1. Empire Realty Group, LLC
12100 Wilshire Blvd. 8th Fl
Los Angeles, CA 90025
(310) 806-9380, (510) 588-4041 fax
Developer Resume and
Sampling of Recent Projects

2. Empire Realty Group, LLC
12100 Wilshire Blvd. 8th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90025
(310) 806-9380, (510) 588-4041 efax
empirereal@sbcglobal.net e-mail address
About The Developer
Empire Realty Group, LLC
Empire Realty Group, LLC, is a privately held statewide real estate development and investment
company founded by and under the leadership of Linnard Lane since 1995. Empire and its members have a
combined hands on experience of 67 years in all aspects of retail real estate development, leasing, investment,
finance, retail brokerage, and asset management producing over 155,000 square feet of stores for Starbucks
Coffee, FedEx Office, AT&T, Petco, TGI Fridays, Applebee’s, Addison Ave. Federal Credit Union, Michael’s
Stores, Linens N Things, Wachovia Bank, Peets Coffee, Chipotle, Jamba Juice, Payless Shoe, Game Stop, Metro
PCS, Quizno’s, Taco Bell and others. Notable developments include a 90,000 sf power center located at the main
entrance to Union Landing, a nearly 1,000,000 square foot Entertainment/Lifestyle retail center in the San
Francisco bay area community of Union City, California anchored by a 153,000 sf WalMart, Lowe’s, Best Buy,
Kids R’ Us, Sportmart, Albertsons, and a 25 screen Century Theatre, two multi story mixed use buildings in San
Jose across from Valley Fair Mall and on the Petaluma River waterfront. It is the combined talent, resources and
capabilities of its members that make Empire Realty Group a specialist in its field.
In addition to developing and remodeling properties for its own account, Empire also performs a great
deal of “Merchant Development” that facilitates the growth and expansion of retail and restaurant brands
across California. Empire closely works with and is retained by national and regional retail store chains on a
preferred developer basis giving it exclusive rights to acquire and develop assigned properties on their behalf
and aid in the strategizing, planning and execution of rolling out their retailer clients expansion plans. Empire
has performed such services in the past for Blockbuster Video, FedEx/Kinko’s, and Noah’s Bagels, and
continues to enjoy that relationship today with Starbucks Coffee, Chipotle Mexican Grill as well as a few
regional concepts helping to aid their in house personnel and exclusive brokers in site location, market strategy
and research, acquisitions and entitlements, project budgeting, construction management and store delivery.
Empire is currently developing contract assignments with other retailers in addition to developing projects for
its own account.
Empire also leverages its real estate development services platform for third party property owners and
asset managers as well. Development Services can mean different things to different people but to us, it means
applying our long-term experience to: maximize an assets current value, create sustainable future value, and
prevent potential project problems from becoming real problems. One such recent project involved the
repositioning of a retail project Empire retained the property management on since selling it to its current owner
over 10 years ago. Empire devised and executed a strategy to downsize an existing 6,000 sf store currently
occupied by FedEx Office to a 3,450 sf space and leasing the balance of the space to Chipotle and created two
new 10 year leases with escalations and increased the buildings overall annual net rentable by $59,000. Empire
has the personnel, experience, and relationships to help its clients with any development project. Our approach
is consultative and collaborative followed by swift execution. Our services are available as the client needs them
and in whatever combination. We select, coordinate and drive our team members to make our clients goals a
reality. Empire provides a one stop shop/single point of contact for the client and guides the process through
establishing business and project plans, preparing project financial proformas and what if scenarios, conducting
feasibility and due diligence assessments, meeting and performing architectural requirements, processing all
governing agency entitlements, underwriting, bidding, and awarding construction contracts, construction
management (start-to-finish), property management, asset liquidation and risk mitigation—singly or in any
combination.

