Andie Wilson Bonkowski, left, and Blaise and Mallory LaBranch. The family members with roots in the Carson City community are now working together out of the Reno office of LOGIC Commercial Real Estate. Courtesy
Mallory LaBranch grew up in Carson City with commercial real estate virtuosos Andie Wilson and Brad Bonkowski. Even as a kid when she was bored with market jargon or discussion of deals, Mallory was good at it, had a desk in her mom and dad’s office, tracked sales as a teenager.
“Our team is actually a very good metaphor for any individual commercial real estate deal in that there is a human-interest story here and also we’re doing business,” LaBranch told the Appeal.
The 29-year-old Carson High grad looks at a transaction and sees complexity: human need, politics, supply and demand, a relationship. It’s the same way her team at LOGIC Commercial Real Estate looks at deals. And that team just got bigger with the addition of Mallory’s mother, Andie Wilson Bonkowski.
“I feel like Bronny James on the court with LeBron,” Mallory said.
A Dec. 2 news release from LOGIC announcing the addition drew attention to Andie’s 27-plus years in the industry and over $450 million in transaction volume, among other achievements. Andie is now an executive vice president at LOGIC’s Reno office.
“Andie’s extensive experience in the Carson City market, combined with her commitment to relationship-based business practices, aligns perfectly with our vision for growth in Northern Nevada. This team creates a unique blend of established expertise and forward-thinking strategies that will benefit our clients tremendously. We're delighted to welcome Andie to the LOGIC family,” Ian Cochran, LOGIC partner, said in the release.
The move made business sense for those involved but also made sense on a human level. Mallory and her husband – 36-year-old Blaise LaBranch (a 2007 graduate of Bishop Manogue High School in Reno) – recently staked out their own territory as associates for LOGIC, homing in on the Carson commercial markets including office, multifamily and industrial. And it was a little more than two years ago that Andie lost her life partner to cancer.
Brad Bonkowski was a Carson City supervisor and owner with Andie in NAI Alliance and before that Coldwell Banker Commercial Premier Brokers. Andie, now 54, said they spent 24 years together but didn’t get married until 2022 when it became clear Brad’s illness was terminal.
The wedding was officiated by Carson restaurateur and health care professional Kitty McKay, Andie said.
“It was very sad, and it was very sweet, and Kitty actually married us, Kitty McKay, and Brad said to Kitty, ‘I feel like this one might finally last.’ Because he knew he was really sick. Everyone always assumed we were married, but we didn’t get married until we had to. We got married on Oct. 28, 2022, and he died Nov. 19,” she said.
Both widow and daughter said Brad filled them with words of inspiration and wisdom in his last days, insisting how they would continue without him.
“What Brad would say is the greatest growth comes out of moments of challenge. Again, that’s true in life and business,” Andie said. “You can’t always control what’s coming at you, but you can control the way you respond.”
Around the time Brad passed away, Mallory and Blaise, recently married, decided to “step further into entrepreneurship,” as Mallory described it. She’d held a real estate license since the age of 18 and had worked in a consulting capacity as well, while Blaise had experience on the residential side in title insurance. They met at First American before being laid off, they said, and it was Andie who saw potential in Blaise.
“I always kind of doubted getting licensed. I don’t come from a long family of commercial real estate, but you know what? She has, I think, faith in people that she thinks will work for something,” Blaise said of his mother-in-law.
Heading into 2025, the trio has forged a unique dynamic at LOGIC. Andie and Blaise work the front of transactions, more public facing, while Mallory handles the data, analysis and contracts like the prodigy people thought she was growing up.
The LOGIC office is in Reno, but the trio considers Carson the epicenter of their business, with listings east in Dayton and south in Carson Valley. And picking up from where Brad and Andie left off with NAI Alliance, Mallory and Blaise have been conducting vacancy studies of Mound House and Carson City, the findings of which the Appeal previously published.
On Dec. 2, Mallory presented some new figures for the year to date, drawing from the city assessor’s office and CoStar. In the Carson industrial market, for example, there were six total sales this year as of Dec. 2, with an average price per square foot of $191.11 and a median sales price of $3.15 million.
In the Carson multifamily market, four properties sold year to date, with a median sales price of $687,500, while in the office market, seven properties sold year to date, with an average price per square foot of $223.25 and a median sales price of $735,000.
The business partners agreed it’s a good time to buy a location in Carson if a business is willing to buy something bigger than they need and lease portions of it.
“This is a really interesting business, what we do,” said Andie. “It’s like working on a 3-D puzzle literally all the time.”
Asked what’s most interesting about local commercial real estate the three gave different, but not unrelated answers.
Andie emphasized the importance of meeting the needs of clients and protecting property rights.
“So, the number one thing I wish people understood is there is no ‘they.’ ‘Why are ‘they’ putting Walmart in?’” she said. “Who is they? There is no they. If something is happening in a certain location, it is because the zoning, the Master Plan, the economics, the owner of the property, the economic climate all support what is happening. There is no they. It is not us and them.”
Blaise said: “I would say something interesting, at least to me, is oftentimes when making calls into certain sectors specifically like Carson City industrial, they may not necessarily know what they have, but oftentimes people are willing to sell and don’t know what they’re holding.”
He said a call about a property can motivate people to make a decision that could have been made a decade earlier.
Mallory said: “I have an unpopular opinion that change is good for a community and a society, that we should be evolving in terms of what businesses are around, what types of restaurants are in the downtown corridor. In my opinion, a community is always going to be changing and evolving, and it’s a positive thing because it means that human beings continue to live here, continue to make a home here, and I think it’s a positive thing that people move from California to be here. I’m a native, so I’m allowed to say that.
“For me, I like commercial real estate because that is where the positive change starts. A business comes here, and they’re looking for some industrial space to occupy and run their business out of, and as a result, new people come here, new ideas, and we get to have new experiences.”
For information go to logiccre.com or call Andie at 775-721-2980.
