ABOUT

Mark Shields

Founder | Primus Real Estate Services

A small firm with hands on every part of the process.

Primus Real Estate Services was founded in 1999 to do commercial real estate work the way Mark Shields had learned it should be done — by being personally involved in every phase of a project, from the first site visit through the years of ownership that follow.

In four decades of work in Central Texas, Mark has represented major retail and office tenants on their site selection and lease negotiations, represented landlords on the leasing of more than 4.5 million square feet of commercial space, and has developed or renovated multiple retail, office, mixed-use and multi-family projects.

The work has not been limited to brokerage and development in the usual sense. Mark has personally managed entitlements and rezoning, overseen general contracting and construction, handled floodplain remediation, and structured creative solutions to bring the right tenants to the right sites.

That breadth of experience shapes how Primus advises clients today. The firm understands what a transaction looks like from the broker's side, the landlord's side, the developer's side, and the long-term owner's side — because Mark has worked all four. For tenants evaluating a site, that means honest counsel about what a lease will actually mean over twenty years of operation. For landlords and developers, it means a partner who has solved the kinds of execution problems that come up after the deal closes.

Mark began his commercial real estate career at Henry S. Miller Commercial in Austin in 1984, one of Texas’s leading commercial real estate firms at the time. He remained with Miller until its merger with Grubb & Ellis in 1987, then continued with Grubb & Ellis until 1989. When Herb Weitzman founded The Weitzman Group that year, Mark joined the new firm. Over the next decade, he served as Senior Vice President and Head of the Retail Division — Austin’s largest retail brokerage practice at the time — and was a company-wide top producer. He founded Primus in 1999.

Mark is also co-owner and managing partner of Bluebonnet Copacking, the parent company of the Thirsty Planet and Hops & Grain beer brands. Mark and his partners own Crossroads Center at 110 East MLK in San Marcos — a building Primus redeveloped — where Bluebonnet is the anchor tenant. At that property Mark serves as both landlord and operator.

  • AFFILIATIONS: · Urban Land Institute (ULI) · Real Estate Council of Austin (RECA) · Austin Commercial Real Estate Society (ACRES, Past President)

  • EDUCATION: B.B.A., Saint Edward's University