Steven P. Heller is a partner with Gilchrist & Rutter. Mr. Heller handles all aspects of real estate transactions, focusing on commercial leasing, development and sales/acquisitions, with an emphasis on leasing retail, office and industrial properties. He has worked with clients including Maguire Properties, Walton Street Capital, the Archon Group, L.P., Thomas Properties, AIG Global Real Estate, B.H. Properties and several regional and local developers and businesses.

Mr. Heller was previously an associate attorney with Gilchrist & Rutter from 1997 to 2003. Most recently, he served as Associate General Counsel and Director of Leasing for BH Properties, a Los Angeles based “value-added” real estate investment company.

Mr. Heller earned his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley – Boalt Hall. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley after attending the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a Benjamin Franklin Scholar.

Representative Experience:

• Negotiated and documented numerous office lease transactions for a variety of institutional owners of high-rise, suburban and other office projects in downtown and the westside of Los Angeles, as well as in Philadelphia, the Inland Empire, Northern California and Salt Lake City.
• Oversaw all business and legal aspects of leasing activities for a privately held real estate company with over $500M of retail, office and industrial real estate throughout U.S., involving routine direct contact with national retailers, large industrial users and other tenants of all types, as well as with outside brokers and in-house acquisitions, leasing and asset management teams.
• Represented a variety of local developers in developing, leasing, selling and acquiring various regional retail centers, primarily in Southern California and Arizona.
• Negotiated and documented the restructuring of owner participation agreements and ground leases for the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency with respect to complex parking arrangements among office and mixed use developments in downtown Los Angeles.
• Negotiated business terms and documented two adjacent 50,000 sq. ft. leases in an empty former Wal-Mart in central Washington to a national “big box” sporting goods retailer for a retail store and to Amazon.com for a call center.
• Represented an institutional real estate equity fund in the sale of a national portfolio of twenty-one retail and industrial sites.
• Negotiated and documented a 500,000 sq. ft. industrial lease to a national consumer products manufacturer in El Paso, Texas.
• Negotiated and documented the sale of a multi-unit apartment project in Santa Monica, California.
• Negotiated and documented several construction, architectural and consultant agreements with respect to office, retail and industrial projects of various size and complexity.
• Documented financing work for several large Los Angeles office projects.
• Handled wide variety of other real estate and business transactional matters, including management and leasing agreements, title review, tenant representation, financing and corporate formation and maintenance.