Profile
A monthly column featuring retail real estate companies
Real Estate Legal Eagles
by Joe Dyton
Founded in 1926, Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione is a regional law firm ranked among the nation’s top 250 firms, providing transactional, litigation and counseling services to businesses regionally, nationally and internationally.
The firm’s 185 attorneys counsel in all legal areas including real property and environmental, business and commercial litigation, corporate, criminal defense, employment law, financial restructuring and creditors’ rights, government affairs, intellectual property and products liability. Gibbons maintains offices in Newark and Trenton, NJ; New York, NY and Philadelphia, PA.
The Gibbons Real Property & Environmental Department integrates practitioners in transactional real estate, development and environmental law. The combined expertise of attorneys practicing in these areas is critical to the success of urban redevelopment projects, other development projects and major property acquisitions and dispositions, real estate financings and significant lease transactions. The firm’s clients include retailers, major corporations, property owners and developers in New Jersey, New York and throughout the mid- Atlantic region.
Department members have substantial experience in redevelopment transactions representing clients including developers, municipalities and redevelopment authorities. The department sponsors a redevelopment resource website - www.redevelopmentlaw.org - providing news, articles on legal and business issues, and other resources for the industry.
Russell Bershad chairs the Gibbons
Real Property & Environmental Department.
Among the Transactional Real Estate Group’s core activities are buying, selling, leasing and financing properties, and counseling with regard to joint ventures. The group handles leases ranging from ground leases for development projects to retail, office and industrial leases, on behalf of landlords and tenants, and works extensively and regularly with governmental authorities on condominium and common interest filings and related matters, including conversions of thousands of apartment units.
Attorneys in the group also represent a broad range of institutional lenders and banks, as well as borrowers, in every kind of real estate financing transaction. On a regular and ongoing basis, national lenders hire Gibbons to handle complex commercial real estate transactions. In addition to typical construction and permanent mortgage financing, the firm frequently represents lenders and users in sale-leasebacks and other financing mechanisms, and has often represented lenders in connection with loans secured by properties in many states. The Development Group has significant experience in zoning, planning and permitting matters with particular emphasis on retail, commercial, office, and industrial uses. The attorneys in the group consistently work with architects, professional planners, landscape architects, traffic engineers, engineering firms and environmental consultants. The group’s attorneys have counseled clients or appeared before planning boards, boards of adjustment and governing bodies in nearly one-third of the municipalities throughout New Jersey in connection with zoning and land use matters, and provide similar services in the Lower Hudson Valley area of New York.
Gibbons attorneys also represent retail developers and other clients in zoning and real-estate related litigation involving such issues as commercial lease disputes and objections during the permitting process by business competitors. The firm has handled appeals of use variances to municipal governing bodies, counseled clients in disputes with municipalities concerning water and sewer connection fees, and represented clients in proceedings before special-purpose boards such as historic preservation commissions and architectural review boards.
The Environmental Group has diverse, broad-based experience capable of supporting its clients’ litigation, regulatory and transactional needs, and is comprised of attorneys with both public and private sector experience that has served to develop strong working ties with the regulatory agencies affecting its clients. In the litigative arena, the Environmental Group has been extensively involved in the defense of potentially responsible parties in Comprehensive Environmental Response Control and Liability Act of 1980 cases in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and New York, and in companion personal injury and property damage cases emanating from these cases. The group’s attorneys have strong regulatory experience before administrative boards and agencies, and handle administrative hearings on air, hazardous waste, water and noise pollution matters, as well as on issues involving a variety of permitting questions. For more information, contact Russell B. Bershad, Chair of the Gibbons Real Property & Environmental Department, at 973-596- 4500 or rbershad@gibbonslaw.com.
For more information on the firm, visit www.gibbonslaw.com . Russell Bershad chairs the Gibbons Real Property & Environmental Department. www.dealmakers.net The DEALMAKERS November 25, 2005 page 19