Lori Hill: The Seattleite

Lori Hill has seemingly worked at just about every job in commercial real estate. Last September, she pivoted to the leasing side at Clise Properties, where she serves as executive vice president. Her resume includes stops at Unico Properties as senior vice president of investment management, and as managing director of capital markets at JLL. She also served as principal at Pacific Real Estate Partners and as vice president at Cushman & Wakefield.

Clise, founded after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, owns and manages more than 2.3 million square feet of real estate in Seattle, including well-known buildings such as 1700 Seventh Avenue near Amazon headquarters, La Quinta Inn & Suites Seattle Downtown, and the Virginia Mason Lynnwood Medical Center.

Hill has returned to her downtown Seattle office five days a week. She wouldn’t have it any other way.

You stumble into (commercial real estate) kind of by accident, and sometimes it just sticks.

The thing that really kind of prompted me to make a change (to Clise) from a place where I was perfectly happy was an opportunity to move back closer to hands-on real estate and managing the portfolio. I find it really satisfying to be making decisions that are going to shape the future of this company.

I started my career back in the ‘90s in the downturn. Then came the tech bubble in the early 2000s, and then, obviously, the global financial crisis (in 2008). I’ve seen these periods of market disruption.

We still have all these amazing companies headquartered here or wanting to have a presence in Seattle, and we have this startup culture, but the dynamic has changed around remote work and hybrid. How we engage with each other is very different.

I came from New York, which is kind of like that true 24-hour city. I started to see the evolution of that over the past 15 or 20 years here as we’ve seen more zoning that allowed high-rise residential to come in. This recovery may be a little bit longer than some others, but I do think that at the end of the day we will be a more diverse, 24-hour, truly healthy city.

While we have a lot of technology here, we have a lot of other industry as well. This economy is more diverse than it’s ever been. And it’s a beautiful place to be.

It’s an interesting opportunity for the city to evolve and grow in a way that, through this disruption, will make it an even better city. Long term, we will have continued demand for housing in this market.

We need to see the return of healthy retail downtown. That’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing right now. We’re starting to see some office comeback. I’m right on the doorstep of Amazon’s HQ, and people are in the restaurants at lunch, walking around on the street, and we just need to spread that throughout the rest of the city.

The industry overall has had a little bit of a stall because of interest rates. We’ll start to see an easing.

I can say coming back to the office all week, my job satisfaction is very high. It has been proof to me that we are social, collaborative creatures. Even introverts among us still need to be around people. I am optimistic and positive about the market and where it will head.

The hard thing is that we’re trying to figure out a formula that fits into a policy. That’s a real challenge for businesses because I think really what we’re recognizing is a need for flexibility. Employees have a need for flexibility to manage their work and their life, and that’s something I’ve long known as a woman and a mother working in this industry.

It’s not even so much about three days in the office or two days out. It’s just some acknowledged flexibility to go and do certain things at this time. I think that hybrid at some point will become much more the permanent norm, rather than permanent remote. My personal opinion is hybrid is here to stay and it should be.

I liked (fully remote) a little bit at first because I thought I would have more time to multitask. Then I realized I don’t want to be multitasking my home life with my work life.

I think that companies that are serious about maintaining their culture and innovation need to bring people back together in a meaningful way.

One of the things that brought me here, that I found appealing, is because it’s personal. We’re part of this community. It matters to us.

Seattle’s always been a somewhat expensive city to buy into the value of our real estate. I always remember the surprise of institutional investors that were coming from other markets thinking that they could come in and buy inexpensively, and then getting a shock when they realized that, on a cap-rate basis, Seattle is more expensive than a lot of East Coast cities.

We can count on innovation and evolution that will positively drive the economy. The future is going to continue to be technologically driven. We continue to have a highly educated workforce that is still desirable to employers. We have this culture of innovation and great educational institutions that serve us. We just have all of these tools in the toolkit that, for the long run, will continue to make this a dynamic market.

I used to spend an inordinate amount of time explaining the Boeing factor to investors coming into this market. One big change that has occurred over my time here is the vast diversification of this market. While we have a lot of technology here, we have a lot of other industry as well. This economy is more diverse than it’s ever been. And it’s a beautiful place to be.