Snyder's secret: change with times, keep residents happy.

Developer returns to glitzy office projects

Look around town and Jerry Snyder's handiwork is everywhere.

He was the developer of Santa Monica's luxurious Water Garden office campus, the man who converted the Marina City Club to condominiums, and the builder of 40,000 homes across Southern California.

In the Miracle Mile district alone, he bought and renovated the Museum Square and E! Entertainment buildings, and built the 1-million-square foot Wilshire Courtyard complex.

And while most business developers have yet to find many opportunities in post-recession Los Angeles, Snyder has managed to get back on track. He's arguably the busiest developer in town.

After completing nine Ralphs-anchored shopping centers over the last two years, Snyder is working on two bigger centers totaling about 460,000 square feet, and two more office complexes totaling nearly 1.2 million square feet.

So how does he do it? Unlike many developers, Snyder has a knack for winning community support for the projects he pursues. And he gets it from the beginning.

"Jerry honed some key skills during the entitlements battles of the '70s and 80s when developers were taking it on the chin from the homeowners who hated them," said Bob Bisno, a veteran California developer and a partner with Snyder in the Water Garden's long-stalled second phase.

Such consensus-building efforts were critical in gaining approval for Snyder's most noteworthy developments: Water Garden, the big Channel Gateway mixed-use complex near Marina del Rey and the 1 million-square-foot Wilshire Courtyard office complex (where the Business Journal is located) in the heart of the Miracle Mile.

"With some developers, it's trench warfare," said Laura Lake, a Westside community activist who is often at war with developers. "But Jerry has an outstanding reputation as being a concerned, responsible member of the community."

Added Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter: "Jerry treats people who raise questions with respect, and he spends an enormous amount of time and money trying to create and maintain relationships with the surrounding community."

Snyder said it's just the way he does business.

"I think we do a good job working with neighbors wherever we go - and they appreciate it," said Snyder, who at 66 retains a nearly-full head of mostly reddish-blonde hair and favors his Jeep over his Rolls Royce.

Just last week, Snyder personally took architectural renderings of his proposed 210,00-square-foot Granada Hills Town Center shopping center project to a meeting where neighbors could review and comment.

"I'm not sending a PR person, I'm going out there myself to show our plans," he said.

Snyder also stressed that the talents of his three other J.H. Snyder Co. partners - Cliff Goldstein, Milt Swimmer and Mike Wise - have helped the firm maintain a competitive edge amid the troubled local real estate environment.

Snyder had no partners when he started in the real estate business nearly a half-century ago.

After graduating from Roosevelt High School in East L.A., he opted to forego college and jumped on the building boom. His father, a general contractor, helped back his early efforts, and by his early-20s, Snyder was building 1,500 homes a year.

"I thought I was invincible," he recalled with his signature grin.

Under the Signature Homes banner, Snyder spent much of the 1950s and 1960s building homes in the growing San Fernando Valley and Orange County regions. Toward the end of the 1960s, he formed a venture with Loews Corp. and expanded his homebuilding operations, now under the J.H. Snyder name.

In the mid-1970s with Loews, Snyder's firm built the huge Coronado Shores multiple highrise complex totaling 1,500 units on San Diego's Coronado Island. Noteworthy local projects include the 850-home Beverly Glen Park development in the Santa Monica Mountains and the 317-unit Ocean Towers complex in Santa Monica.

The Snyder-Loews venture even ventured outside of California and built homes in Illinois and New York.

Snyder's career in the commercial real estate field really began with his 1979 acquisition of Prudential Insurance Co.'s former L.A. head office along the Miracle Mile - now known as Museum Square.

When L.A.'s commercial sector expanded rapidly in the 1980s, Snyder developed and renovated some of the area's best-known office facilities.

And now that certain retailers have been expanding here - and both commercial and residential development remain in the doldrums - the Miracle Mile-based developer has become perhaps the most active builder of local shopping centers.

"Jerry has certainly proven to be adaptive to changing conditions here and has managed to remain a major presence" said veteran local developer Ned Fox, principal in the new CommonWealth Partners real estate firm.

J.H. Snyder adapted to the recent recession by focusing on its fledgling retail division - completing eight Alpha-Beta/Ralphs-anchored centers in Southern California and another in Santa Rosa.

"I've always remained active" even in the worst of times, noted Snyder. But his firm's development activities during the early-1990s - when existing properties felt the rent-slump crunch - were to some extent aimed at "staying alive," he acknowledged.

As Snyder concedes, he and nearly everyone else who remained a competitor on the commercial development scene got pinched by the unprecedented real estate depression.

Snyder was forced to relinquish at least partial control of some of his signature projects - including Water Garden. As the local office market declined, Snyder saw his interest in the 666,000-square-foot first phase diminish in favor of his financial partner, billionaire investor Marvin Davis.

Snyder's ambitious conversion of Marina del Rey's high-profile Marina City Club residential complex into condominiums also suffered financial woes.

But now that L.A.'s general real estate economy is picking up, the energetic developer said his firm plans to break ground on two of its biggest retail projects to date as well as two high-profile office developments.

A January groundbreaking is scheduled for Snyder's Granada Hills Town Center project - which boasts nearly 150,000 square feet of pre-construction commitments from the likes of Ralphs, Orchard Supply Hardware, Office Max, Petco and Hollywood Video.

Snyder is also under contract to purchase a site within the San Diego (405) Freeway-front Howard Hughes Center mixed-use business park in Westchester. Snyder said he expects to get construction under way late next year on a 250,000-square-foot entertainment center featuring a 24-screen cinema complex and perhaps 50,000 square feet of restaurant space.

In the office arena, Snyder recently won the competitive bidding on a long-idled development site strategically located adjacent to NBC's studio within Burbank's high-demand Media District. The firm is now pursing approvals for a two-phase campus-like office complex featuring more than 585,000 square feet of business space and 1,780 parking stalls.

In Santa Monica - another market seeing strong demand from the media/entertainment field - a Snyder-led team is hoping to break ground next year on the 600,000-square-foot second phase of the big Water Garden office campus Snyder initially began pursuing more than a decade ago.

And with the media-entertainment field fueling strong demand for offices in Burbank and Santa Monica, it looks like Snyder and partners could very well be the first teams to get major new projects off the ground in both those markets.

"Jerry is a successful dealmaker who understands and is able to react to changes in the marketplace. That's a strong competitive advantage," Chalmers said.