Letter from the AIRE President

Dear AIRE Members & Friends:

Serving as AIRE president is an honor I accept with great conviction and pride. It is a position I have aspired to for a long time. The road to the presidency, and getting to know the organization better from top to bottom, has been both fun and a learning experience.

When you think of AIRE, it would be easy to identify the association by our numbers:  we have 385 active members and 109 associate members who are the leaders in the industrial real estate industry and account for more than 90% of all industrial real estate transactions in the Chicago metropolitan market.

Some may think of AIRE for our regular lunch-and-learn events, ethics classes, golf events, trade shows and market tours.

Still others look at AIRE and the cornerstones of our association—ethics, cooperation and education—as a guiding force in the way we conduct our business, whether interacting almost daily through use of the AIRE web site and/or exchanging information so that we can better serve our clients.

When you combine all of these views, you come closer to understanding what AIRE really is:  a close-knit association of real estate professionals who work together like no other in the country. 
With this in mind, AIRE in 2008 will be celebrating our membership and recognizing the many talented individuals whose shoulders we have stood on, day after day, throughout our rich and colorful history. We shall continue to spread awareness of AIRE to new brokers, business leaders, and government, while improving every aspect of our web site and exploring other venues to better serve our members.

I would like to thank our past president, Dan Leahy, for his leadership in 2007, along with all of the board members and committee chairs who volunteer their time on our behalf.
I look forward to a fulfilling year in 2008. Please send me your questions or suggestions via e-mail at: rdelisle@lee-associates.com or call me at 847-812-8180.

Thank you for your trust and support.

Richard R. Delisle, SIOR
Principal
Lee & Associates of Illinois LLC