Gregory Thorpe
400 South Hope Street
Los Angeles, CA, 90071
Phone: +1-213-430-6593
Fax: +1-213-430-6407
LAWYERS
- Related Practices
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Anschutz Entertainment Group
Buchanan Street Partners
Carson Estate Trust
Centerline Urban Capital
CityView
Conexant Systems, Inc.
Cook Inlet Region, Inc.
Donahue Schriber Realty Group
Fannie Mae
Fremont Realty Capital
HAMC Wasatch
ICI Development Company
IHP Capital Partners
KB Home
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Kennecott Land Company
Meer Capital Partners
Mickel Trust
Resmark Equity Partners
SunCal Companies
The Macerich Company
Tishman Speyer
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Real Estate
Dramatic changes in capital-formation methods, development structures, and regulatory requirements are reshaping the international real estate market. Investors are looking for legal and financial advisors whose diverse substantive and geographic experience can assist them in developing projects, negotiating investments and partnerships, establishing trusts, and sustaining long-term transactions. Throughout its history, O’Melveny has helped real estate clients build and reshape cities in urban as well as remote environments with an emphasis on minimizing investor risk while maximizing results on complex projects. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, our real estate team works closely with our lawyers in the key areas of finance, tax, sales and acquisitions, environmental compliance, and dispute resolution to craft innovative, practical strategies for our clients. From the sale of San Francisco’s famous Embarcadero Center buildings to structuring a US$400 million investment for a Chinese developer, our real estate practice spans the globe, and includes entrepreneurial investors and developers, as well as large institutional clients.
Key Facts
- O’Melveny’s experience with landmark, master-planned communities enables our lawyers to assist clients with projects ranging from 30 acres to 300,000 acres. For example, our Real Estate group is currently counsel to Kennecott Land Company in the entitlement and development of a master-planned community on approximately 93,000 acres of historic mining property in Utah’s Salt Lake Valley. We also represent Centerline Urban Capital as a preferred and common equity investor for a 143-acre master-planned development in Arizona that eventually will encompass 5.7 million square feet. The project is organized into five preliminary development sites. The initial phase is a 70-acre mixed-use site that will include retail, restaurant, office, residential, and hotel space.
- Our long history of involvement in complex development and land-use matters means our lawyers have the credibility and relationships that are crucial in negotiating with city councils; planning commissions; boards of appeal; and county, state, and federal regulatory agencies. We have substantial experience with environmental laws such as CEQA and NEPA. O’Melveny represents Conexant Systems, Inc., a publicly traded technology company, in the entitlement and sale or joint venture of 25 acres of land in Newport Beach. This mixed-use, urban-infill transaction is expected to result in the redevelopment of commercial property into 1000 or more residential units.
- For more than 40 years, we have guided our private real estate investment trust (REIT) clients and their investors through shifting market conditions and legal frameworks. Our lawyers understand upREITs, downREITs, and rollups, as well as strategic transactions such as REIT mergers, taking REITs private, and share repurchase programs. O’Melveny advised a large securities bank subsidiary in the formation, offering, and financing of the first REIT in Japan, which achieved a market capitalization of 52.23 billion yen. Additionally, we represented Donahue Schriber, in connection with a construction loan for a California property secured by a first mortgage on the property. Donahue Schriber, which owns and or operates 91 shopping centers representing more than 15 million square feet of retail space in the Western United States, developed the property into a large shopping center with a national grocery store as the anchor tenant.
- O’Melveny represents a wide variety of clients in the acquisition and sale of many of the largest real estate assets and portfolios in the United States. Our interdisciplinary teams coordinate planning solutions that incorporate tax, ERISA, banking, bankruptcy, securities, and corporate considerations. The Macerich Company, one of the United States’ largest owners, operators, and developers of major retail properties relies on O’Melveny for assistance with many of its regional mall acquisitions, dispositions, financings, and joint ventures.
- O’Melveny has carved out a specialty in residential development and represents large and medium sized developers and home builders, as well as sources of capital, including commercial banks, Wall Street investment houses, opportunity funds and pension advisors. We have advised clients in diverse transactional structures, including joint ventures, limited partnerships, and limited liability companies in a wide variety of transactions, including participating and mezzanine debt, entitled and unentitled land development deals, acquisition and development projects, housing joint ventures, and apartment, multifamily, and condominium development and conversions. Our counsel has run the gamut from due diligence investigations and deal structuring through transaction-closing supervision, and asset management. In addition, we have served as the principal finance counsel for a number of residential developers and home builders.
- We have worked on numerous transactions involving hotels, entertainment facilities, and mixed-use development projects around the world. Our clients include purchasers, sellers, and developers; ground lessors; major hotel-management companies; franchisors and franchisees; construction lenders; permanent lenders; and equity investors. O’Melveny’s Asia offices represent Marriott International in all aspects of the company’s business in China.
Practice Strengths
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Health Care Properties
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Hospitality Industry
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Joint Ventures
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Land Use and Entitlement
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Master-Planned Communities
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Mezzanine Debt and Structured Finance
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Mixed-use Developments
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Real Estate Funds
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Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)
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Residential Development and Finance
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Retail Industry
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Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG)
Deutsche Bank
The Macerich Company
Cook Inlet Region, Inc.
Kennecott Land Company
Resmark Equity Partners
SunCal Companies
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