Allen Matkins opened up its 12th-story office at 3 Embarcadero last night for an anniversary party and a slew of real estate big wigs from places like Kilroy and CBRE attended (Allen Matkins' attorneys are involved in some of the biggest transactions across the state). One was that little lease that closed last month at Tishman's 222 2nd, with LinkedIn taking the whole tower (we broke the story). We caught up with the lawyer behind that gigantic deal, Allen Matkins' Lee Edlund (right), with pals First Exchange American Co biz dev manager Alaine Bry Raven and The Swig Co SVP of asset management Deborah Boyer. All three are East Bay residents (no, they didn't carpool).
The S.F. office celebrated its birthday with live music, a martini bar and passed bites like mini grilled cheese. Deborah, who was a panelist on our Oakland State of the Market event last week, mentioned her all-time favorite place for the simple sandwich is Loring Cafe. Meanwhile, Alaine's preferred place for bubbly is Roederer Estate in Anderson Valley, and the party happened to have it. Somehow our convo switched to how California avocados can't be beat; Lee concurs.
Here we caught up with Sares Regis' Jeff Holzman and Dave Hopkins, flanking Allen Matkins land-use partner Sonia Ransom. The firm gives an ode to the City by the Bay by branding conference rooms with names like Alcatraz and Telegraph Hill—with actual views of each.
We headed up the street to 555 Cal to catch the tail-end of the CRE // Tech Intersect Steering Committee's West Coast event to find out what's new in CRE technology. S.F. startup RealCrowd, which recently got a $1.6M seed round, had a booth set up to explain how it's bringing equity crowdfunding to the real estate industry (the team will also be at ICSC next week). We were also admittedly there to catch downtown's highest sunset view on the 52nd floor, which is also the future space for gaming company Supercell.
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