Robert Maguire, Who Transformed L.A. Skyline, Passes Away at 86

Robert F. Maguire III, who changed the Los Angeles skyline as the developer of prominent high-rises including downtown icon U.S. Bank Tower, has died at his home in Studio City, the Los Angeles Times reported. Maguire, who died Tuesday from complications from pneumonia, was 86.

Maguire graduated from UCLA in 1960 and went to work at Security Pacific National Bank, where he worked with large corporations and real estate developers before entering the real estate field on his own in 1965. 

His firm developed industrial and housing projects, then ventured into building the office towers he would become known for when he erected the high-rise Northrop Building in Century City in 1968.

During the 1970s, his company developed Peter’s Landing, a waterfront 40-acre commercial residential development in Huntington Beach and rehabilitated a 1920s office building in downtown Los Angeles into senior housing.

After that, “he wanted a high-rise office building in downtown L.A.,” said Jim Thomas, who joined Maguire in the early 1980s to form Maguire Thomas Partners. Maguire achieved that goal many times over, taking his company public as Maguire Properties in 2003.

Maguire left the company in 2008, after a $3-billion bet on a 24-property portfolio run headlong into the downturn. The company was sold to Brookfield in 2013.

“Rob always wanted his projects to be significant in and of themselves, but also significant to the community,” said Ned Fox, former president of Maguire Thomas, who remembers Maguire as energetic and demanding.

Maguire will best be recalled for helping make Los Angeles look like a big city, Thomas said. “For those of us who were there when it happened,” he said, “you can’t look at the skyline of downtown L.A. without remembering Rob.”

Pictured: The 73-story U.S. Bank Tower, for many years the tallest building in the western U.S.