Jackson Walker L.L.P. is a leader in guiding owners, including financial institutions, through the maze of local entitlements. Attorneys in our Land Use and Municipal Law practice group offer a broad range of capabilities in dealing with regulation of land use, especially at the local government level. Our attorneys have broad experience and a high degree of success with securing appropriate zoning, addressing various issues as part of that process, and obtaining necessary approvals. In addition, our group has a wealth of experience and expertise in economic development incentives and public-private partnership matters. Our Land Use practice group includes attorneys with advanced degrees related to land use planning, with direct experience in real estate development, and with experience as planning officials.

Land Use Entitlements
We work with property managers, owners, and developers in identifying the land use approvals most appropriate for their projects, assisting them in obtaining those approvals from public agencies, and helping them implement cost-effective approaches to their projects. This includes advising on regulatory issues, negotiating with public officials, agency staff, and other interested parties, presenting projects at public hearings, and negotiating agreements with agencies. We are very experienced, also, in managing the strategy and tactics involved in contested cases in the public arena.

Further, we are experienced in handling all kinds of land use entitlements for a wide variety of developments, including:

• Zoning changes
• Use permits
• Variances and special exceptions
• Master plans
• Subdivisions and plats
• Development agreements
• Right-of-way abandonments/vacations
• Public/private partnership incentives
• Infrastructure financing
• Special districts
• Historic preservation
• Environmental review

Regulatory "Due Diligence" in Connection with Real Estate Acquisitions
In cooperation with a client's other consultants, we are able to prepare a land use due diligence analysis of existing or proposed development projects to identify land use issues which may interfere with the desired use of the site. The results of our analysis enable clients to make more knowledgeable decisions regarding transactions, including possibly renegotiating certain terms to address resolution of the issues we have identified.

Public-Private Partnerships and Economic Development Incentives
Our Land Use practice group has decades of combined experience and leading expertise in assisting our clients in analyzing, requesting, and obtaining the maximum possible amount of local government economic development incentives, or "public-private partnership" assistance. These incentives very often make the difference in a project's economic feasibility, and they can include tax increment financing, tax abatements, tax exemptions, fee waivers or rebates, public improvement districts, Texas Local Government Code Chapter 380 agreements, and others, individually or in combination. Numerous signature projects in Downtown Dallas, for example, have been developed with our assistance in obtaining the incentives needed for them to come to fruition.

Land Use Litigation
While we hope that none of our clients' projects result in legal conflict, we have a litigation team experienced with land use issues, to complement the services of our regulatory and transactional specialists.

Areas of Special Expertise
— Urban Development - The Land Use and Municipal Law practice group has developed special expertise in the cutting-edge field of urban in-fill development and redevelopment. We work with leading national developers, investors and financial institutions to resolve complex regulatory issues and obtain project incentives, such as infrastructure cost participation, whenever available. We have been involved in the entitlement of numerous urban residential projects, as well as the renovation for reuse of a number of historically significant commercial buildings across the nation. Most experts believe that urban infill development will be the wave of the future, and with our expertise in new urbanist and form-based development regulations, we are very well positioned to assist in such efforts.

— Master Planned Projects - Working in some of the most complex regulatory jurisdictions, we have helped plan, solve land use and environmental issues, and implement numerous master planned developments. These projects, which typically involve hundreds or even thousands of acres of land, include residential communities coupled with facilities for shopping, services, education, and recreation. These projects involve comprehensive sets of issues regulated not only by local governments, but also by state and federal agencies.

— Smart Growth - We work closely with both building industry organizations and individual developers in formulating policies and entitling projects attuned to the fast-spreading desire for "smart growth" – meaning more efficient land use, combining higher-density growth in locations adjacent to existing development, with clear attention to environmental benefits and to higher-quality design. For example, in Dallas and in Plano, Texas, we assisted the builders of several transit-oriented developments, creating pedestrian communities adjacent to downtown commuter rail lines.

— Sustainable Development and Green Building - Our Land Use and Municipal Law group has also been very involved in, and has developed expertise in, the rapidly-growing movement toward "green" building and sustainable development. In the broader sense, sustainable development is related to and includes areas of our expertise such as urban infill, pedestrian-friendly, and transit-oriented development. This can include components such as form-based zoning, mixed-use development, and often trade-offs of more density and height in return for more public open space. We also work closely with our clients and their architects to turn "green building" plans into reality by helping to craft and advocate for the municipal approvals needed to accomplish these plans.

Value and Service
We offer our clients a high level of professional skill, combined with a results-oriented attitude, to achieve both effectiveness and cost-effectiveness in the delivery of our services. Our attorneys are experienced in handling a wide variety of issues and problems, and commence solving problems on behalf of clients at full speed from the start. Moreover, we approach client service from a preventive perspective, with the goal of helping our clients anticipate and avoid legal difficulties in the first place, rather than having to overcome problems which could have been avoided. This yields major cost savings on projects of all types and sizes.

We have worked in a broad diversity of regulatory jurisdictions throughout the country. Consequently, we have good working contacts in many public agencies and among other experienced development industry professionals and consultants. That experience frequently allows us to help our clients obtain expedited approvals and achieve significant cost savings.

The Land Use and Municipal Law practice group brings especially high value to client services both by coordinating with attorneys having different areas of expertise within the group and by coordinating with other practice groups within the firm as a whole. The Environmental, Corporate, and Litigation practice groups, in particular, provide valuable backup to our services to the land use field. Within the Land Use and Municipal Law practice group are specialized subgroups available as resources both to clients and to the rest of the group. The entire firm is highly technologically oriented, using the most up-to-date computer programs and communications equipment, as well as research tools, to provide optimal information access, document generation capabilities and communications on a nationwide scale.