Journey’s End

Patrick Hanlon

Real estate: its siren call is both timeless and irresistible. Real estate is a traditional and palpable asset, a reliable avenue to personal wealth and security. And because land is limited in availability, the competition to own, trade and develop it is always fierce. More than a century ago, Mark Twain wittily opined that people should buy land, “because they’re not making it anymore.” The decades have proven the transcendent wisdom of that quip.

But real estate is also complicated. It’s exceedingly difficult to determine the true potential of a given parcel – and putting together an ambitious development deal can be mind-numbing in its complexity. Lining up investors, negotiating loans with bankers, hammering out agreements with regulators: it’s not for the faint heart or dull mind. No surprise, then, that consistently successful real estate investors are a rare breed.

One such exemplar is Patrick Hanlon, a principal at Ackman Ziff Group, a company widely acknowledged as the country’s leading boutique real estate capital advisory firm.  Hanlon is known as a wizard in the industry for his expertise in preferred and joint venture equity, debt and mezzanine financing and investment sales. Though based in New York, Hanlon has contributed his expertise to real estate ventures around the country – including California, where he met his West Coast analogue, Darius Anderson.

“I met Darius in the mid-2000s through some mutual relationships with the Hearst Corporation, and I liked him immediately,” recalls Hanlon. “Darius does a lot of things, and one of them happens to be real estate. We both do a lot of entitlement work, and we started talking about collaborating on some deals together – including a certain hotel project in San Francisco.”

Those discussions, however, took place just before the 2008 Lehman Brothers collapse that presaged the Great Recession; the hotel plans fell through as the economy declined.

“We just ran out of cycles,” says Hanlon regretfully. “But I’ve continued to see Darius at various social functions, and I’ve always enjoyed our interactions – and we’ve never stopped looking for opportunities to work together.”

Hanlon describes Anderson as the prime mover in one of the three development projects that will transform San Francisco in coming decades.

“These projects – Treasure Island, Parkmerced and Candlestick – all will turn underused and degraded land into vibrant, highly sought-after places to live,” says Hanlon. “They will ensure San Francisco maintains its status as one of the world’s greatest, most livable cities. And Darius is responsible for one of them – Treasure Island.”

Make no mistake, continues Hanlon: shepherding a megaproject like Treasure Island to completion is tough. It requires a rare talent for negotiation coupled with deep fiscal insight and an ability to accommodate meticulous planning, unrelenting work, and multiple – sometimes cascading – challenges.

“These kinds of projects are massive undertakings with great cost burdens,” says Hanlon. “They typically require time frames that can stretch to 20 years or more. People often get exhausted and leave it to the next guy – but Darius doesn’t get exhausted. He had the long-term vision that made Treasure Island possible.”

Hanlon also characterizes Anderson’s multiple and wide-ranging interests as an invaluable business asset.

“Darius spends a great deal of time on philanthropy, and he serves on many different boards,” Hanlon says. “He doesn’t do that for business reasons, but the broad network of relationships he has developed helps him in everything he does, including investment. He’s strategic, he’s creative, but his primary enterprise is advocating for people. That’s his greatest strength. That’s why he’s the straw that stirs the drink.”