5 West Coast Real Estate Legends We Lost in 2015
As we look to the year ahead, Bisnow took a moment to look back on the West Coast leaders we lost. The industry will miss them.
SAN FRANCISCO—Doug Shorenstein, a giant among the West Coast real estate community, died in November at the age of 60. He was the second-generation leader of Shorenstein Properties and was celebrating his 20th year as head of the private real estate investment firm. Some of the buildings Shorenstein has owned over the years include iconic structures such as San Francisco’s Bank of America Building; Chicago’s John Hancock Tower; Park Avenue Tower in New York; Hamilton Square in Washington, DC; and 1201 Third Avenue in Seattle. The company's portfolio currently totals 24.8M SF across the country.
SILICON VALLEY — Scott T. Carey, chairman of Newmark Cornish & Carey, died in August at the age of 82. He helped transform his firm’s commercial division into a veritable powerhouse in leasing and sales and it played an instrumental role in the growth of Silicon Valley, reports the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Deals transacted by the company’s brokers helped pave the way for the growth of numerous firms, including Hewlett-Packard and Intel. An attorney by trade, Scott had been a US Air Force pilot when he joined the company in 1968.
LOS ANGELES —Fred Sands, who died in August at the age of 77, founded Fred Sands Realtors, which grew to 65 offices and was the largest independent residential brokerage in California, when he sold to Coldwell Banker in 2000 for more than $100M, according to the LA Times. He then turned his attention to distress shopping malls, founding Vintage Capital Group. Through the years he built a clientele that included US presidents, corporate leaders and hundreds of Hollywood celebrities.
SAN FRANCISCO—Angelo Sangiacomo, who died in December at the age of 91, was one of San Francisco’s largest residential landlords, devoting his career to buying and building local houses and apartment buildings real estate. Those who knew Angelo remember not only his love and dedication to the City of San Francisco (he refused to deal with properties outside of the city), but also to his family and his business, which were sometimes one and the same. Angelo built Trinity Properties, which owns and operates thousands of apartments across the city, and Trinity Management Services, where all seven of his children now hold roles. His family noted he refused to buy property unless he could walk to it or sell any property that he ever built or acquired.
LAS VEGAS — Kirk Kerkorian, MGM mogul and billionaire real estate investor, died in June at age 98. Before reshaping the face of Las Vegas with iconic hotels like the MGM Grand, Kirk was an airline pilot and high-stakes poker player. He shifted MGM from a film company to a hotel operator during his tenure—during which he sold the company for $1.5B, only to buy it back for $300M the next year. Kirk was the son of Armenian immigrants, and donated $1B to that country after a devastating earthquake in 1988. He was named an honorary citizen of Armenia in 1998.
