Tech Cities 2.0: Los Angeles

As the firm launches ASPIRE, an employee resource group for Asian and Pacific Islander employees and allies at Cushman & Wakefield, we welcome three Korean American professionals to discuss their careers in commercial real estate. Los Angeles is home to one of the largest Asian communities in the world. According to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation Economic Profile Series, in 2017 there were nearly 1.5 million people of Asian descent in Los Angeles County, accounting for 14.5% of the county’s population. Cushman & Wakefield’s Hanna Kim Yoon, Senior Counsel; James Chung, Executive Managing Director and West Region Retail Lead; and Executive Director Suzanne Lee share details and insights about their backgrounds and commercial real estate careers.

We invited Cushman & Wakefield’s Leslie Mayer, Executive Director; Matthew Fainchtein, Senior Director; and Carter Magnin, Director to chat about retail in Greater LA. The trio brought lots of great intel to share, giving fresh insights on trends like experiential retail, the shifting role of brick-and-mortar, and how top brands give their customers a “lifestyle,” not just a product.

Three Cushman & Wakefield brokerage professionals, Rusty Smith, Michael Seidman, and Sophia Hwang come together in this podcast discussion to tell their stories about starting out as elite athletes before embarking on commercial real estate careers.

In this month’s episode of Cushman & Wakefield’s Greater LA podcast series, we spotlight Wilshire Grand Center, an iconic development from owner Korean Air, completed in 2017 and located in Downtown Los Angeles. Join Cushman & Wakefield’s Executive Director Steve Marcussen, leasing representative for Wilshire Grand Center, and Toni Reed, Cushman & Wakefield’s General Manager for Wilshire Grand Center, as they share a behind-the-scenes look into the inner workings of this landmark project.

Caroline James and Annie Canada, both from Cushman & Wakefield’s communications’ team, recently sat down with LA Times commercial real estate reporter, Roger Vincent, for an episode of the firm’s Greater Los Angeles podcast. They kicked things off by highlighting some recent Cushman & Wakefield-brokered deals in Downtown LA that Roger covered for his readers in the LA Times.

To hear what it’s like being a millennial woman working in brokerage at Cushman & Wakefield, we bring together Senior Associate Kelli Snyder and Senior Associate Brianna Demus (Capital Markets/Agency Leasing), as well as Senior Associate Morgan Jackson (Capital Markets), three rising leaders in the firm’s Downtown LA office. Tune in to hear them share their insights and stories on what they love about commercial real estate.  

Cushman & Wakefield’s Corina Irvin, Sarah Friedman Casparian, and Melissa Sullivan, come together ahead of International Women’s Day to discuss what it’s like being female, and in the commercial real estate industry. The percentage of women in #CRE is growing from an estimated 32 percent in 2000 to 43 percent in 2015 – great news for women, and for the industry overall – as evidence supports that a gender-balanced workplace benefits a business’s bottom line as well as its employees. http://www.cushmanwakefield.com/IWD  

  Jeff Green is Managing Director of Global Occupier Services and Leader of The Automotive Advisory Group at Cushman & Wakefield. As a recent transplant from New York, the first thing one notices is the love Los Angelenos have for their cars. Whether they are pick-up trucks, new electric vehicles or old vintage sports cars, automobiles are the clear method of choice for transportation here. While this may be an obvious fact of life for those already living in sunny Los Angeles, as an east coaster, it certainly takes some getting used to. To help me make sense of the LA transportation scene and its impact on commercial real estate, I recently spoke with Cushman & Wakefield Executive Directors Justin Collins and Kevin Turner, where we shared some of our reactions and commentary around the latest report in the company’s “Tech Disruptor Series”, entitled Mobility Shifts and Commercial Real Estate - Implications of Ridesharing; Autonomous Vehicles; Micro-mobility and Electric Vehicles. Highlights from our conversation include: · Parking Infrastructure o With most buildings in the Downtown LA area having been built in the early 1980s, companies and local government officials are contending with outdated city codes and ordinances that no longer apply to transportation today. o Today, building owners and occupiers have to consider things like electric vehicles and the prerequisite charging stations, as well as ridesharing zones (i.e. designated pick-up and drop-off locations.) · Commercial Trucking and Ports o As the West Coast’s largest and busiest port, stakeholders in Los Angeles are examining ways to improve efficiencies across all aspects of the industry, from how autonomous vehicles will impact trucks and truck drivers to warehouses and logistics. Issues like dock availability, warehouse floor teams, queuing lanes and even amenities for the truck drivers moving in and out of the port, are all evolving, with companies leveraging all the management technology at their disposal to improve efficiency. · The Olympics in 2028 o The podcast even touched on the impending 2028 Olympics. While it is still a decade away, we speculated on the changes in infrastructure the city would need to make in order to accommodate the games and its millions of attendees.  

Join research analyst, Sarah Lucenti, and director, Marques Williams, talking tech in LA.

Downtown Los Angeles has been going through quite a transformation to a point where power cranes have become part of the skyline, however, it hasn’t all been about the new developments. There have been notable projects where older,