Los Angeles Creative Office & Design Trends

Mr. Sischo previously served as Co-Chief Operating Officer and Director of TPGI and was instrumental in the company’s public offering in 2004. At TPGI, in addition to his duties as Co-Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Sischo was responsible for the acquisition of approximately $3.8 billion of operating properties. During Mr. Sischo’s tenure, TPGI grew its operating platform from 2 MSF to 17 MSF, entered into new markets in Austin, Houston and the Washington, DC area, and acquired such trophy assets as the City National Plaza in Los Angeles, the CityWestPlace in Houston and the Frost Bank Tower in Austin. Mr. Sischo joined TPGI in 1998 as Chief Financial Officer after eight years leading Bankers Trust’s Los Angeles real estate practice.

Peter K. Johnston is one of Los Angeles’ best known landlord leasing executives, overseeing 25 million square feet of office space throughout the United States during the past 30 years, with a focus on the West during his recent career. His responsibilities have encompassed all aspects of marketing and leasing Class A office space to many of the nation’s leading corporations and professional firms. From 2005 through 2012, Mr. Johnston was Senior Vice President of Leasing for MPG Office Trust and oversaw marketing of over 21 million square feet of office space in Southern California and Colorado. In 1996 Mr. Johnston joined a number of senior executives from Maguire Thomas Partners to found CommonWealth Partners, a fully integrated private real estate investment, development, management and operating company. He was the CommonWealth partner responsible for all brokerage activities and lease transactions in California, Arizona, Colorado and Texas. In 2005 Mr. Johnston sold his interest in CommonWealth and joined MPG Office Trust. From 1989 through 1995, Mr. Johnston was Senior Vice President of Leasing for Maguire Thomas Partners during a time when the company was creating several of downtown LA’s most prominent office buildings as well as expanding nationally. He was responsible for leasing, marketing, advertising and procuring lead tenants for the company’s premier office developments as well as developing Maguire Thomas Partner’s real estate services/brokerage division. During his tenure at Maguire Thomas Partners, Mr. Johnston was designated Landlord Broker of the Year by the Los Angeles Business Journal. Mr. Johnston started his career as a senior member of the leasing and marketing team of BCE Development Inc./Oxford Properties for nearly eight years. His responsibilities covered several major cities in the U.S. including Chicago where he was responsible for leasing and marketing more than 8 million square feet of office space in Chicago, Minneapolis and Denver. As Vice President of Marketing and Leasing in Minneapolis, he was a member of the Minneapolis City Center Development Team, and led pre-development leasing, marketing, public relations and advertising of office and retail space in this 1.1 million-square-foot mixed use project. Mr. Johnston attended the University of Denver where he received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a major in Real Estate and minor in Accounting.

Lia Tatevosian is currently Vice President, Operations Manager for Swinerton, with oversight of the Aviation, Civic, Special Projects, Seismic/Adaptive Reuse and Entertainment markets for Swinerton’s Orange County and Los Angeles Division. She is responsible for an annual revenue of $550Mil for 2017 and 550 employees and growing. Lia is a 22-year veteran with Swinerton, having started her career with them as a Project Engineer in 1996 and working her way up through project management and estimating. Prior to working for Swinerton, Lia spent 2 years as a Junior Estimator working for an LA general contractor in Silver Lake, CA where she discovered her passion for construction. Lia has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from UC Davis. She lives in Glendale, CA and has three children, Mara (17), Luca (15) and Ella (9). In her spare time, Lia coaches a high school age girl’s basketball traveling team, enjoys watching her son play basketball, going to music concerts and the movies. Lia is one of the co-founders of Women in Construction Operations (WiOPS) and served on their Southern California board for 5 years. She also serves on the Architecture Construction Engineering (ACE) Los Angeles Chapter board helping high school students become exposed to the ACE disciplines and leading them in the right direction, finding scholarships and internships in their desired fields. Lia is also one of the newest members of the Architecture and Design (A+D) Museum board in Los Angeles, whose mission is to celebrate and promote an awareness in progressive architecture and design in everyday life through exhibits, educational programs and public outreach.. Lastly, Lia serves on the Swinerton Foundation board, which helps build sustainable cities and neighborhoods by partnering with community-focused non-profit organizations to support health, social services, cultural, education, and environmental programs that benefit all members of the community. The Swinerton Foundation also serves as a catalyst to encourage and expand the philanthropic endeavors of Swinerton Incorporated and its affiliates' employees and has raised and donated millions of dollars to non-profit groups and organizations since its inception in 2002.

