Almost five years ago, in September 2011, Miller Starr Regalia launched its first blog, CEQA Developments (www.ceqadevelopments.com), to highlight the firm’s experience and provide an up-to-date resource in the area of CEQA law.  As readers and CEQA practitioners can attest, there has been no shortage of “CEQA developments” to analyze and report on over the years, and I fully expect that trend to continue.

At the same time, and while CEQA and land use law go together like “hand and glove,” there have always been and continue to be a great many interesting and important non-CEQA land use developments under distinct laws and legal schemes – including, but not limited to, the Planning and Zoning Law, the Subdivision Map Act, the Brown Act, the Public Records Act, the Elections Code, the Mitigation Fee Act, and the Eminent Domain Law, as well as the Federal and State constitutional provisions prohibiting the taking or damaging of property without payment of just compensation. The firm’s Land Use Practice Group has deep experience and expertise entitling and defending a wide range of development projects, implicating numerous areas of land use law, throughout the state.

As principal author of Miller Starr Regalia’s CEQA Developments blog, Co-Chair of its Land Use Practice Group, and Chair of its Appellate Practice Group, I am pleased to inform this blog’s readers that the firm has now launched a Land Use Developments blog (www.landusedevelopments.com), to cover such developments and highlight its expertise in the related area of land use law.

My fellow shareholder, Bryan Wenter, AICP, who most recently served as the Walnut Creek City Attorney before joining Miller Starr, is the principal author of the new blog.  The blog’s official start date is May 17, 2016, and it includes upon launching a number of initial posts, including pieces addressing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision not to review the San Jose inclusionary housing ordinance litigation; whether impairing views from private property constitutes a taking requiring the payment of just compensation; whether a rezoning denial may give rise to liability for discriminatory zoning practices under the Fair Housing Act; and the Martin’s Beach litigation addressing the closure of a beach long used by the public following its sale to a new owner.

A link to the Land Use Developments blog can be found here.

 

 

Questions? Please contact Arthur F. Coon of Miller Starr Regalia. Miller Starr Regalia has had a well-established reputation as a leading real estate law firm for more than fifty years. For nearly all that time, the firm also has written Miller & Starr, California Real Estate 4th, a 12-volume treatise on California real estate law. “The Book” is the most widely used and judicially recognized real estate treatise in California and is cited by practicing attorneys and courts throughout the state. The firm has expertise in all real property matters, including full-service litigation and dispute resolution services, transactions, acquisitions, dispositions, leasing, financing, common interest development, construction, management, eminent domain and inverse condemnation, title insurance, environmental law and land use. For more information, visit www.msrlegal.com.