The Legacy of Gerald Hines, Master Builder
The founder of Hines built a development giant that changed the industry and shaped skylines around the world.
August 25, 2020 | Greg Isaacson | Commercial Property Executive
Gerald D. Hines, the pioneering builder who died Sunday at the age of 95, changed skylines around the world and raised the bar for quality and style in commercial buildings. The founder & chairman of Houston-based Hines leaves behind a legacy that includes some of the most memorable properties in cities from Chicago to Shanghai—out of a portfolio spanning hundreds of projects—and a real estate industry that he helped lead and transform.
Born in Indiana in 1925, Hines established the development firm as a one-man office in Houston in 1957. Over the decades, he built Hines into a diversified global company that is active in 25 countries and 225 cities. His son Jeffrey Hines, who has been running the firm as president since 1990, now assumes the role of chairman & CEO of a company with more than 4,800 employees, $144.1 billion of assets under management and 165 developments underway.
One measure of the firm’s global significance is that the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, which tracks the world’s loftiest towers, includes about 150 Hines projects in its database. Many of these properties set new height records in their respective cities, including Salesforce Tower in San Francisco; JP Morgan Chase Tower in Houston; the Devon Energy Center in Oklahoma City; and Italy’s tallest building, the Unicredit Tower in Milan.
