For Williams, the sky's the limit in leasing.

LEASING BROKER

Lynn Willams

Born: Pasadena, year undisclosed

Position: Executive Director, Cushman & Wakefield Inc.

Accomplishments: Represented City National Bank last year on its 315,000-square-foot lease at Arco Plaza, which will be renamed City National Plaza. Represented Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker LLP on 2001 lease at Arco Plaza.

Quote: "All large complicated transactions have their own personal gestation period. It takes as long as it takes to final a perfect solution."

IF you want to see Lynn Williams' impact on downtown Los Angeles, just look up.

The logo of law firm Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker LLP adorns the top of the 52-story north tower of Arco Plaza, having replaced the original Arco logo when the firm moved from the south tower in 2002. Across the plaza, Bank of America signage atop the south tower will soon give way to a City National Bank sign.

The seemingly sudden changes to the 33-year-old property, which will be renamed City National Plaza and undergo a $125 million renovation, were largely a result of years of effort on the part of Williams, executive director at Cushman & Wakefield Inc.

Williams represented both Paul Hastings and City National in their deals at 515 and 555 S. Flower St. She said she worked on the City National deal, which was the second largest in the county in 2003, for three years. It took more than a decade to seal the law firm's lease.

"We had a competitive interview process, and the team she assembled for our project had the most talent and had done the most homework," said Harry Topping, senior vice president at Beverly Hills-based City National Corp. "We took our time, but she was very patient."

With those two deals, Williams has filled 425,000 of the 2.7 million square feet in the complex since 2001. In all, the deals were valued at nearly $220 million.

Compounding the achievement is that she worked as a tenant representative dealing with two different sets of owners.

"I always believed in Arco Plaza as a very important landmark in downtown," Williams said of the site, considered downtown's premier address when it opened in 1971. "What's really exciting is that's 250,000 square feet of absorption to downtown L.A."

The Arco Plaza association is fitting, given that Williams began her real estate career with John Cushman III, chairman of Cushman & Wakefield Inc. A graduate of USC Law School, she practiced real estate law for three years before signing on as an executive assistant to Cushman, who came to Los Angeles in the late 1960s and worked with Atlantic Richfield Corp. on the development and leasing of the property.

"Nothing was as exciting as the opportunity I had with John Cushman," said Williams, whose first assignment was working on Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc.'s 2 million-square-foot consolidation in New York.

She became a broker in 1988 and has since brokered or consulted on more than 16 million square feet of transactions nationwide, serving as a tenant rep for national firms like Parsons Corp. and Raytheon Co.

Last year, she represented Pepperdine University's Graziadio School of Business & Management in its move to 112,000 square feet at Howard Hughes Center.

Still, most of Williams' work has been close to Cushman & Wakefield's Figueroa Street offices. "Not only is she good at the lease and negotiation side, she's skilled at building consensus and working within a structured environment," said Kent Handleman, managing director at Thomas Properties Group, who negotiated with Williams on the 15-year City National deal. The decisions leading up to the deal, he said, "were not easy or quick decisions."

As for being a minority of sorts--a woman in the male-dominated brokerage industry--Williams does not view that as an issue. "A good broker is a good broker," she said. "I just try to work harder."