Overview

Objective: Strategies for Public Challenges

In our efforts to secure discretionary approvals from government agencies, the firm has enjoyed great success combining its expertise in legal issues applicable to particular approvals with close contact with elected officials and public agency staffs, and familiarity with the various community activists or special interest groups participating in individual approval processes. The firm assists in securing approvals for developments from landfills to health care facilities to housing developments, as well as non-development permitting for property use, operations, and rate setting.

Representative Matters

Representative Matters

Significant projects demonstrating our experience in the arena of public/private contracts across a broad spectrum of industries in the last decade include:

• Negotiating the hospital transfer and commencing transition planning for the transfer of Marin General Hospital from a Sutter affiliate to freestanding District operations projected for 2009 to 2010.
• Counseled the Prison Industry Authority on an agreement with the City of Folsom involving its re-cycling facility.
• Defended the Foster City/San Mateo School District in litigation with the City of Foster relating to various land swap agreements for school sites. This was an alleged fraud case arising from their prior agreements on the swaps and the covenants in the agreements. It also involved as a third party the Foster family and their initial grant of the subject properties.
• Represented underwriters and borrowers in numerous multi-million dollar public financings.
• Prepared contracts and agreements between private entities and public entities.
• Handled $500 million dollar, 65-year ground lease and agreement to build and operate a hospital.
• Completed purchase by a private residential developer of a portion of real property owned by a school district.
• Counseled solid waste company in securing the largest private residential recycling and collection franchise contract in the United States.
• Represented the seller of a $200 million solid waste company to a publicly traded national waste company.
• 3-year transition agreement where a private entity returns to a healthcare district control over a hospital.
• Managed complex merger of public Mt. Diablo Medical Center and (private) John Muir Hospital.
• Negotiated on behalf of the Peninsula Health District the contribution of its $70 million valued site and aging hospital for the long-term lease and development agreement with Sutter Health of a new $500 million Medical Center to be built by Sutter Health in Burlingame.
• Completed the long term lease of a public hospital, Brookside Hospital, to Tenet Health in 1997 and led the negotiation and transition of the facility back to freestanding public status in 2004.