![\"Ed](\"https:\/\/internal.multihousingnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2018\/01\/Ed-Sachse.jpg\")
<\/a>During his 30-year career, Ed Sachse
has worn many hats: accountant, broker,
property manager and cancer survivor.
Today, he presides over Kennedy Wilson\u2019s
property services group, where he\u2019s at
the forefront of downtown L.A.\u2019s groundbreaking reemergence.<\/p><\/div>\n
Though Ed Sachse never planned to be an accountant, the quantitative nature of the field drew him in. Since graduating with honors from Michigan State University in 1983, he\u2019s parlayed his long-honed analytical skills into a 30-year career in commercial real estate. Currently president of Kennedy Wilson\u2019s property services group, Sachse seems to have moved mountains over the past three decades, pivoting from balancing books in Detroit to leasing retail sites in Los Angeles, before taking an improbable leap to start his own commercial real estate firm at the height of the early 1990s recession. Still, Sachse remains grounded, humbled by his most vital victory yet: beating cancer.<\/p>\n
In Sachse\u2019s view, these experiences have aptly equipped him to navigate a rapidly changing industry. After shepherding his company\u2014Sachse Real Estate Co.\u2014through the global financial crisis, he pored over scores of contacts looking for someone to acquire the firm. \u201cI learned early that if you ask for the business, you just might get it,\u201d he observed.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s very strategic when bringing parties together for a deal,\u201d noted Vic Montalbo, former principal of retail real estate services firm Epsteen & Associates, who first encountered Sachse in 1990 at a meeting of the International Council of Shopping Centers and began collaborating with him soon after. \u201cHe pays a lot of attention to detail and respects everyone\u2019s input. Most important, he knows his audience, which I believe is the reason for his success.\u201d<\/p>\n At Oceanwide Plaza, under construction in downtown L.A., Sachse has been enterprising since his childhood. Growing up in the suburbs of Detroit, his earliest gig was shoveling snow from his driveway at age 10. As a teenager, he became a self-taught guitar instructor, offering lessons to his neighbors. By the time he finished high school, he and his friend Larry were running a lucrative window-washing route and\u2014at as much as $90 monthly per account\u2014outearning their peers. \u201c(Larry and I) would go door to door looking for business, washing windows at strip malls on the weekends,\u201d he recounted. \u201cWe realized that we could get even more accounts\u2014by being reliable, honest and kind\u2014through word of mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n After graduating college, Sachse joined the Detroit office of former \u201cBig Six\u201d accounting firm Arthur Andersen LLP as a public accountant in September 1983. Soon after, tragedy struck: His father fell gravely ill, moving Sachse to take a sabbatical so he could spend time with his family at his father\u2019s bedside at a University of Michigan hospital. Two weeks after Sachse\u2019s arrival, his father passed away.<\/p>\n \u201c(My father) was sick, but he was only 45 and I was 22, so it was a big shock,\u201d Sachse admitted. He returned to Detroit and Arthur Andersen, and in 1984 earned his CPA license. He enjoyed working with a diverse clientele\u2014including Ralph Wilson Industries, whose late proprietor counted among his assets the NFL\u2019s Buffalo Bills and a thoroughbred horse-breeding business. But by his third year at the firm, he was fatigued.<\/p>\n He relocated to Santa Monica, Calif., after visiting his aunt in L.A. in 1986 and meeting a young woman named Julie, who would later become his wife and the mother of their two children. There, upon connecting with a fellow Michigander working in acquisitions at Douglas Emmett Inc., Sachse joined the company as a property accountant. Soon after, his pedigree caught the eye of company co-founder Dan Emmett, who offered him the opportunity to replace the outgoing CFO of the firm\u2019s mortgage banking arm.<\/p>\n \u201cI said, \u2018Sure. What\u2019s mortgage banking?\u2019 I had no idea what it meant,\u201d Sachse admitted, \u201cbut I was in my late 20s and thought it would be very cool.\u201d In his new role, Sachse serviced portfolios on behalf of California Federal Bank (now Citigroup), but he yearned for something different. Catching wind of the profits that the firm\u2019s analysts were reaping, he shifted gears to commercial brokerage, in 1989 landing a position supporting Jim Donnerstag, a retail leasing and sales agent in Coldwell Banker\u2019s Beverly Hills office.