Hawkins\Brown is internationally renowned award-winning architecture practice striving to create places with personality and purpose that are well-made, well-used and well-loved. Since joining Hawkins\Brown over a decade ago, Matthew has been involved in many of the company’s flagship projects across multiple sectors, including academic research facilities, commercial workspace and mixed-use residential projects. Matthew has developed a particular specialism in the creative re-use and adaptation of existing buildings and is currently leading the implementation and growth of Hawkins\Brown’s satellite studio in Los Angeles, bringing a unique European perspective to the North American market.

A name partner of the firm, Anton N. Natsis is Chair of Allen Matkins’ Real Estate Department and is one of the top real estate attorneys in the United States. His practice focuses on development, leasing, purchase and sale, and portfolio investment sales transactions involving office, retail, and industrial projects, as well as arbitrating numerous fair market value disputes, CAM disputes and other significant landlord/tenant disputes. He also has extensive experience in debt, equity, and joint venture workouts, and the purchase of distressed assets and distressed debt. Tony is continually sought out by some of the largest national land owners, such as J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Blackstone Real Estate, Brookfield Properties, HCP, Vornado Realty Trust, Regent Properties, The Irvine Company, Boston Properties, Equity Office Properties, Kilroy Realty, Inc., Beacon Capital Partners, MPG Office Trust, Kamehameha Schools (The Bishop Estate) and Westfield Corporation. He represents many governmental entities, including the LAUSD, State of California, and City of Anaheim. Tony is also frequently retained as counsel for major national office tenants, such as AT&T, Citicorp, the FDIC, AIG, The Walt Disney Company, and the Los Angeles Times. A frequent lecturer and author, Tony is the chief consultant for the California Continuing Education of the Bar Commercial Leasing Series, the legal education reference book on leasing for California attorneys, is an adjunct professor of law at Loyola Law School for a course covering commercial real estate transactions, and has spoken before such national real estate groups as ULI and BOMA. Tony is a founding board member of The Ziman Real Estate Center, which is governed under the joint auspices of the UCLA Anderson School of Business and the UCLA Law School. In the past decade, Tony has closed commercial office leases exceeding 50 million square feet. He has worked on real estate purchase contracts with a total consideration of more than $30 billion and on development transactions with a total consideration in excess of $25 billion. Since 2006, Tony has represented clients in office building portfolio investment sales transactions involving over $75 billion of consideration. One of Tony's most significant transactions is the largest real estate acquisition deal in the history of the United States. He provided extensive real estate services in connection with Blackstone Real Estate's purchase of Equity Office Properties Trust, at that point the largest owner of office space in the U.S. other than the Federal Government, for $43 billion. Subsequently, Blackstone contracted to sell over 50% of the properties it purchased with such sales closing in the first and second quarter of 2007. Tony assisted Blackstone in its acquisition due diligence related to EOP and the subsequent sales of the properties. The transactions related to this deal included Maguire Properties' purchase of Blackstone/EOP in Orange County for $2 billion, Irvine Company's purchase of Blackstone/EOP in San Diego for $1 billion, Morgan Stanley's purchase of Blackstone/EOP in San Francisco for $2.5 billion, and Beacon Capital Partners’ purchase of Blackstone/EOP Seattle for $6.3 billion.

Robert F. Kane joined Lincoln Property Company in 2012, and is responsible for Acquisition, Dispositions, Development and Finance related activities for the Company. Since joining Lincoln, Robert has been involved in the acquisition of over $1 billion square feet of commercial development projects and successfully entitled more than one million square feet of commercial projects including the Parsons campus, the largest commercial project ever approved by the City of Pasadena. Prior to joining Lincoln, Robert was a Vice President at Thomas Properties Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: TPGI), where he focused on acquisitions and development of office, residential, and mixed-use properties throughout the country, including the entitlements effort for the Wilshire Grand Redevelopment project proposed by Korean Air Lines totaling $1.4 billion and 2.5 million square feet of mixed-uses which was unanimously approved by the City of Los Angeles. Rob is on the Board of Directors for the Ketchum-Downtown YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles.

