Our Expertise
Administrative, Land Use and Environmental
The 7th largest U.S. city today, San Diego has a flowering downtown with clusters of new high-rises, both commercial and residential. They signal both the city’s new urban sensibility and its long-masked economic might: its Gross Regional Product ranks ahead of three-quarters of the world’s 181 countries, including highly prosperous nations like Singapore, New Zealand and oil-rich Kuwait.
Those growth dynamics have played to the experience of the Land Use and Environmental practice, accentuating its strengths as a savvy, steady partner helping clients deal with legal complexities that bigger, more intensive and longer-lead-time downtown projects imply. Along with local clients who have stayed with SCMV have come new national developers and their architects. Some have relationships with other law firms elsewhere, but recognize that SCMV representation can accelerate their successful journey through the San Diego’s unique development, regulatory and community terrain.
The practice addresses the full range of land use issues, including zoning, planning and property acquisition; government entitlements under General, Master and Specific Plans; infrastructure financing agreements; redevelopment agency agreements and Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) matters; eminent domain matters and impact fee issues. SCMV attorneys regularly lead negotiations with government officials of San Diego City and County during entitlement and project development, and also advocate for clients before regulatory bodies.
The city’s growing skyline and regional vibrancy are key measures of the practice’s success. But perhaps none is as important to us as the fact that we have helped to realize so many important projects while almost never having litigation threaten a client’s goals.
The SCMV Administrative, Land Use and Environmental Practice:
Dependability . . . beyond the letter of the law.