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If you haven't heard of Lend Lease Corp. before, you will soon. In an aggressive undertaking to expand their U.S. holdings, they are focused on the international arena and have become a significant global player, providing project management and construction services in almost 40 countries.

Lend Lease Corp. is a 42-year-old Australian company, started in 1958 by a Dutch man named Gerard Josef Dusseldorp ("Duss") who wanted to take advantage of Australia's post-war real estate boom. His construction company, Civil and Civic Contractors, needed a finance and investment company to raise money for projects. He chose the business name Lend Lease because he planned to lend out money to others to develop and lease space that he would build or acquire himself.

Taking on a housing project for the Snowy Mountains Authority, Duss applied his out-of-the-box thinking to project management. He felt that the traditional method of contracting did not encourage productivity so we looked for people who were project-oriented. He got to demonstrate the company's "design and construct" methodology on a project no one else would touch and it led to the project management philosophy of Lend Lease's success.

Duss introduced the 'user pays' system for sewerage connections in a residential project in Sydney and developed the city's first skyscraper, Caltex House, the first large city project after World War II. Dussedldorp died recently at his retirement home in Tahiti at the age of 81, having witnessed tremendous growth in his company.

Today, Lend Lease Corp. manages $35 billion dollars in assets for U.S. investors and $48 million dollars worldwide. As one of the largest real estate investment managers in the world and a leading U.S. real estate advisor to pension funds, they have an impressive amount of U.S. real estate in their portfolio. They have over 10,000 employees worldwide, up from 4,000 just last summer. The scope of real estate specialties of their employees is unmatched among their competitors.

New acquisitions include a majority stake in the Leo Burnett Building, 35 West Wacker Drive, Chicago (considered one of the top ten buildings in the city - trophy-quality, Class A+ space, 100% occupied) and Kiln Brook Office Park in Lexington, Massachusetts (Class A, Five -building office park, 95% occupied, in high tech area).

Some of their other holdings include:

• In the Chicago area - 200 S. Wacker, Cityfront Center, Equitable Building, Morton International Building, 10 & 30 S. Wacker (joint venture interest), and One North Wacker (joint development with The John Buck Company).
• In the Boston area - Rowes Wharf and One Post Office Square, Holliday Fenoglio Fowler (mortgage banking), Bovis Group $500 million Millennium Place and 10 St. James Avenue office building and acquisition of Boston Financials tens of thousands apartments and low- to moderate-income housing.
• In San Francisco - a $270 million dollar piers reclamation project.
• In Texas - The Preserve at Travis Creek apartment complex in Austin (on behalf a public pension fund client), Class AA luxury garden-style apartment community, contains 40 buildings totaling 608 units and Las Cimas Office Building (joint venture with Lincoln Property Company). In addition to their real estate investments, they also are involved in property development, project management and construction, and financial services, including fund management and administration, life insurance and wealth and income protection.

Lend Lease Corp. watched the economy and predicted the falling real estate market in the '80s when they started to diversify into other business areas, particularly financial services. The company has expertise in commercial, retail and complex urban mixed-use projects with a focus on retail in Europe, Asia, Australia and the U.S. Their credentials can be summed up in this quotation from their 1999 Annual Report: "What makes us different is that we aren't a Wall Street type firm, we have been in the market for a long time, we've been through the cycles before, we understand how real estate behaves." Howard Huang, Lend Lease Real Estate Investments, Atlanta.

Pat Rioux

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