CIM rehires the architect of its opportunity zones platform

CIM Group is bringing back one of the architects of its opportunity zones platform: Garett Bjorkman has returned as principal and co-head of opportunity zones, IREI reported, sharing the role with Robert Dupree, a CIM principal whose own history across the firm's platforms runs more than a decade. Bjorkman worked at CIM from 2015 to 2024 as managing director of portfolio oversight and helped launch the opportunity zones effort in 2019; he is based in Phoenix and brings more than 15 years across sourcing, asset management, product development, and portfolio management.

The rehire is CIM's second senior investment addition this month: In early September the firm brought Adam Lerer, PIMCO Prime Real Estate's former head of special situations, onto its real estate equity desk to source deals across core and value-add strategies. Lerer arrived from outside to widen origination; Bjorkman returns to a platform he helped stand up. For a firm that has been simplifying its balance sheet, doing both inside the same month reads as a bench being rebuilt rather than reshuffled.

The platform's capital story is unchanged by the announcement, which carried a title and no capital detail: no fund close, no target, no new vehicle. Rehiring the person who built the platform in 2019 suggests CIM sees its constraint as execution—running and scaling what the portfolio already holds—rather than origination; a defensible bet if the next chapter is monetization of standing assets, and the weaker staffing call if it is new deal sourcing, since a returning alum carries institutional memory of CIM's own projects instead of a fresh relationship book. Bjorkman's first tour ended in 2024, and the firm has decided two years away did not cost him the context that matters here.

CIM's recent transactions have leaned toward the sell side: in August it sold two Tysons office towers to Finmarc for $77.5 million, the $168-per-square-foot print our coverage flagged as a marker for suburban office pricing, and weeks later bought a 134-unit White Plains apartment building, a small step with strategic meaning because of the office exit behind it. The next data point for opportunity zones will be a vehicle, or the absence of one. Until a fund is named, the co-head structure is the clearest sign the platform remains a priority.