Michael Kuppersmith

My focus

I focus my practice on commercial real estate transactions, with an emphasis on the leasing, acquisition, development, financing and disposition of office, retail, multifamily residential, student housing, hotel and industrial properties, corporate facilities work, workouts involving distressed real estate assets, and the development and redevelopment of commercial properties. I represent an array of clients, including private real estate funds, pension funds, commercial and multifamily residential developers, office, retail, and industrial landlords and tenants, multinational corporations and institutional investors on these types of transactions. I also regularly represent multinational corporations in connection with their corporate facilities’ needs. I have extensive experience working on commercial real estate transactions in California and I have lectured on commercial leasing for Continuing Education of the Bar in California.

Representative experience

• Representing a multinational corporation on an 880,000-square-foot build-to-suit transaction for a distribution center in New Jersey and a 600,000-square-foot distribution center in Lebanon, Indiana
• Representing a real estate fund on the acquisition and financing of a portfolio of six multifamily residential/student housing projects located in Berkeley, California, for a purchase price of approximately $180 million
• Representing the developer of a 300-acre mixed-used redevelopment project in San Francisco, California, in connection with a series of land transfers between the developer, the City of San Francisco, Port of San Francisco and the State of California
• Representing a multinational corporation and its subsidiaries on multiple office facilities leases and subleases involving more than 5 million square feet of office and industrial space in locations throughout the United States, including Arizona, California, New York, Indiana, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and New Jersey (including the lease for its U.S. headquarters), on real estate aspects of corporate acquisitions and dispositions, and on sales of real estate assets
• Representing the landlord on the restructure and expansion of a 300,000-square-foot office lease with a multinational, publicly traded corporation, in a Class A downtown Chicago office building
• Representing a publicly traded real estate investment trust on the acquisition, development, financing and refinancing of a 2 million-square-foot retail center in Ontario, California
• Representing a publicly traded real estate investment trust on the construction financing for a 1.2 million square-foot retail development project in Madrid, Spain
• Representing a real estate fund on multiple acquisitions and dispositions of office properties in the Washington, D.C., area
• Representing a real estate fund in connection with a long-term ground lease with a Chicago-area university for the development and operation of an on-campus 10-story student housing project
• Representing a real estate fund in connection with the acquisition, financing and development of a 500,000-square-foot life sciences building adjacent to the campus of a major university in Connecticut
• Representing the owner/ground lessee in connection with the restructuring of a long-term ground lease covering 20 acres on Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, California, the development and financing of two new office buildings on the property, the lease-up of the project to three investment banks and Stanford University, and the disposition of the project
• Representing a real estate fund in connection with the sale of a Class A office building in Washington, D.C., for approximately $250 million
• Representing a pension fund on multiple acquisitions and dispositions of multifamily, office, retail and industrial assets

Looking ahead

I see significant changes in the utilization of commercial real estate. As a result, there will be a potential surplus of office and retail space, an increase in sublease transactional work and redevelopment opportunities for both office and retail assets.