Land Use

One of the most often dif­fi­cult aspects of own­ing prop­erty is under­stand­ing just what it is that you can do with that prop­erty. 
Options in this regard may be dri­ven by a num­ber of dif­fer­ent over­sight enti­ties, includ­ing Fed­eral, State or Local Gov­ern­ment laws or reg­u­la­tions, such as zon­ing or archi­tec­tural restric­tions, and even fur­ther lim­ited by pri­vate agree­ment such as home­own­ers asso­ci­a­tions, ease­ments, covenants, licenses, lot line adjust­ments and sim­i­lar legal restric­tions.

Our expe­ri­ence as leg­is­la­tors and pub­lic admin­is­tra­tors allow us to under­stand the nature and envi­ron­ment of land use issues. But beyond merely being able to advise our clients on the legal aspects of a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion, we can also advise on the polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions of cer­tain actions. It is that valu­able insight that allows our clients to set path­ways that early on are designed to avoid prob­lems down the road, reduc­ing costs, and achiev­ing an effi­cient and pos­i­tive out­come.

We advise our clients on a diverse set of issues, rang­ing from minor home improve­ments to assist­ing them in full-scale devel­op­ment projects, from the ear­li­est stages of prop­erty acqui­si­tion, through the final stages of per­mit con­di­tion com­pli­ance.  Along the way, there are a num­ber of agen­cies, orga­ni­za­tions, and polit­i­cal thick­ets that may hin­der even the sim­plest project, such as expand­ing an exist­ing deck on a sin­gle fam­ily home, but also may range into more com­pre­hen­sive projects that require per­mits such as a Con­di­tional Use Per­mit (CUP), or even lot legalization.  

The scope of our rep­re­sen­ta­tion is deter­mined by the nature of the enti­tle­ments asso­ci­ated with a given par­cel.  Where land own­ers want to go beyond their enti­tle­ments and seek dis­cre­tionary enti­tle­ments, such as CUPs, our gov­ern­men­tal expe­ri­ence makes us uniquely qual­i­fied to nav­i­gate these often dif­fi­cult waters.  We have first-hand expe­ri­ence with all crit­i­cal aspects of the dis­cre­tionary enti­tle­ment process, and we under­stand it from both a gov­ern­ment and private-sector per­spec­tive. In prepa­ra­tion for, and through­out the dis­cre­tionary enti­tle­ment process, clients ben­e­fit from our depth of expe­ri­ence with envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tion, zon­ing, and land-use pol­icy implementation.