The Nashville branch of Colliers International is breaking away from the commercial real estate megafirm along with several other former Colliers offices.

The local affiliate of St. Louis-based Turley Martin Tucker will join with Washington, D.C.-based Cassidy & Pinkard, New York's Colliers ABR, Baltimore's Colliers Pinkard, western firms BT Commercial and BRE Commercial and New Jersey-based Colliers Houston. All are former Colliers firms, except for BT – which was with NAI – and BRE, a former Grubb & Ellis affiliate.

The new group will be called Turley Cassidy and will be headquartered in St. Louis. The brand will launch March 1.

Doug Brandon, managing principal of the Nashville office, said there will be few changes day-to-day, but the new grouping presents more opportunities.

"Long-term, it's going to be a stronger platform. We control the brand," he said. "If, for example, we wanted to expand to Memphis, we couldn't do that."

The news comes in the wake of Colliers' announcement Monday of a new venture with FirstService Real Estate Advisors. Brandon said the cleavage and subsequent merger "had a lot to do with" the FirstService announcement.

"To move forward, we had to develop a different strategy. ... It's a great time to be growing [in commercial real estate]. We are in a position we can do that," he said.

The firms of the privately held Cassidy Turley had 420 million square feet of managed space in 57 locations and $15 billion in completed transactions for 2008.