3. Empire possesses intimate knowledge of local retail markets and trade areas throughout California and
maintains relationships with most of the local and regional major retail leasing and investment brokerage
houses throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California. It has also enjoyed and negotiated
numerous joint venture relationships with nationally recognized institutional equity sources, regional and
national conventional banking relationships and other sources of private equity capital investment.
Linnard Lane
Linnard Lane, Empire’s Managing Member, has over 30 years of extensive transactional and operational
business experience in all aspects of retail property development, including site selection & acquisitions, market
strategy & planning, project feasibility & financial analysis, leasing, sales, permits & entitlements, and
construction management. Over his career, Linnard has been responsible for producing over 543,000 sq. ft. of
lease transactions valued at more than $136 Million, the acquisition and development of over 130 shopping
center and free standing retail properties, managed six development teams simultaneously (real estate, leasing,
design, construction, legal, broker network) producing over 138 new store openings for retailers and
restaurants, raised and structured $21.5M of public debt and municipal financing instruments with local
governments through public/private partnerships, and has supervised to on time completion $1M - $20M
project budgets.
Linnard began his career in retail development in 1981 for one of California’s largest retail real estate
development companies, La Mancha Development Company based in Los Angeles. Since 1972, La Mancha has
been responsible for the development of over 800 strip shopping centers primarily throughout California,
Arizona, and the western US. By 1984, as its Director of Real Estate for Southern California, he was personally
involved in the acquisition, development, and leasing of over 74 shopping centers throughout the Los Angeles,
Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside and Ventura County trade areas. In addition he supervised the leasing of
over 223,000 sq. ft. of lease transactions and managed the company’s 54 shopping center portfolio covering 140
stores and directed all property management and lease administration department staff.
By mid 1985, after conducting local and statewide market analysis and trade area studies to identify
new growth opportunities outside of Southern California, Linnard spearheaded the opening of and became La
Mancha’s Northern California Division Manager directing all of its development activities including marketing,
construction, leasing, and acquisitions producing over 45 new ground up shopping centers covering
approximately 288,000 sq. ft. and leases with Blockbuster and Hollywood Video, Little Caesars and Dominos
Pizza, Barnes and Noble, 3Day Blinds, Payless Shoes, 7-11, Office Max, Kragen Auto among others. He also
developed additional relationships with various local and county governmental agency members as well as a
network of 3rd party leasing and Investment brokerage houses, general contractors, architects, escrow and title
companies which he still maintains today.
In 1995, Linnard founded Empire along with one of the states largest and most successful retail tenant
representation brokerages with offices in San Francisco, Ventura, Los Angeles, and San Diego creating a
boutique real estate firm which has now grown into a full service commercial real estate company specializing
in retail real estate development, leasing, property management and advisory services. Empire’s mission was
and still is to facilitate the expansion of established national and regional lifestyle and urban infill retail and
food service clients in the California marketplace.
Since Empire’s beginnings, Linnard has managed and participated in all phases of the store and
shopping center development lifecycle and leads in addition to its own forces, a network of experienced team
members including leasing specialists, general contractors, architectural, engineering and environmental
consultants, finance and legal professionals with specialized knowledge in various practice areas and has
developed numerous relationships over the years with city and county planning staffs, redevelopment agencies
and city council people all over California. He has appeared before numerous local, county and state agencies
and commissions public hearings in the presentation and acquisition of various project entitlement requests.

4. He has been retained by the cities of San Leandro and Union City redevelopment agencies to advise on
downtown core developments and received the Design of Excellence award from the city of San Leandro for
best adaptive reuse of one of its central core downtown developments and the Cultural Heritage award from
the Stockton City Council for its redevelopment project near the University of the Pacific. He also consulted
with the Town of Los Gatos on a design charette to help revitalize its main shopping strip of Los Gatos Blvd.
Some of Mr. Lanes other notable entitlement and government agency accomplishments include negotiating with
the City of Oakland to terminate condemnation proceedings to acquire land Empire was currently developing
and was successful in getting the City of Mountain View to suspend a 19 month development moratorium as it
applied to an impending Empire project. He also negotiated the successful funding of a forgivable $800,000 Tax
Incremental Owner Participation Loan with the Redevelopment Agency of Union City, CA that was paid off 5
years early and closed a Disposition and Development agreement and subordinate $700,000 loan from the City
of San Leandro Redevelopment Agency in connection with a city redevelopment project, it too was retired early
and created a profit for the city. Linnard was also directly responsible for successfully orchestrating the
assemblage and supervision of the $5M environmental remediation of a 9 acre brownfields site resulting in the
16 month concurrent development of a 90,000 sf power center, Empire Pointe, anchored by Petco, Michael’s
Stores, Linens N Things (now Smart & Final) with outpads containing Applebees, TGI Fridays, Chipotle, FedEx,
AT&T, and Payles Shoes. Empire Pointe is located at the main entrance to Union Landing, a nearly 1,000,000
square foot Entertainment/Lifestyle retail center in Union City, California anchored by a 153,000 sf WalMart , 25
screen Century Theatre, Lowes Home Improvement, Best Buy, Babies R Us, Extended Stay America, and
Albertsons.
Linnard has also devised, participated in, and implemented aggressive multi-store roll out market
penetration programs, and deployed innovative techniques to open multiple stores in high barrier to entry
markets for Starbucks Coffee, Chipotle, and Noah’s Bagels among other current assignments. Empire developed
a reputation, which it still enjoys today, as being the “go-to” company that restaurants and retailers rely upon
for obtaining permits and on time/on budget store delivery anywhere in California.
Professional Affiliations:
Linnard's Professional affiliations have included International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC); has
been an expert witness in the commercial real estate field for arbitration and mediation proceedings in
California; and has been a guest lecturer at the University of Southern California, Lusk Graduate School for Real
Estate Studies, John Shea Series.
Education:
Linnard received his B.S. degree in Psychology, Real Estate, and Business from Arizona State University
in 1980. In addition, Linnard completed studies in the professional continuing education program at University
of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in Advanced Real Estate Finance in 1982 and Restaurant Industry –
Operations and Management (2010).

