking and welcoming hugs, management and realtors at Royal LePage Real Estate Services celebrated the rebrand of their Yonge St. and Lawrence branch, along with their company’s recent acquisition of Sutton Group Granite Hill Realty.
The newly named Royal LePage on Yonge, formerly known as The Parks Branch, now boasts over 30 new realtors as a result of the sale. Realtors had a choice as to which corporately owned Royal LePage office they could work at, and Trish Manning says all but two moved to the Yonge St. office.
“I was so flattered people liked the energy here,” says Manning, broker manager for the Yonge St. office. Such a clean transition, she adds, is highly unusual in the real estate business.
The fit was perfect, as Granite Hill Realty owner Elmar Moser has had a long history with the Yonge St. office, starting there as a salesperson in the 1970s and acting as the office manager in the ’90s. Many of Moser’s employees who started with him at the Yonge St. office so many years ago are returning there for a second time.
“It was very much a reunion of sorts,” Manning says.
Moser, now a realtor with the new Yonge St. office, says he’s delighted to be back.
“I couldn’t think of a better option to shift my career into a lower gear,” he wrote in an email.
“To come back again, after building my own company … for the last 10 years, is coming full circle not once, but twice.”
Manning headed up the rebrand initiative at the Yonge St. office and is equally pleased about the deal.
“He was such a well-respected manager,” she says of Moser.
“He ran a class operation.”
The old Parks branch was ready for a change, she says, and bringing in the Granite Hill people dialed up the rebranding initiative.
Part of the new vision of the Yonge branch is to connect even more with the community, Manning says. There have been so many changes in the marketplace, she adds, that people have all kinds of questions. All they need to do is drop in and chat, no pressure added.
“You don’t have to be ready to pound that sign into the lawn.”
The branch is also redeveloping its website, [url]www.rlponyonge.com[/url], which should launch at the end of 2009. Manning is seeing a more interactive web presence that will have a blog component, allow locals to post information about community events, and give residents the opportunity to ask realtors questions.
