Kevin Shannon and Jay Luchs
Co-head of U.S. capital markets; vice chairman at Newmark
At any point, you can bet there’s an untold number of real estate brokers scheming to get their names posted on the most prized properties and coveted vacancies in the market. But, from Downtown L.A. to Malibu Beach, Jay Luchs’s name appears on more windows along each major corridor in the Los Angeles region, where retail is in a league all its own.
The best and most recent example includes landing the listing for L.A.’s most popular LGBTQ magnet The Abbey, and its sister location The Chapel, in West Hollywood. But the top spot, of course, is Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive, where the world’s top-name luxury brands — Louis Vuitton, Hermes and Cartier — need flagship locations. Lease deals immediately make headlines, and rare property sales become landmark transactions — and there’s a good chance Luchs quarterbacked the plays.
Luchs has facilitated some of the rarest and most notable property sales along Rodeo. He represented Bernard Arnault’s LVMH, one of the most valuable companies in the world, when it bought the 42,560-square-foot Luxe Rodeo Drive Hotel and its posh shops with high-end tenants — including Rolex, Patek Philippe and Ferrari — for $200 million. He was also behind the sale of 457 North Rodeo Drive for $122 million, and the sale of the former Brooks Brothers store for $245 million.
Office real estate is surely another story, and Kevin Shannon has been integral as the post-pandemic market plays out. In the past 18 months, Shannon has been very busy racking up a long list of significant transactions and listings.
He recently secured the listing for the 52-story office tower known as Figueroa at Wilshire, a Downtown L.A. building owned by Brookfield, as well as two Glendale buildings spanning 441,000 square feet owned by Kennedy Wilson. Shannon also recently brokered deals for Shorenstein Properties’ AON Center in Downtown; KBS’s sale of the 40-story Union Bank Plaza, also in Downtown, to investor Joel Schreiber for $110 million; CIM Group’s sale of 801 South Grand Avenue, again in Downtown; a deal in which Blackstone sold the 560,000-square-foot Griffin Towers in Orange County; and the sale of the 81,600-square-foot headquarters for Fox Racing in Irvine to Rexford Industrial Realty.
