Shaul Kuba, Avi Shemesh and Richard Ressler

Shaul Kuba, Avi Shemesh and Richard Ressler, the leaders of one of the most prominent private commercial real estate firms in Los Angeles, have seen a lifetime’s worth of changes since launching the company three decades ago.

Now, after much of the office market has started falling apart, CIM Group has been picking up the pieces.

In one notable recent example, the Southern California Gas Company decided to leave its longtime home — a Downtown L.A. structure named Gas Company Tower — and instead signed a nearly 200,000-square-foot office lease at CIM Group’s City National 2CAL, an office tower just one block away. 

In December, international law firm Sheppard Mullin signed the largest new office lease in Downtown L.A. in 2023 when it took almost 120,000 square feet at the same CIM Group-owned 52-story tower. That building’s hot streak goes back to last summer, when another global law firm, Sidley Austin, similarly decided to ditch the Gas Company Tower and relocate to City National 2CAL.

CIM Group controls a defining multi-family portfolio too, and an ambitious pipeline — especially by L.A. standards. The firm made waves with plans to significantly expand in the West Adams area, with several multifamily projects in the works in the historic enclave. 

But CIM’s multifamily team is active throughout Greater L.A. For example, in the first quarter of this year, CIM sold a 34-story, 525-unit luxury high-rise in Downtown L.A. for $186 million despite the sharp drop in multi-family investment in Southern California. Another example includes a plan to build a mixed-use building that could be as tall as 34 stories, which would make it the tallest building in the small city of West Hollywood.

CIM also manages some noteworthy retail assets. Earlier this year, it sold a fully leased retail property along the famed Sunset Strip in West Hollywood for $30 million, or nearly $792 per square foot.

Other assets under management include the Dolby Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, which hosts the Oscars and many other events, and the Lot on Formosa, a historic soundstage and office complex spanning 540,000 square feet.

Kuba and Shemesh have been friends since their childhoods in Israel. The two business partners and Ressler created CIM Group 30 years ago. Since then, the firm has amassed more than $31 billion in assets.