LEGENDS
& ICONS
65
of the industry leaders in this type of transaction. Having co-founded the Association
for a Better New York with Lewis Rudin in
the early 1970s, Benenson then turned his
attention to the national scene. In the mid-
1980s he founded the Coalition Against
Double Taxation, which opposed the elimination of deductions for state and local
taxes in the federal tax code reforms proposed by President Reagan. The coalition
successfully lobbied against these reforms
and evolved into what is now known as the
Real Estate Roundtable. A prolific deal-maker, Benenson reportedly averaged four
deals per week in 1946. He was also
renowned as a philanthropist and as an art
collector, who upon his death left the bulk
of an eclectic collection to the Yale Art
Gallery. He famously bought an 18.5-inch
bronze cast by Rodin from the Four Seasons
restaurant while dining there in 1964. The
cast, titled “The Mighty Hand,” set
Benenson back $4,800. “It’s a lot of money
for just one hand,” he reportedly quipped.
“But then, too, it’s quite a hand.”
DONALD BREN
Chairman as well as sole shareholder of the
Irvine Co., Donald Bren is ranked as both
the richest man in Southern California and
the wealthiest developer in the US, with a
net worth Forbes has estimated at $12 billion. For more than 45 years, Bren has
been a key player in California real estate
as a master planner, master builder and
long-term investor. “Simply put, Orange
County looks like Orange County—much
of it uniformly manicured and catering to
the high life and high tech—because of the
influence of Bren,” the Los Angeles Times
wrote. “UC Irvine, Fashion Island, the
Irvine Spectrum, University Research Park,
Newport Coast, Orange County’s thousands of acres of wilderness and parkland
and its enviable public school systems all
bear Bren’s imprint.” Most of the Irvine
Co.’s land and real estate assets are in
Orange County, but the company also
owns investment properties in Los Angeles,
San Diego and Silicon Valley. Its portfolio
exceeds 85 million square feet and includes
475 office buildings, 41 retail centers, 115
apartment communities, three hotels, five
marinas and three golf clubs. “In terms of
great visionaries who have influenced
Southern California, I’d put him up there
with Walt Disney,” Caruso Affiliated CEO
Rick Caruso, a member of the Irvine Co.
board, told the Times earlier this year.
PRESTON BUTCHER
As the name of his current firm implies,
Preston Butcher presides over an organization that draws on a previous company’s
legacy—in this case, that of the Lincoln
Property Co.’s original West Coast operation. Butcher joined the Dallas-based
Lincoln Property’s newly opened West
Coast office, Lincoln West, in 1968; it was
established to develop multifamily projects
in California, Arizona, Nevada and
Washington State. A Lincoln West commercial property division followed in 1972. In
1998, the California operation bought out
Lincoln Property’s interest in the Lincoln
West operating company and established
Legacy Partners Residential Inc., with
Butcher becoming its CEO and chairman
of the board. The following year, Butcher
purchased the interests of the other Lincoln
Property shareholders in Lincoln West and
continued these operations under the new
Legacy Partners name. He became chairman of the board for Legacy Partners
Commercial LLC in 2003. Today, Legacy’s
portfolio encompasses 36 million square
feet, with $7 billion of assets under manage-
GAME
CHANGERS65
but it wasn’t until the Southdale
Center opened its doors in 1956
that America was introduced to
the concept of an enclosed shop-
ping mall. Located in the
Minneapolis suburb of Edina, MN,
the four-story property was the
first of its kind at the time—two
department stores and multiple
other retailers all under one roof
within an 800,000-square-foot,
climate-controlled structure—
and was quickly embraced by the
public and imitated by others.
Though architect Victor Gruen’s
plans were for an even larger,
master-planned community-type
project on 463 acres, complete
with apartment buildings, houses,
schools, a medical center, park
and lake, the Southdale nonethe-
less changed the retail land-
scape—not to mention the cul-
ture of suburbia—by serving as
the model after which many
modern shopping malls were
built.
Did You Know…One of Southdale’s
anchors, Dayton’s department
store, was predecessor to today’s
Target Corp.
1956
US INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM
In 1956, President Dwight David
Eisenhower signed the Interstate
Highway Act into law. This legis-
lation resulted in the largest pub-
lic works program in US history,
and not only linked major cities
across the US, but also led to the
rise of the suburbs, and in par-
ticular their viability as commer-
cial markets. Eisenhower himself
wrote in his 1963 memoir,
Mandate for Change, that the cre-
ation of the Interstate system
changed the face of America
more than any other single action
