Summertime

We stopped by law firm Allen Matkins in Century City Thursday to break not bread but Perrier Water with transactions partner John Tipton. Fresh from taking his lucky kids, ages 14 and 16, to London, Amsterdam and Paris earlier this month (they loved the Churchill war rooms), John reports he vacationed easier knowing his team was closing the transaction he'd worked on representing Hines and Pimco in their acquisition of the Quintana office park in Irvine.

Out the window we got a visual update on accelerating redevelopment at Century City Mall. One of the two original Avenue of the Stars buildings has been removed (that's why there's a hole on the left), to be replaced by low-story, high-style luxury retail, integrated into...

…renovations of the existing footprint where you may remember seeing Brooks Brothers, Boss and Sees Candy in decades past. 1.2M SF will be done in phases and may all be ready by around 2017.

We also stopped across the street to see our friends at accounting giant CohnReznick, including Gregg Bloomberg, guru on tax structuring for REITS and private equity clients. A onetime Westfields director of real estate, he knows Century City Mall well, and demonstrated that it's still very much in action by leading us to his favorite restaurant. (We diverted from its seafood theme but had a great chopped salad with crispy chicken.)

Speaking of food, congrats to office managing partner Scott Sachs, left, who besides being busy working with 160 colleagues who have produced continued "sequential revenue growth" (we think that means things are going quite well), personally created a "brownie cake with white icing" last week (widely reported to be "delectable") for the firm's charity bake sale. And to audit partner Garrett Ushiyama, who works up an appetite for those culinary offerings as one of the office's resident surfing champions.