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Bringing Clarity to the Complex

Land use and environmental laws and regulations provide both opportunities and challenges for your commercial real estate venture. Whether it is a prospective purchase, sale or lease, CGS3 helps you identify, navigate and overcome the myriad environmental regulations at the local, state and federal levels.

Our in-depth experience, laser like-focus on your business goals and willingness to think outside the box in obtaining flexible and defensible land use and development entitlements – across all asset types – instill certainty in an often uncertain process, and ultimately enable you to complete a project on-time and on-budget. In addition to collaborating with our clients in solving day-to-day land use and zoning challenges, CGS3’s LER team offers best-in-class legal services in obtaining entitlements for high-profile developments, master-planned communities, urban in-fill and mixed-use projects and historic redevelopments.  

CGS3 helps clients maneuver the maze of land use and environmental regulations in the following contexts:

  • Pre-purchase/leasing due diligence;
  • California Planning, Zoning and Subdivision Law/obtaining entitlements (including design reviews, permits and subdivision and plat maps) from local jurisdictions and other agencies;
  • Rezoning and variances;
  • Master and general plan adoptions and amendments;
  • Zoning or building code enforcement actions;
  • Environmental enforcement actions by agencies regulating water quality, air quality, hazardous substances, and other resources;
  • California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) compliance;
  • Impact fees, exactions and other conditions of development approvals;
  • Historic landmark designation and preservation;
  • Easements/abandonments;
  • Condemnation of property rights by public agencies; and 
  • Defense of administrative and judicial challenges to development approvals.

CGS3 LER lawyers are committed to developing innovative, forward-thinking solutions to the complex legal requirements governing land development and the many regulatory compliance challenges – solutions that ultimately result in getting your project approved on terms that make good business sense and support downstream financing, operations and disposition strategies.  Our lawyers succeed by employing a unique blend of legal sophistication and old-fashioned “know-how” as well as strong relationships with governmental officials and regulators – and an understanding that entitlements serve an important underlying business goal.