Bonnie S. Milavec

How Bonnie Helps Clients

Bonnie is a commercial real estate attorney assisting regional and national real estate owners, developers, landlords, tenants, brokers and managers in all aspects of commercial property transactions. With 35 years of significant hands-on experience, Bonnie has closed transactions across many industries including life sciences education, retail, healthcare.

Bonnie has served as SVP, senior real estate counsel and assistant secretary of a Real Estate Investment Trust publicly traded on the NYSE, where she oversaw the legal affairs of the company’s day-to-day real estate operations – including acquisitions, sales, development, insurance coverage issues, construction law matters, joint ventures, financings and leasing of its properties, build-to-suit and otherwise.

In her nearly 13 years with the industrial and office REIT, Bonnie worked to facilitate billions of dollars in value through individual and portfolio sales and acquisitions. Among many significant projects, Bonnie is proud of having worked on build-to-suit and adaptive reuse lease negotiations to accommodate life science laboratory facilities. During her tenure, she played an integral role in building the REIT’s portfolio in the US and UK to include: a 108 million square foot logistics operating portfolio; 4.9 million square feet of logistics development in progress; 1,748 acres of land for future logistics development with build-out potential of 20.5 million square feet and a 3.8 million square foot office operating and development portfolio.

Bonnie also worked as a senior vice president for real estate and general counsel of a $100M private-equity backed pet-care start-up organization covering in the Mid-Atlantic states. Her business responsibilities in that role included site selection, lease negotiations, land use, permitting, and build-outs. As General Counsel, she focused on transaction documentation, negotiation of third-party agreements, developing a comprehensive insurance program, addressing labor and employment matters, creating operational business forms, facilitating board meetings and engaging outside counsel.

In her first in-house counsel role, Bonnie spent 11 years as associate general counsel to a Pittsburgh-based quasi-public, state-related research university handling business, real estate, corporate, and finance matters. Notably, she was responsible for providing counsel to the university’s office of technology management in support of the commercialization of biomedical technologies coming out of the university’s health sciences schools. During Bonnie’s time as associate general counsel, the NIH sponsored $400 million in research annually. She also oversaw endowment investments, negotiated major university sponsorships and handled technology transfer transactions and start-up company activities formed around university-developed technology.

She began her career working on commercial real estate matters for a large Philadelphia law firm, where she handled acquisitions, sales and development transactions; build-to-suit projects; land-use; retail, office and industrial leasing; joint ventures; and secured financing. Milavec earned her BA, in three years, summa cum laude, from Temple University School of Communications and Theater and her JD, from Temple University Beasley School of Law, where she was a Temple Law Review Note/Comment Editor, a Trial Advocacy Barrister’s Award Winner and First Place recipient of the Donald J. Orlowsky Memorial Prize.

What Clients Can Expect

Bonnie’s 35-year career in private practice and as in-house counsel allows her to deliver clients unique perspective gained from having represented stakeholders on all sides of complex transactions. Leveraging her multi-faceted experience enables Bonnie to anticipate the opportunities and challenges presented to her clients. Bonnie is a responsive, business-focused professional who takes a collaborative approach to achieving her client’s objectives in a timely and efficient manner.

I’ve always loved real estate law because I take pride in positive outcomes and enjoy the closure that comes with finalizing a deal. Likewise, I find that nearly all real estate projects generate meaningful economic benefit to the local community.

Proof Points

• Representation of Landlord in connection with one million square foot build-to-suit food distribution center lease. Representation of purchaser in $1.475 billion multi-state portfolio acquisition of 177 industrial properties. Representation of seller in $969 million multi-state disposition of 108 office properties,
• Served as senior company officer responsible for structuring, implementing and settling claims arising per an Owner Controlled Insurance Program (OCIP) for construction of $1.5 billion joint-venture development project.
• Collected in excess of $1.2 million in tenant arrearage utilizing personal guarantees.
• Facilitated a university technology-transfer process through the licensing of technology into existing biomedical companies and through new enterprise development formed around university inventions.
• Handled affiliation agreements with other universities to support collaborative research, innovation and entrepreneurship and other business of the University’s Office of Technology Management.

Outside the Office

Bonnie spends free time with her husband, twin daughters and two dogs, Honey and Hazel. She loves warm-weather travel and the New Jersey shore.

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