The year after Ed Muna’s 1990 graduation from San Diego State University with a degree in finance, he landed a job that might have daunted more experienced commercial real estate brokers: To lease up Downtown’s recently completed and half-tenanted Emerald Plaza office tower during a severe recession.

That was the beginning of Muna’s 14-year association with the trophy property, a tenure that saw Emerald Plaza’s average occupancy rate jump to 95 percent. When Emerald Plaza’s original ownership sold the building to Southwest Value Partners, Muna stayed on and took over leasing for SVP’s new Downtown acquisitions, Comerica Bank Building, Golden Eagle Plaza and the First National Bank Center.

As a rainmaker among Downtown brokers representing ownership, Muna was ready for a new challenge in 2005 when he was asked to join Lankford & Associates Inc. and take over leasing of its 655 West Broadway, Downtown’s first new private-sector office tower to open since he began his career in 1991. At the time, the new project’s leasing had stalled at 50 percent. Using his proven skills and relationships, including those made as a director of the Downtown San Diego Partnership, Muna ended the project’s inertia and oversaw a lease-up that exceeded the anticipated schedule.

Now Muna, 39, concentrates on Lankford’s commercial space interests in the region, other parts of California and in Colorado. “The opportunities for us are all over the map,” he says.