Christopher Rising is the CEO of Rising Realty Partners (RRP), a Los Angeles-based real estate investment and operating platform that owns and manages over five million square feet of properties. He serves on the company's Executive and Investment Committees, drawing on his extensive experience in managing acquisitions and creative development. Prior to joining RRP, Christopher was Senior Vice President of Asset Transactions at MPG Office Trust, where he worked directly with the CEO to improve finances through debt reduction and restructuring. Under Christopher's visionary leadership, RRP has spearheaded the revitalization of historic buildings in Downtown Los Angeles into creative office spaces, attracting unique businesses back to the region. The company's transformation and subsequent sale of the PacMutual Campus, one of the oldest office buildings in the heart of DTLA, was described by the Los Angeles Times as a "record price for a pure office building downtown." More recently, RRP has generated great success by entering the industrial space, acquiring five multi-tenant light industrial properties in the past year. Christopher's success in the real estate industry has earned him recognition by the Los Angeles Business Journal as one of the 500 most influential people in Los Angeles. In 2003, Christopher founded The Rising Real Estate Group (RREG) and eventually partnered with Barker Pacific Group to create Hamilton Capital Partners (HCP), an equity fund vehicle. RREG is also a principal in 626 Wilshire Blvd, a 156K square foot office building located in downtown Los Angeles. Christopher began his career as an associate at Pillsbury Madison & Sutro and later worked at Cushman Realty Corporation (CRC) under brokerage legend John C. Cushman, III. He then served as a Director at Cushman & Wakefield of California, Inc. (C&W), joining C&W after its merger with CRC in 2001. Outside of work, Christopher is an active member of the Los Angeles community, serving on the River LA Board and The Rose Bowl Legacy Foundation. He formerly sat on the Board of Overseers at Loyola Law School and the Duke Athletic Advisory Board. He is a past President of the Board of Chandler School in Pasadena and served for ten years on the Board of Regents of Loyola High School, where he chaired the Investment Committee. Christopher holds a J.D. in Real Estate Law from Loyola Law School and a B.A. in History and Political Science from Duke University. He also attended Duke on a football scholarship and was a member of the 1989 ACC Championship team.

As Managing Director of Acquisitions and Development, Gregg Hall is responsible for acquisition and development activity in Los Angeles County. In this capacity, he is involved in deal sourcing and feasibility analysis, debt origination, contract negotiation and asset management. Gregg has been involved in the origination and financing of over $1.75 billion of SteelWave transactions totaling over 5.2 million square feet, including development and entitlement projects. Gregg has 12 years of real estate experience, all with SteelWave. Prior to joining SteelWave, Gregg spent eight years in a variety of investment management and consulting roles, including raising capital for venture backed start-ups, as well as institutional fund placement for numerous general partnerships.

Mitch Hudson is the Chief Operations Officer at Del Amo Construction. For more than 30 years, he has worked as the “technical builder of the group,” while in his role as COO and the company’s safety officer. He works closely with the on-site teams to ensure that Del Amo Construction and its subcontractors are following the company’s safety policies as well as all Cal/OSHA rules and regulations. Mitch works to ensure company-wide safety while providing the best building experience ever from start to finish for everyone involved. In his more than 40 years of working in the construction industry, Mitch has taken on various roles including laborer, carpenter, chief estimator and project manager. His deep experience brings an array of knowledge that he applies as the Chief Operations Officer, working closely with clients and internal Del Amo Construction teams. In his free time, Mitch enjoys skiing, water skiing, running and working on home improvement projects. He also spent 20 years as a youth sports coach for baseball, softball and football.

Karin Liljegren has dedicated her career to revitalization and the power of adaptive reuse to enrich a community. In 1999, she worked on the very first projects under Los Angeles’s Adaptive Reuse Ordinance, which launched her nuanced understanding of the challenges and opportunities of adaptive reuse. Karin is a thought leader in the community and is active with city and county officials in crafting policies that ease the challenges of working on existing buildings. Her impact created the return of historic downtown Los Angeles as a livable, walkable neighborhood. Karin founded Omgivning in 2009. The firm uncovers potential in underutilized buildings and spaces transforming them into hotels, multifamily housing, offices, restaurants, and bars. Omgivning has grown and expanded having touched more than 500 buildings in Downtown Los Angeles and greater Southern California. In 2014, the firm received a Presidential Honoree award for an Emerging Practice from the AIA Los Angeles. Karin is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA) and a frequent contributor and speaker on architecture, design, and adaptive reuse. She is a member of the Urban Land Institute’s Redevelopment and Reuse Council and a member of the AIA Los Angeles Historic Resources Committee.

As senior principal and design director for Studio One Eleven, Michael Bohn, AIA, is responsible for architectural, landscape and urban design within the Studio. Maintaining the Studio’s dedication to creating more vibrant, healthy and equitable places, he is a licensed architect with over 25 years’ experience. His firm’s experience includes co-developing the re-use of an existing series of warehouse buildings into a creative office complex in downtown Long Beach, three ground up creative office buildings at the LOT in West Hollywood where Oprah Winfrey and Will Farrell have located their headquarters and the completion of his own office which relocated to an abandoned Nordstrom Rack. He is currently working on a 100,000 SF ground up creative office for Laserfiche, a software development company. He is a Council Member with the Urban Land Institute, past President of the Long Beach/South Bay chapter of the American Institute of Architects and an active member of the Southern California Association of Non-Profit Housing.