Christiansen & Portela offers a full range of commercial and industrial real-estate services in the Puerto Rico market to corporate and institutional clients around the world.

The firm is a niche player, devoting all of its time and energy creating value and opportunities for its clients. Because of its extensive local market presence, unique knowledge of the major real estate players, and continuing relationships with its clients, C&P is ideally placed to meet the real-estate demands of its customers.

The company’s services include property acquisition, dispositions, leasing, tenant representation, site selection, and advisory services.

The firm’s principals, Gerald J. Christiansen and Rafael Portela, have extensive experience in the Puerto Rico market. Christiansen, the firm’s managing partner, was born in San Juan and educated at Georgetown University’s School of Business Administration, from which he graduated in 1976. He has been a licensed real-estate broker in Puerto Rico since 1988 with the GRI designation from the National Real Estate Institute.

Prior to working in Puerto Rico, he was actively involved in the commercial and industrial real estate brokerage business in Washington, D.C., where he forged strong working relationships with major stateside commercial real estate brokerage firms, many of which are actively working with C&P on various projects for their Fortune 500 clients in Puerto Rico.

A few years after moving back to Puerto Rico, Christiansen joined forces with Portela, founder and president of Allied Management Group, a local commercial and industrial real-estate investment and service company. Portela, a graduate of the Wharton School of Finance & Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania, has been involved in the commercial and industrial real estate business in Puerto Rico for more than a quarter-century as a lender, broker, investor, and consultant.

Major dispositions completed by the firm include the sale of the former Seven-Up Bottling Co. facilities in Bayamon, the Puerto Rico Telephone Co.’s transportation center on Martinez Nadal Avenue, the former Puerto Rico Telephone Co. multistory headquarters building in Caparra, J.C. Penney’s distribution center in La Muda, and PRTC’s multipurpose complex in Caparra, to which Farmacias El Amal recently relocated its Caparra Shopping Center store.

What makes C&P unique, differentiating it from other real-estate brokerage companies in Puerto Rico, is the partners’ ability to capitalize on their areas of expertise for the benefit of their clients. Christiansen’s marketing savvy and Portela’s intricate knowledge of the contractual components of commercial real estate transactions enable the firm to offer its clients a level of service not previously available in Puerto Rico.

Additionally, their combined knowledge, experience, aggressive marketing techniques, and innovative solutions to real estate problems have placed them in a leadership position within the commercial real estate brokerage community.

But C&P is much more than just its partners; it is a dedicated group of real-estate professionals composed of six licensed real-estate agents and brokers and support staff committed to providing the firm’s clients with viable real-estate solutions.

Major assignments now being handled by C&P under exclusive brokerage arrangements include leasing of the state-of-the-art Capitol Office Building project in Miramar, which was substantially leased prior to completion of construction; sale of the 200,000 square foot ReedCo-DentCo facility in Humacao; sale of the 80,000-square-foot Filtertec plant in Patillas; sale of the Corporate Center at the Roosevelt office condominium project adjacent to Doral Plaza; leasing of the soon-to-be constructed 100,000 square foot DASE Office Building in Guaynabo; and leasing of the Plaza Guaynabo Shopping Center, currently under construction.

The firm is also actively involved in the establishment of various U.S. Postal Service facilities in Puerto Rico.