DENNIS FRIEDRICH , 39

BBA ’88
President and COO,
U.S. Operations, Brookfield
Properties Corporation

On Sept. 11, 2001, Dennis Friedrich was walking into a meeting at his company’s headquarters at 1 Liberty Plaza when debris from the first attack on the World Trade Center rained down the side of the building.

At the time, Friedrich was chief operating officer for U.S. operations at Brookfield Properties, lower Manhattan’s largest landlord. He helped evacuate all the workers from Brookfield’s five downtown buildings and then escaped before the first tower collapsed.

Since that day, Friedrich has been one of the leading figures helping to revitalize downtown Manhattan. At a time when many tenants wanted to flee those buildings, Brookfield made a commitment to drawing businesses back. Occupancy within the World Financial Center stood at 40 percent in the months
following 9/11. In September 2002, Brookfield bought out the World Financial Center’s Tower Three for $128 a square foot. Under Friedrich’s leadership, Brookfield has increased the occupancy level to 85 percent and expects it to reach over 90 percent by the end of 2005.

In 2003 Friedrich was named president and COO of Brookfield’s U.S. commercial operations. He oversees commercial property comprising 18 million square feet of premier office space in New York, Boston, Denver, and Minneapolis. In 2004 he handled two of the top five lease transactions in North America, including the largest lower Manhattan lease to date.

Friedrich, who is a member of the Real Estate Board of New York, recently
attended a real estate symposium hosted by Baruch’s Newman Real Estate Institute and was impressed by how far the Baruch campus had come since he graduated. He plans to become more involved with future programs.

—Pam Widener

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