It’s no secret that Chinese investment in U.S. commercial real estate is taking off. With its creation of a Chinese investment group earlier this month, Century City firm Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP is looking to get in the pilot’s seat.

In the last year, the firm’s hospitality practice group has had a hand in several hotel deals involving Chinese buyers. The firm helped put together the estimated $90 million sale of the Sheraton Universal hotel to Shenzhen New World Group Co. in January and assisted Chinese investors who put $20 million into the W Hotel and Residences Hollywood this year. The firm also represented Taiwan’s Formosa International Hotels Corp. in its acquisition of Regent International Hotels in June of last year.

“It’s really spiked,” said name partner Jim Butler, head of the hospitality practice group. “Clearly hotels are one of the preferred investment areas the investors tend to be comfortable with.”

The new Chinese investment group, which Butler also chairs, will help Chinese clients identify hotel and real estate investments in the United States, finance the deals and more. The group also will represent stateside developers and owners looking for foreign investment.

The deals won’t just be in hotels. The team is working to finalize Chinese investments in a solar farm and several restaurants, Butler said.

“We want to be a gateway for Chinese investment,” he said.

Joining Up

Those who have dealt with Lisa Quateman know that the pride she takes in building and running a woman-owned boutique law firm is nearly palpable. In the 22 years after she founded Quateman LLP, she turned down plenty of offers to join up with larger firms.

But earlier this month, her Century City firm joined fast-growing Kansas City, Mo., firm Polsinelli Shughart PC. The old firm will be the core of Polsinelli’s new L.A. office, with Quateman as the office’s managing partner.

“The fit and the timing was right this time,” she said.

There were several reasons the move happened. With the lease in her office expiring early next year, Quateman began thinking more pressingly about the firm’s future and more seriously considering joining a larger firm. She also wanted to be sure all six attorneys and all of her staff would be able to make the jump to a new firm with her – some previous offers hadn’t guaranteed it. Furthermore, joining the 540-attorney Polsinelli would give her firm, driven by work in the financial services industry, access to resources it didn’t have and a shot at larger clients.

“Sometimes when you’re a small woman-owned firm, in certain situations you may get pigeonholed into smaller matters and smaller pieces of transactions,” she said. “With all the experience I have I thought it’d be fun to be in a large firm and work on bigger pieces of the deals.”

Still Downtown

Just last month came news that Nossaman LLP’s downtown L.A. office had moved a mere four blocks down the street to make room for expansion. Now, 20-attorney firm Palmer Lombardi and Donohue LLP has moved around the corner to 515 S. Flower St. from West Sixth Street.

The firm, which primarily handles securities, financial services and real estate litigation, also needed space to expand. It has grown from 10 attorneys to 20 in the last two years, and is planning on opening a San Francisco office by the end of the year.

“The economic conditions have created more (litigation) issues for our clients,” said name partner Tom Lombardi.

Lombardi and name partner Scott Palmer co-founded the firm in 2002 in Glendale, but soon moved to downtown Los Angeles for what they called “street credibility.” They moved to 888 W. Sixth St. in 2005.

When the firm’s lease ran out, they never considered leaving downtown. The rates have stayed competitive, Lombardi said, and he’s found it easy to recruit attorneys.

“It sort of syncs up with the image we want to convey in terms of representing financial institutions, doing business litigation, corporate litigation,” he said.

The new space is subleased from a much larger downtown firm, Paul Hastings Janofsky and Walker LLP. The space was originally supposed to be used for back-office work, and Palmer Lombardi paid for several hundred thousand dollars of improvements.

“But we still got a good deal,” Lombardi said.

Staff reporter Alfred Lee can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 221.