<\/p>\n Kennedy Wilson will lease the 40,000-square-foot retail segment of The Culver Steps in Culver City, Calif., a mixeduse development that broke ground in November and is In his new role, Sachse soon proved that he was not only an adept broker but also a skillful property manager. \u201cMany of my clients had operational problems with their properties,\u201d he explained. One of them, Oakridge Development (now Steven Scott Management), was struggling to collect rent at its two-story, 26,000-square-foot retail property, Marina Center, located at 4240 Lincoln Blvd. in Marina Del Rey. Sachse asked if he could try his hand at collecting the past-due rent and leasing the vacant spaces. Twenty-seven years later, the company still retains his Kennedy Wilson division to oversee leasing and management of its Southern California retail portfolio.<\/p>\n With his CPA experience and retail background, Sachse next sought to carve his own niche. In 1993, he left Coldwell Banker to start Sachse Real Estate Co., a property management and brokerage firm focusing primarily on retail and office assets.<\/p>\n Beginning with just three clients, Sachse employed the same tactic he\u2019d used as a teenager: \u201cI knocked on a lot of doors and remained diligent, consistent and competitive.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the next several years, he also brought in young talent, developed a recognizable brand in Los Angeles and grew the firm\u2019s workload to as many as 40 projects at one time. \u201cI was fortunate enough to have had clients for decades, so their mission became our mission,\u201d Sachse said. \u201cThey trusted me, and I was invested in their success.\u201d He\u2019s counted among his clients major brands like Trader Joe\u2019s, Starbucks, Staples and Petco, as well as fashion brands such as G-STAR and Miu Miu.<\/p>\n Starting a successful company during a downturn gave Sachse the courage to tackle even more challenging obstacles. However, nothing could have prepared him for the sobering phone call he received one Sunday morning in 2001, informing him that what he\u2019d thought was lower back pain were in fact tumors on his spine, liver and spleen. Reflecting on the diagnosis he received at age 41\u2014stage IV non-Hodgkin lymphoma\u2014he said, \u201cIt was one of the most difficult times of my life. I\u2019m a lucky man to be clear of cancer today and back in business.\u201d<\/p>\n His longtime friend, Appel & Henick LLP Founder & Managing Partner Brian Appel, marveled at Sachse\u2019s unwavering optimism throughout his eight years in treatment: \u201cHe\u2019s the single-most-positive person I know. Somehow, he kept in context what he could and couldn\u2019t accomplish,\u201d all while tending to his family, friends and firm.<\/p>\n During this time, Sachse managed to keep his company functioning\u2014until the Great Recession halted operations in 2009. Again, he reached into his contacts to find a new business opportunity, and reconnected with Jim Rosten, a colleague from Coldwell Banker who had become president of Kennedy Wilson\u2019s property services group. Sachse recalls his insistence at their meeting: \u201cI told Jim, \u2018We\u2019re not leaving the table until we find a way to do business together.\u201d Rosten\u2019s response was to make Sachse\u2019s company part of Kennedy Wilson, appointing him executive managing director of the property services group.<\/p>\n These days, Sachse is preparing his 165-person division for the next real estate cycle. Along with retooling services and consolidating accounting departments, he plans to add fresh talent so that his team can stay ahead of the nationwide trend toward urban living.<\/p>\n \u201cWe see (retail) tenants taking smaller spaces, as well as reducing inventory to be smarter at moving the right products more quickly,\u201d Sachse noted. \u201cOver the coming years, we\u2019ll continue to see brick-and-mortar retail tenants come up with spinoff concepts, like CityTarget and 365 by Whole Foods Market, to serve urban neighborhoods. I think the companies that elevate their in-store experience will be the ones to survive in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>His inkling was spot-on: In 2010, Kennedy Wilson bought Sachse\u2019s company and named him an executive managing director of its property services division, overseeing property management platforms and brokerage teams in Northern California, Southern California, Seattle and Chicago and executing $383 million in lease and sale transactions to date. Appointed president of the division in September 2017, Sachse now manages 20 million square feet of retail, industrial, office and multifamily assets worth more than $3.7 billion, but he has recently sharpened his focus on L.A.\u2019s Westside submarket, which has seen a surge in mixed-use development.<\/p>\nBy the bootstraps<\/h2>\n
<\/a>
Kennedy Wilson manages 153,000 square feet of open-air
retail space. The 1.5 million-square-foot mixed-use complex is
slated for delivery in 2019. Image courtesy of Kennedy Wilson<\/p><\/div>\nLeveling up<\/h2>\n
<\/a>
scheduled to open in 2019. Image courtesy of Kennedy Wilson<\/p><\/div>\nShaping the Skyline<\/h2>\n