PRACTICE AREAS

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Redevelopment & Housing
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Redevelopment and Housing

We have extensive experience in forming and advising a wide range of successful redevelopment agencies and housing authorities. Redevelopment allows a community to proactively recreate itself, and we believe the expertise and creativity we offer in this area is critical to a community’s long-term success. Accordingly, this is a special area of emphasis for the Firm. Affordable housing is an essential element of redevelopment, as real estate trends continue to work against housing affordability and must be dealt with in a comprehensive and integrated fashion.

A truly successful redevelopment program involves elements of long-term planning, zoning, code enforcement, property acquisition, developer transactions with incentives, environmental analysis, housing assistance, and public financing – and requires expertise in all those subjects. Our Firm is one of only a few in the state with such broad expertise.

Expertise

  • Advice and assistance in preparation, adoption, and amendment of redevelopment plans
  • Formulation, negotiation, monitoring, and enforcement of Exclusive Negotiation Agreements (ENA), Cash Depository Agreements (CDA), Owner Participation Agreements (OPA) and Disposition and Development Agreements (DDA)
  • Property acquisition either by negotiated sale or condemnation
  • Hazardous wastes and toxic materials clean up including Polanco Act and brownfields
  • Economic development through loan and grant programs and business retention
  • Preparation of easements and other real estate documents
  • Compliance with California Community Redevelopment Law including AB 1290, AB 637, SB 211, etc.
  • Prevailing wages legislation (SB 975)
  • Formation of project area committees
  • Documentation and analysis of blight
  • Environmental documentation under CEQA
  • Negotiations with affected taxing entities
  • Relocation assistance
  • Low and moderate income housing requirements and housing assistance programs
  • State and Federal programs for housing assistance
  • Loan, grant, and deferred payment housing rehabilitation programs
  • First-time home buyer programs
  • State housing audits and general plan programs to maximize housing opportunities for low-income minority and disadvantaged persons
  • Density bonus and other zoning incentives
  • Drafting and enforcing housing restrictions through covenant agreements

Expertise in Action

Our attorneys in this practice area have over 100 years of aggregate experience in redevelopment and housing, and have worked on numerous projects of importance in California. These projects include auto centers and individual auto dealer transactions, commercial town center projects, mixed commercial/residential projects, big box centers, entertainment complexes, neighborhood commercial projects, grocery/drug store complexes and industrial complexes. We have negotiated projects ranging from a 157-acre $800,000,000 retail/entertainment/housing project in Carson on a former landfill site to a 2.5 million square foot award-winning Trammel Crow industrial/commercial project in Irwindale on a refilled former mining pit.

We have attempted through award-winning projects to help our cities meet the strong state legal mandates encouraging the provision of low and moderate income housing. These programs range from infill of urban lots in Irwindale to development of the 92-unit Signal Hill Las Brisas project including a park and childcare center to win the League of California Cities’ prestigious Helen Putman Award.

Finally, with its own public finance specialty area, the Firm is one of the few which can offer attorneys with expertise in financing innovative projects.