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Bio
Donna, a founding member of Cityline Partners, is responsible for Cityline’s strategic planning, and for oversight of the company’s day to day execution of its business plan. Prior to Cityline, Donna was affiliated with West*Group for several years, first as the CEO of Park*Crest, and then as Executive Vice President for West*Group. Prior to her tenure at West*Group, she was General Counsel and Vice President of Real Estate for Opus East, and a partner with the law firm of Hazel & Thomas, now known as Reed Smith.
Donna serves on the Board and Executive Committee for George Mason University Foundation, and chairs the Foundation’s Real Estate Committee. She is also on the Board of New Hope Housing and a member of the Urban Land Institute Executive Committee, and the Urban Land Institute Trends Committee. Donna earned her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia, and her Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law.
Show Notes
- Current Role- DLJ Real Estate Partners formed Cityline Partners and she was made a Managing Director and has led the effort (6:30)
- While with West*Group before Cityline Partners the vision for Tysons’ land they owned was created (7:15)
- Origins
- Born in Denver, CO and was an Air Force “brat” as her Dad was an Air Force officer (8:30)
- Traveled constantly as a child
- Comfortable traveling and developing self confidence (9:15)
- Lived in Virginia until her senior yr. in HS where she graduated in South Dakota (10:00)
- College at UVA and she applied only there (11:30)
- Was told when accepted that 1 of 3 would not graduate (12:00)
- She was “lucky” (12:30)
- UVA Law School (13:30)
- Parents encouraged her (14:15)
- Parents met in NC and Dad went into Air Force for a career (15:00)
- She just decided to go law instead of business (16:00)
- Liked moot court and property law (17:45)
- Internship at Hazel Beckhorn and Haynes (18:45)
- Parents encouraged her (14:15)
- Hired at Hazel Thomas (merged firm) (now Reed Smith) (20:00)
- Transactional legal work (22:15)
- Specialties- financing, P&S agreements, JVs (22:45)
- 13 years there (24:00)
- Opus East became a client (24:30)
- Closing a deal and they made a special appointment with her at her office to recruit her (25:00)
- Transactional legal work (22:15)
- Joined Opus East (26:30)
- Worked initially four days a week and it was the most comfortable time in flexibility (26:45)
- Few women had the responsibility of GC in real estate companies (27:50)
- Burning Tree Country Club membership (29:40)
- Growth trajectory- Merchant builder in office & retail
- Opus Companies– Rauenhorst family (31:00)
- Build to sell and not permanently finance projects (31:40)
- Transitioned from real estate law to be a business executive (32:00)
- She valued getting the deal done- managing risk (32:45)
- Real estate lawyer should be knowledgable in real estate economics (33:45)
- While there she reached out to Gerry Halpin at West*Group about a site they had for a large mixed use project to JV with them. He approached her to join them. (37:00)
- Joined West*Group to develop Park*Crest, a large mixed use project in Tysons Corner (38:15)
- Construction drawings ready to go and decided to sell the entitled sites for $173MM in 2002 (40:30)
- Didn’t work directly for West*Group only the project initially (40:15)
- Gerry Halpin– “Force of Nature” (41:30)
- While a young associate was engaged to work exclusively at West*Group (43:00)
- She was brought in to make large decisions (50:00)
- He had a broad imagination and curiosity even beyond real estate (52:00)
- After the sale of Park*Crest she was looking around to join another firm, but Gerry wanted her to stay (53:45)
- When she joined West*Group, Gerry was in his late 70s and was still very active (55:30)
- Two other partners were “retired” and the company was divided regarding its future, as Gerry wanted to go forward while his partners wanted to sell the company (56:30)
- Halpin had a health event in 2008 and decided to “run a process” to review the portfolio (58:30)
- Real estate crash- Ray Ritchey asked her about Gerry, saying “Does he know Rome is burning?” (59:20)
- Credit Suisse came to town in a January 2010 to tour and review the properties and they heard the passion and keenly understood the local government involvement and the Metro rail coming (1:00:00)
- Sale to Credit Suisse created DLJ Capital Partners that bought the real estate all cash in 2010 and was the biggest investment they had made to date (1:02:00)
