Jeffrey S. Arnold

Jeff has over thirty years of real estate and corporate law experience, representing developers, operators, corporate users, lenders, borrowers, and construction professionals. He has represented clients ranging from individual entrepreneurs to real estate operating companies to national retailers to multi-national corporations in projects involving vacant land, office, hotel, industrial, retail, residential, and mixed-use real estate.

Jeff brings a special appreciation of what clients want in an attorney, having been one himself for eleven years as an in-house counsel responsible for selecting and working with attorneys and law firms. Most recently he was the general counsel of Joseph Freed and Associates LLC and before that the head real estate transactional lawyer at Equity Office Properties Trust, where he also served as counsel to the Trust’s audit committee. He also was a Director of Investments for Equity Office.

Prior to his work as an in-house attorney, Jeff was a partner with Rudnick & Wolfe (now DLA Piper), where he headed the Condominium and Common Interest Communities Practice Group and also created a national practice representing corporate users and developers in tax increment financing, development incentives and public private partnerships. Among his many projects while at Rudnick & Wolfe, Jeff created the first leasehold single-family residential common interest community project in Illinois and, for a national retail mall owner and operator, developed and implemented the first lease-leaseback sales tax revenue sharing arrangement with a municipality in California.

Jeff has been a registered Illinois and Louisiana lobbyist and has drafted and lobbied the passage of legislation in both states. He has also been active with the International Council of Shopping Centers, NAREIT, the Illinois Tax Increment Association, and the Chicago Central Area Committee.