Homebuilder Secures Vital Approval for Environmental Plans

We served as land use and environmental law counsel for a master planned development project approved in southeast Los Angeles County.  The project is the first in decades to provide substantial new housing opportunities in the area.  Over two-thirds of the site will remain in open space.

The project includes the construction of up to 1200 homes, an internal circulation network, a backbone water system, parkland and hiking trails and a 260-acre reserve for the federally threatened California gnatcatcher.  We helped prepare a Development Agreement, a Specific Plan, a General Plan Amendment and associated entitlements and zone changes authorizing.  The project site has been an operating oil field for over 100 years.  While the site is located in a developed community, the California gnatcatcher co-exists on-site with the oil operations.  Facing a complex suite of constraints, overlapping regulatory schemes and intense environmental community scrutiny, the developer turned to Nossaman for our longstanding environmental legal expertise. 

We became fully integrated with the client’s team.  We developed and implemented a coordinated U.S. Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and CEQA compliance strategy.  In the years leading up to project approval, we worked closely with the lead agency to ensure that the environmental analysis kept pace with ever changing and heightened standards for environmental review.  With our advice, the client obtained all federal and local approvals. 

We also represented the developer in litigation filed by a citizen coalition in July 2015.