5. Empire Realty Group, LLC
Empire Pointe Shopping Center, Union City, CA
Kinko’s, AT&T Wireless, Payless ShoeSource, Linens N’
Things. Michael’s Stores, Petco Animal Supplies, Applebee’s
This project sits at the main entrance to the 1,000,000 sq. ft. Union Landing regional shopping center. Three
properties were assembled from two different property owners to create Empire’s 8.75 acre development. The
project has its own 4-way traffic signal at its main entrance and 85,081 sq. ft. of building. Empire negotiated
two separate complex indemnity and environmental remediation agreements with two governing agencies and
supervised remediation of the property concurrent with the design and construction of the shopping center.
Adjacent retailers in Union Landing include WalMart, Best Buy, Office Max, Lowe’s Home Improvement
Centers, Babies/Kids R’ Us, Sportmart, In N’ Out Burger, Albertsons, Borders, Century Theatres 25-Plex,
Krispy Kreme, Chili’s, Starbucks, IHOP, and Lazy Boy Furniture.

6. Empire Realty Group, LLC
Starbucks Coffee Company
SWC Lakewood & Telegraph, Downey, CA
This building, sits approximately 800 feet North of Interstate 5 northbound onramp to and 20 minutes
south of Downtown Los Angeles. The site was very challenging to develop in that it was a previous service
station which Empire was able to obtain No Further Action Closure status from the California Regional
Water Quality Control Board, and the city required a street dedication of almost 22% of the total site area
leaving only 15,414 sf of land area available for the building, a drive through lane and adequate parking
and access. Empire successfully resolved this design dilemma with a creative plan that provided a 10 car
high volume drive through stacking lane that loops around the building hiding most of it from view, an
outdoor patio dining area, 14 on site parking spaces, a 10’ wide landscape setback street buffer and
negotiated a variance for 3 parking spaces convincing the city to credit some of the excess auto stacking
towards the parking requirement. Downey has a history of requiring unique architectural statements for its
quick serve food restaurants since it is also home to Johnnie’s Broiler and the world’s very first McDonalds
restaurant which sits just one intersection South from the property, both of which are registered historical
monuments. The building design attempts to project the “illusion” of a Starbucks coffee cup at its hard
corner entrance that is viewable from all street sides incorporating a floor to roof line backlit green glass
curtain wall and floating logo sign as a backdrop that draws the pedestrian customer to enter the store by
walking through “the cup”. The building is also positioned on the property so that while the drive through
lane is easy to locate and access, the public primarily only sees the front of the building and the “Cup” as
their eyes turn the corner.

7. Empire Realty Group, LLC
2500 Mendocino Ave., Santa Rosa, CA
This project consists of 6,137 sq. ft. located at the NEC of Mendocino Ave and Chanate Rd. near
the Fountaingrove area of Santa Rosa. The property, formerly a Chevron service station, has 34
parking spaces with access off of both streets and was redeveloped into a three tenant retail
building for Peet’s Coffee Company, Pearson’s Market, and Addison Ave. Federal Credit Union.
Peet’s is a national chain with stores in 38 states that began in Berkeley California with a cult
following. Addison Ave. is the 10th largest credit union in the country with assets over $14 Billion
dollars and serves as the credit union for HP Computers and Agilent Technologies. This location
was chosen as Addison’s very first off campus location. Adjacent to the property is the Sonoma
County governmental headquarters. The site is also located between two Hwy 101 freeway off
ramps. The architecture was praised by the city’s Design Review Board for bringing the building
to the street and providing an outdoor dining patio.

