Business Journal showcases L.A. professionals who are sold on retail property development.
ATTORNEY
Jerry Neuman, 48
Partner, Government Advocacy and Land Use
Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP, downtown Los Angeles
Jerry Neuman is the man behind Hollywood … and Burbank and Crenshaw, and a growing list of cities with large retail developments.
The Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton attorney has been instrumental in negotiating some of L.A.’s most recognizable retail complexes, including TrizecHahn Corp.’s landmark Hollywood & Highland project and Zelman Development Co.’s Burbank Empire Center.
His latest is Millennium Partners’ Capitol Records project, which would dwarf anything so far in Hollywood’s comeback: a mixed-use complex with twin 48-story office towers.
“I think retail is the essence of an urban experience,” he said. “I think it creates the character oftentimes of a community and area. It helps provide a lifeline to the street as well as to the people it serves, and from that perspective it’s the most exciting piece of a project.”
A native of Tucson, Ariz., Neuman is the son of two Holocaust survivors and began his career in real estate law under boss and mentor Doug Ring, a prominent L.A. land-use attorney who died two years ago.
It didn’t help that he started during the recession of the 1990s, but at least retail was one of the few real estate specialties that wasn’t completely dead. He said the most recent recession and its aftermath have been worse, with an often hostile attitude toward development.
“One of the most challenging things about retail development is the political and legal landscape that you have to work your way through in order to obtain the rights to do these projects,” he said.
For example, he was working on the Midtown Crossing project at Pico and San Vicente boulevards with developer LCOR Public/Private Inc. when it fell apart due to planning and financial problems coupled with some community opposition.
Developer CIM Group Inc. of Hollywood has since taken over and construction is under way at the development, which will be anchored by a Lowe’s.
Another big issue he deals with today is how to make retail work in an era when customers have the option of buying online. The answer, he said, is to make a project virtually irresistible, more than what office or industrial project requires.
“Retail now relies on a sense of social place, and in order to be successful at that you don’t have to be good at getting the right mix of tenants, you have to be good at creating an incredible experience,” he said.
Though Neuman is satisfied with his career choice, he has a ready answer to the question about what he would do if he had to give it all up. He would “completely embroil myself in community service, either through public office or through private foundation work.”
He is the chair of a new downtown non-profit dedicated to fighting chronic homelessness called Home for Good, and credits his young son for getting him involved.
“We were driving downtown and my son asked me, ‘Where does that person live?’ He was 3 or 4 and I had to explain what homelessness meant,” Neuman recalled. “I took him to a shelter to show him, and it made me promise that if I had that opportunity, I would make sure that no father had to answer that question again.”
