Equity making its mark with Huffner at the helm.

Striding into a conference room at the Midtown headquarters of Equity Office Properties, Don Huffner didn't wear the look of a man operating on just two hours of sleep, the result of a delayed flight from Atlanta the night before.

Where the average person's pallor might have been reduced to that of a sallow faced zombie with a demeanor to match from the duress of lounging in an airport terminal instead of a warm bed through the wee hours, Huffner was instead quite animated.

A quick detour to grab a tea in the office's coffee room, where piping carafes of java wafted temptingly, proved that his alert countenance wasn't merely a caffeine-induced facade either. "I'm hyper enough as it is," Huffner said dropping a teabag to steep in the steaming cup.

You'd have to be hyper to maintain the schedule that Huffner does. An executive vice president at EOP, Huffner is in charge of leasing and property management for the more than 6.3 million s/f of Class A office space the REIT owns in Midtown, Manhattan, its 1.6 million s/f in Stamford, Connecticut, and the 39 office buildings totaling more than 7.5 million s/f it has in Atlanta.

Oh, and he's also temporarily overseeing EOP's 8 million s/f in the Washington D.C. region, meaning that, at least for now, he has the lofty assignment of handling the assets of the biggest office REIT in the two biggest and most competitive markets in the country.

And while it would perhaps be easier to administer the portfolio from Atlanta, where Huffner lives with his wife and two children, traveling to the different cities almost as one would do their daily commute is something that Huffner insists is imperative to his position.

"After location, real estate is a service business and it's very much a local business," Huffner said. "You must be here to win, you have to be near the clients. We're a big company, but I have a great intimacy with tenants."

The seemingly effortless manner in which Huffner conducts such an intense work schedule, as well as the outward sense of good humor he seems always ready to display, are things Huffner says stem from a philosophy he received from his father and one which is based in part on the teachings from the famous personal success book by Napoleon Hill "Think and Grow Rich." Those tenets and advice he received have made an obvious impression and he says are responsible for his success in the real estate industry.

"The idea is to give more. Do more. If we're supposed to clean the floors of a building, clean and polish the floors and clean the elevators and walls. That's how so many successful people have distinguished themselves--simply by giving more," Huffner said. "My father was my mentor in that respect. He was always there to pick me up and dust me off when I fell down and to pop a hole in me if I got too high on myself. He taught me how to be successful."

In an industry where the grass so often appears greener at other firms and where executives frequently jump ship to join the ranks of the competition, perhaps one of the reasons why Huffner has shown so much loyalty to the firm he started working for 15 years ago is the leeway it gave him when his father became ill with cancer in 1996. His dad given only months to live, Huffner, who at that time worked in Ohio and Denver, decided to leave so that he could spend as much time with his father as possible.

Amazingly, Huffner's dad wound up defying his prognosis and lived for over five years, a period during which Huffner spent time at other firms, including a stint as a senior managing director for CB Richard Ellis in Columbus, OH, and also as a regional president at The Galbreath Company. But he missed EOP and the REIT gladly hired him back in 2000, just a year before his father passed away.

"I remember getting into an important meeting just shortly after I started here again and I got a call from the family saying that dad wasn't doing too well," Huffner recalled. "My coworkers said 'see you later.' I was like, 'Wait a moment, the meeting is just about to start.' They said 'family comes first, see you later.' These are the kind of people I work with, great people, people who have so much understanding."

Despite its title as the nation's largest office REIT, EOP has a comparatively modest portfolio in the city, that ranks in size well behind major Manhattan REITs like SL Green and Vornado.

The firm rose to prominence however at the beginning of 2005 with its $500 million purchase of 1095 Avenue of the Americas, a building reputed for the challenge it poses. Wholly occupied by former owner Verizon, who is planning to vacate almost entirely, the 1.2 million s/f building is a rare and yet daunting blank canvas. It is Huffner's job to oversee a significant internal renovation in the property and lease it entirely, what is perhaps his most high stakes assignment yet given that the building needs to achieve rents in the $80 psf range to justify the price the REIT paid. Huffner's excitement for the project, as much as all the talent he has for commercial real estate, will help him and his team at EOP achieve success, he says.

"From the top floors of 1095 you can see the ocean, the park, all of Midtown, you can see everything, and if you step out front, you can see the world," Huffner said. "It's such an amazing area where there is literally every manner of product, service, and people. I have a lot of passion for this project and if you can pull from passion, you have fertile ground and you can grow anything."