Kirkland & Ellis said Thursday, Aug. 1, that former Jones Day partner Andrew Van Noord has joined the firm as a partner in Dallas, the first real estate capital markets attorney in the one-year-old office.
Van Noord is bringing along associate Conrad Steele, also from Jones Day. He also is reuniting with former Jones Day partner Michael Considine and associate Alex Rose at Kirkland (Rose was minted a partner at the firm).
The University of Texas-trained Van Noord has experience handling private equity real estate fund formations and transactions, including private funds, club vehicles, joint ventures and portfolio and merger and acquisition deals.
His work over the last year has included advising TriGate Capital on its sale of the Mayfair Hotel & Spa in Coconut Grove, Florida, to Brookfield Asset Management for $40 million; aiding Blackstone on its sale of the Four Seasons Resort and Club Dallas at Las Colinas to Extell Development for undisclosed terms (Blackstone bought it in 2014 for a reported $150 million); and soft drink company Big Red on the sale of its remaining shares to Keurig Dr Pepper for a reported $200 million.
The attorney worked at Jones Day for eight-and-a-half-plus years, including a year and eight months as a partner and almost seven years as an associate. He previously was an associate at Andrews Kurth and a summer associate at Winstead and Andrews Kurth.
“It was definitely a difficult decision to move,” Van Noord said in an interview with The Texas Lawbook. “Kirkland was offering a new opportunity in a new office to build on an already existing platform in the private equity space and add in the real estate component in Texas. They have a great real estate practice and I’m happy to help grow it.”
The attorney said the real estate market – including in Texas thanks to its strong economy – is seeing a lot of activity, which he expects will continue. “There’s a lot of dry powder and funds are looking for good deals,” he said. “You’ll see an active and robust deal space.”
Van Noord notes “last-mile” logistics for companies like Amazon as a busy place for deal flow. “As the shift continues from the retail sector into different online shopping and marketplaces, you’ll continue to see people focus on logistics and warehousing,” he said. “In the last month or so, we’ve seen some large transactions in warehousing.”
Associate Steele, meanwhile, worked on some sizable energy deals early in his career at Jones Day, including SHV Energy’s $170 million purchase of the propane marketing and services business of American Midstream Partners in 2017 and DTE Energy’s $1.3 billion acquisition of pipeline gathering systems from M3 Midstream and Vega Energy Partners in 2016. But his focus more recently has been on real estate.
Before joining Jones Day in 2015, the graduate of Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law clerked at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Northern District of Texas and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Jeffrey C. Hammes, a Chicago transactional partner at Kirkland and chairman of its global management executive committee, said in a statement that Van Noord is the first real estate capital markets attorney to join the Dallas office “and will make an immediate impact for current and future clients in the broader Texas market.”
Kirkland Houston partner Andy Calder, who is a member of the executive of the committee, said Van Noord is well-regarded in the Texas legal community and real estate is an important practice in the Dallas market.
Kirkland said its Dallas office has expanded to around 45 lawyers and will be moving from 901 Main Street to the top three floors with top-of-the-building signage at Weir’s Plaza in 2021. The building is a mixed-use retail and office development in Knox-Henderson that broke ground July 15.