- Formed Cityline Partners right after closing (1:05:00)
- Performance since closing has been better than expected since 2010 to today (1:06:30)
- Strong relationship with DLJ Capital Partners has evolved (1:07:00)
- Comprehensive Plan in Tysons Corner (1:08:30)
- Scotts Run (35 acres) (1:09:00)
- Arbor Row
- Portfolio of office buildings (1:10:00)
- Hired Eric Berkman and Steve Gichner at Cushman & Wakefield and sold all seven buildings in one transaction to PS Business Parks
- Capital infusion in the first year to provide capital for land development activities
- Land entitlement for several years (1:11:00)
- Unsolicited offer from Home Properties in Arbor Row (1:12:00)
- Unsolicited offer from JLB in Scotts Run (1:12:30)
- Meeting in NY to discuss land sales to understand the scale of the overall project and convinced them to agree to sell parcels (1:13:00)
- $17MM of road infrastructure (1:14:40)
- Residential project in Scotts Run was designed by RTKL and were about to go out for financing (1:15:00)
- Broker brought Skanska in to show sites and they looked at the prospective project that Cityline had planned to develop and they took over the project (1:15:40)
- Archer Hotel– Lodgeworks Hotels operator (1:21:30)
- Relied heavily on consultants for the mix of office, retail, hotel, and other uses (1:22:40)
- Walking distance from 10,000 employees (1:23:00)
- Scotts Run Stream Valley Park as large as Rock Creek Park in DC (1:25:30)
- The Haden (1:26:10)
- Skanska’s project- The Heming
- Connection to nature and wellness
- Arbor Row has one parcel remaining (1:30:00)
- Scotts Run has about 5MM s.f. of development left to develop (1:30:20)
- Lesson Learned (1:32:45)
- Be nimble with market changes (1:33:15)
- Office market heating up allowed for sale of buildings early (1:33:30)
- Thinking creatively (1:34:15)
- Create a new zoning category to build a Life Plan facility (The Mather) (1:34:30)
- Needed a variance from “workforce” requirement (1:36:30)
- First to do condo
- First interim use variance- character was important (1:37:00)
- Create a new zoning category to build a Life Plan facility (The Mather) (1:34:30)
- Be nimble with market changes (1:33:15)
- Comparison between Scotts Run and The Boro
- Scotts Run is 6.5MM s.f. in totality whereas The Boro is 5MM s.f. (1:39:30)
- Scotts Run has Capital One’s major development across Rte. 123 with significant existing development (1:40:20)
- New pedestrian bridge between Scotts Run and Tysons II mall (1:41:00)
- Good connectivity among the properties integrating between
- Smith Group and WDG were the land use consultants (1:42:20)
- Includes contract provisions regarding covenants and restrictions for the developments (1:43:30)
- Wanted an open planning process and thinking from proposed developers for different uses (1:45:00)
- Uses images as exhibits to land contracts for proposed developments (1:45:45)
- Long term goal is 100,000 residents in Tysons Corner (1:46:45)
- Without Metro and Hot Lanes Tysons was at its maximum for any new development (1:48:30)
- Tysons is as large as Georgetown to the US Capitol which is very large (1:49:20)
- Add a grid of streets
- Tysons Metro stops become the hubs
- Magic wand request is to have walkability and bikeablilty (1:52:20)
- Hiring
- Creative thinker (1:53:00)
- Questions leading to creativity
- Can do attitude (1:53:45)
- Happy person- people she likes working with (1:54:00)
- Creative thinker (1:53:00)
- Life Priorities
- Family first (1:55:00)
- Refers to Kathy Bonnafe‘s comment wanting to see her kids graduate and not get arrested
- Son is a recent graduate at Swarthmore
- Adopted daughter has challenges
- Work- leave things better than you found it (1:56:50)
- Giving back- Struggle to spend time on giving back due to work and family (1:57:00)
- Looking forward to give more
- Family first (1:55:00)
- Wins- Park Crest deal and DLJ transaction (1:58:00)
- Loss- Not achieving having Metro going underground (1:58:30)
- West*Group invested considerably to bring Metro underground (1:59:00)
- Surprise- 20 years in Tysons Corner- “The Queen of Tysons” (1:59:45)
- Advice to 25 Yr. Old Self-
- Story about her son playing basketball (2:01:00)
- She went to Swarthmore to see the campus and understood the opportunity for her son
- He applied for a scholarship to play basketball in Ireland
- It’s not a race, it is a journey (2:02:20)
- Billboard response- “Slow down with your life a little bit” (2:03:45)
