Growth, Opportunity, and Culture: Inside Cresa’s NorthStar Acquisition

At Cresa, growth isn’t just about expanding our footprint, it’s about finding the right partners who share our occupier-first mindset and collaborative culture. That’s why we’re excited to have welcomed NorthStar Owners Representation to our team. With 25 years of experience in higher education, life sciences, and cultural institutions, NorthStar brought deep project management expertise to our Philadelphia and Conshohocken offices. But beyond their capabilities, what made this partnership the right fit was a shared commitment to empowering occupiers and a culture of trust and growth. In this interview, Ron Street and Rosella Harvey share why joining Cresa felt like the right move for their team and how this alignment will create even greater opportunities for our clients.

This transcript has been edited slightly for readability.

In 2024, Cresa hired NorthStar Owners Representation to enhance its project management capabilities.

Ron Street

We vetted Cresa for about a year and a half before we were able to close our deal. And a lot of it was wrapped around culture.

Rosella Harvey

It was the number one thing we looked for, was having the right cultural fit. Not only for those of us who owned NorthStar, but for our team. We talked to more than one company, and we could tell pretty quickly if it was the right cultural fit. And Cresa frankly was the only one that could meet our cultural requests.

Ron

And it was funny because when we were looking at it, one of the questions was “where could our staff go?”, “How could they grow in the organization?” And there were just so many choices. One of our staff was from Guana. And he was like “Do they have an office in Guana? Do they have an office in Dubai?” And all those things are possible within Cresa. I think it’s extraordinary. With a lot of other organizations, those opportunities were not present.

Rosella

The opportunity for growth for the team. The opportunity for people to do their job and do it well, to not be micromanaged. All of us are always open to hearing ways to improve.

Ron

When I sat with our staff to tell them this was going to take place, I said this is really not about me, it’s not about money. It’s about your ability to grow. Have resources, increase your platform and have somewhere to go beyond what we were able to provide at any one point in time, because we were a small family business basically.

Rosella

Cresa said to us, you all do what you do really well, that’s why we want to acquire you. So why would we tell you how to do it or when to do it. Keep doing what you do and do it really well. That was extremely attractive to our team.

Ron

They welcomed us with open arms. There is no doubt about that.