Before Kilolo Luckett attends professional meetings in her field, she has to "gear myself up to smile."

	Tony Tye, Post-Gazette Kilolo Luckett sells real estate at Cool Space Locator. Click photo for larger image. Related coverage Blacks not as scarce elsewhere in real estate

Once there, people rarely introduce themselves, so she takes the initiative, introducing herself to them. Sometimes people seem uncertain about how to respond to her, so she uses humor to try to help them feel more at ease.

And sometimes, after returning home, she cries.

"It's extremely difficult to walk into situations time after time and be met with very cold interaction," she said.

For Luckett, 32, riding this emotional roller coaster is an unintended consequence of being a licensed real estate agent specializing in commercial property -- and being black. She works at Cool Space Locator, a Lawrenceville brokerage devoted to helping companies find urban office space.

By all accounts, Luckett is Pittsburgh's only African-American commercial real estate agent -- and an example of a national anomaly: After decades of affirmative action, the growth of the black middle class and the penetration of African-American executives into the highest ranks of corporate America, the world of commercial real estate remains, as one broker put it, "a white male bastion."

Numbers are hard to come by. The National Association of Realtors, with 1.2 million members, published a member profile in 2001 that showed its membership was 92 percent white, 5 percent Latino, Hispanic or Spanish, 2 percent black, 2 percent Asian and 1 percent American Indian.

The organization does not have a breakdown between commercial and residential practitioners. But the Certified Commercial Investment Member Institute, a Realtors association affiliate group for commercial agents and brokers, has estimated that less than 1 percent of all commercial brokers are ethnic minorities.

The absence of blacks from the region's commercial real estate brokerages is all the more striking when compared with residential real estate, where blacks have been active locally since at the least the 1930s, when James Ramsey conducted his brokerage from a phone in his Brushton barber shop.

Back then, there were eight or 10 black brokers, said Robert R. Lavelle, who joined Ramsey's sales staff in 1949 and formed his own firm, Lavelle Real Estate Inc., in 1951.

	Bill Wade, Post-Gazette Michael Polite is president of Ralph A. Falbo Inc., a Downtown-based development firm. Click photo for larger image.

"There was a pretty lively real estate market for blacks, but the problem was they were trading in the broken-down houses that blacks could get," he said. "The commercial market was a white market."

Little has changed in that regard.

"It's unbelievable how underrepresented minorities are" in the industry today, said Peter Sukernek, vice president and general manager at Howard Hanna Commercial Real Estate Services. He described the situation as "embarrassing."

It also is a situation that has been decades in the making and defies easy solution. At its core, local brokers say, is that the commercial real estate is a relationship-driven business that for much of its existence was represented by family firms, none of which was black.

"Up until very recently, (commercial real estate) tended to be dominated by families," said David W. Auel, naming several -- Arnheim, Neely, Oliver, Gold.

"Since they were family-run firms, not only did family [members] come into the firm, but also friends of sons and daughters, which is how family-run firms tend to hire."

Auel, owner of Griffon Realty Inc., Downtown, is a prime example of the sort of closed networking circle.

When he came out of college, he had never heard of a commercial real estate broker. But one day in 1985, when he was coaching a swim team, the father of two team members asked him if he was interested in commercial real estate.

It turned out that the questioner was chief financial officer for Oliver Realty Co., the family-owned precursor to Oliver Development Co., one of the leading commercial firms in the city. With his encouragement, Auel joined the firm and has been in the business ever since.

Because blacks and other people of color rarely have even casual relationships with someone in the business, most remain as unaware of the field as Auel was. That translates into a lack of candidates attempting to try their hands in the business.

During his 10 years as a district manager for Grubb & Ellis during the 1990s, only two black applicants for sales and marketing positions came his way, said Thomas B. McChesney, now senior vice president for the Downtown-based firm. "The applicant pool for diversity is few and far between in Pittsburgh," he said.

The dominance of family-owned firms did start to fade in the late 1980s as family firms began to merge with national and multinational firms. The change has led to a push to try and address the lack of blacks in the business.

For example, Dallas-based Trammell Crow Co., which has regional offices in Cranberry, has set diversity goals for 2005 that include "a formal mentoring program" and "targeted recruiting efforts." Other national firms have adopted similar efforts.

So far, however, the national objectives appear to be failing at the local level.

It doesn't help, McChesney said, that soft local market conditions have dampened hiring.

His firm hired three to four people during the 10 years he was district manager, and not much has changed since the '90s. "You get your staff built up, and because the market isn't growing, you don't add new people," he said. "That's a great barrier" to minorities.

McChesney and Jack Norris, president of CB Richard Ellis Pittsburgh, suggested that another reason for the lack of minorities seeking careers in commercial real estate sales is the pay structure, which is typically 100 percent commission. That means newcomers may have to wait a while before receiving their first paycheck.

Because the brokerage side of the business is commissioned while the property management and service side is salaried, "It's easier in our business for people to break into it on the property management and the professional support services staff side," Norris said.

While declining to provide specifics, Norris said CB Richard Ellis has "a number of black people with professional responsibilities" in the property management-services side. He expects several eventually will end up in the brokerage-sales side.

Luckett, of Cool Space Locator, has been spared from making the choice between sales and property management. She is salaried, and the nonprofit firm negotiates commissions with each client individually.

The pay structure allows her to operate differently from other commercial real estate agents. Indeed, if not for Cool Space, Luckett, with a background in arts management, might not have entered what she calls "a cutthroat profession."

But now that she is in the field, she is determined both to act -- and to be treated -- as a professional.

Which means that while being snubbed socially might evoke occasional tears in private, being slighted professionally might evoke a confrontation -- as when the listing agent on a property spoke to her client as if she weren't there. That agent got an angry phone call in which Luckett pledged never to work with him again.

But mostly, Luckett said, she relies on humor to get her through the day. She recalls, for example, arriving at an industry function and realizing that people were celebrating St. Patrick's Day by wearing green.

Not wearing green, she nevertheless claimed the holiday by telling a colleague, "I'm what you call Black Irish."