Daniel Rosenfeld

City of Los Angeles

Age: 44

Recent Deal: Finding space for 1,400 city workers who must vacate City Hall during renovation

Specialty: Applying private sector management techniques to government-owned property.

Dan Rosenfeld already had quite a real estate resume when he became assistant general manager of the Los Angeles Department of General Services, where he is in charge of managing the city’s property.

A former private sector developer, Rosenfeld was a senior vice president with the Canadian firm Cadillac-Fairview, which at one time was the largest publicly held real estate development firm in North America.

Before joining the city in 1994, Rosenfeld served from 1992 to 1994 as California’s deputy director for real estate, a post in which he was responsible for approximately 34 million square feet of space and more than 2,300 leases.

That high-profile job came after he had already spent two years as a development executive with El Segundo-based Kilroy Industries.

Now Rosenfeld juggles a diverse assortment of real estate assignments with the city. One task is relocating 1,400 workers who must move out of L.A. City Hall during renovations, a space problem that will cost the city an estimated $58 million.

Victorville native Rosenfeld studied architecture and engineering at Stanford University and received a Harvard MBA. He began his real estate career as an architect, but switched to development because “there was more authority over the final outcome.”

Rosenfeld says he took a “sabbatical” from the private sector when he joined the state, and he expects to one day return to private business.

“This is a short-term, public service stint that I’m doing out of a mixture of old-fashioned idealism and frustration with government,” Rosenfeld said.

Rosenfeld sees his big job now as “reviving the downtown core” of Los Angeles, where he originally planned to stay with city government for just two years.

“My wife and my better judgment are telling me that maybe it’s time to hand the baton to someone else,” he said. He wishes more business people would perform temporary stints in public service because, “Government is like the weather. Everybody complains about it, but unlike the weather you can do something about it.”

Bob Howard