8. Empire Realty Group, LLC
Starbucks Coffee, Taco Bell, & Quiznos
1443 E. 14th St., San Leandro, CA
This project was developed in conjunction with the City of San Leandro Redevelopment Agency. The
building, originally an old fabric store built in the 1920’s of hollow clay block, was seismically retrofitted and
redesigned by turning the side of the building, once a solid wall, into the front of the building by constructing
a new wall in its place five feet behind the old wall location with new storefront entrances, sidewalks,
windows and facades. The building sits mid block with a competing streetscape in front of a Safeway
Marketplace/Longs Drug anchored shopping center. Empire negotiated a complex redevelopment agency
loan subordinate to a conventional construction loan and a 99 year license agreement for an adjacent city
owned parking lot at no additional cost for the exclusive use of the projects tenants and customers.

9. Empire Realty Group, LLC
LLCLLCLLCGroup,LLLC
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LLCLLC Building Remodel @ 1415 East 14 St., San Leandro, CA
Electronics Boutique & Metro PCS
BEFORE
AFTER
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This project is two doors North of the Starbucks/Taco Bell/Quizno’s project at 1443 E 14 St. in the City of San
Leandro. The building, originally an old dress shop for 40 years, has been transformed into a virtually different
structure through an extensive remodel of the buildings infrastructure and architectural features. The design will
complement the architectural style of the Starbucks project while infusing new colors, materials and textures to a
continuing pedestrian streetscape. The incorporation of a sign tower element for the buildings two tenants,
Electronics Boutique and Metro PCS, at an already prominent intersection made this structure important to the
redevelopment of the downtown area. The building sites in front of a Safeway Marketplace/Longs Drug
anchored shopping center. Empire’s activity and infusion of capital over a 2 year period was responsible for the
majority of all new development in San Leandro’s downtown redevelopment core. Empire received from The
City of San Leandro City Council its prestigious Planning and Design Award for best project of the year for
adaptive reuse.

10. Empire Realty Group, LLC
NEC 19th St. & J St.
Sacramento, CA
This property is located in the heart of the Midtown neighborhood district of Sacramento. Its tenants include
Starbucks Coffee, Noah’s Bagels, Jamba Juice, and Una Mas restaurants. The 6,200 sq. ft. building has many
architectural details and finishes including operable sliding front windows and is sited up to the public sidewalk
with an integrated textured colored concrete patio of approximately 2,250 sq. ft. for outdoor cafe’ seating that
gradually steps back from the street as it turns the corner of the building. The buildings location acts as an anchor
to the now flourishing J St. corridor and streetscape. Prior to Empire’s development of the parcel, the land sat
vacant for nine years until Empire recognized that the younger, more affluent, yet bohemian style resident who
began to populate the neighborhood was being underserved. The center now serves as the anchor to the Midtown
retail district.

11. Empire Realty Group, LLC
This 2,895 sq. ft. building was
the product of rehabilitating an
existing vacant 1,695 sq. ft
Taco Bell for Noah’s Bagel’s
and constructing an integrated
additional 1,200 sq. ft. for
Starbucks Coffee. The building
façade was modified to
accommodate each of the
tenants trade dress while
utilizing the Spanish mission
theme of the building common
to the area. The project is
approximately 2 blocks from the
University of Pacific and
received an award of excellence
from the City of Stockton
Cultural Heritage Board and
City Planning Commission for
its contribution to the
neighborhood.
Noah’s Bagels & Starbucks Coffee
2535 Pacific Ave., Stockton, CA
Evans/Brueners Rents Furniture
SEC Stevens Creek Blvd. & Casa View Dr., San Jose, CA
Located on Stevens Creek Blvd., one of San Jose’s busiest and most coveted retail destinations, this
building was the product of massive rehabilitation. Formerly an abandoned bar with no windows, this
6,547 sf building underwent a total makeover right down to the foundation including designing a main
entry with vaulted lighting, wraparound 15ft. tall show windows and storefronts, and new exterior plaster
treatment and tile accents creating depth and presence.

12. Empire Realty Group, LLC
Blockbuster Video
SEC San Pablo Ave. & Brighton Way, Albany, CA
This building sits one block south of the El Cerrito Plaza which recently completed redevelopment with a
new Borders Books, Bed, Bath, & Beyond, Old Navy, a remodeled Albertson’s supermarket, Ross Dress
For Less, and Pier One Imports among others. The site which is also close to the El Cerrito BART station,
also attracts attention from both neighborhood uses via busy San Pablo Ave. as well as El Cerrito Plaza.
The 6,542 sf building also accommodates approximately 33 parking spaces behind the building which
boasts access from both streets. This project was only the second project to come before the Albany
Planning Commission since the implementation of its “San Pablo Rehabilitation Plan” in over five years
and helped influence design policy for future projects.