Land Use and Development

Development Matters Include

• Oakland A’s Athletics Investment Group, LLC (Oakland A’s) in the effort to entitle a new baseball stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada, and previously advised the A’s in their efforts to build a new ballpark and a mixed-use development, including negotiating and documenting transactional agreements in Oakland, California. In connection with the Oakland work, we successfully defended the A’s against a challenge before the California Court of Appeal to the California Governor’s authority to certify the Oakland A’s proposed baseball stadium project at Howard Terminal in Oakland under Assembly Bill No. 734 and also successfully defended (with co-counsel) the certified EIR for the Oakland Project.
• Brookfield Properties in its proposed redevelopment of the Stonestown Galleria shopping center on the west side of San Francisco into a new mixed-use development with over 3000 new housing units. The redevelopment proposal includes a rezoning of the site and a development agreement with the City of San Francisco.
• Bay Meadows Land Company, the developer of the Bay Meadows Racetrack, valued in excess of $1.4B. The first phase was completed in 2002 with over 2 million square feet of new development, including a 900,000 square foot office campus for Franklin Resources, 760 single-family multi-family housing units and a mixed-use complex, including a market, health club, retail, live/work and office components. The second phase of development received final approval in 2008 for more than two million square feet of additional mixed-use, transit-oriented development, including a possible office/campus component. Infrastructure work is ongoing, and vertical construction of Phase II is well underway.
• Murphy’s Bowl, the developer of the new Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California, proposed as the new home for the Los Angeles Clippers, anticipated to open in 2024.
• The Kroenke Group, owner of the former St. Louis Rams football franchise, which secured NFL approval in 2016 for the Rams to move to the City of Inglewood, returning the team to the Los Angeles area after 20 years. Gibson Dunn leads the development team implementing the multi-billion dollar sports and entertainment complex on 298 acres in Inglewood, including SoFi Stadium (the host of the 2022 Super Bowl) and the YouTube Theatre. The team devised the original strategy to secure the approvals through a voter-initiative process, and drafted continue to negotiate the complicated development documentation unifying the retail, residential, office and open space portions of the project, which has catalyzed development throughout the City of Inglewood and begun to transform the 298 acres of Hollywood Park from a closed racetrack into the start of a mixed-use community that will ultimately include at least 2,500 housing units, hotel, casino, and more than 1.5 million square feet of office, retail and other non-residential development. Gibson Dunn continues to work on development and refinancing of the Hollywood Park campus, including the negotiation with the City of complicated mapping issues related to the provision of public streets and utility infrastructure. On these issues of city-wide concern, affecting multiple clients with projects in the City of Inglewood, Gibson Dunn has helped to shape policy decisions that will impact development far into the future.
• The Golden State Warriors in their successful entitlement of a new event center and mixed use development in the Mission Bay area of San Francisco, including successfully defending the entitlements and CEQA analysis pursuant to AB 900, an expedited judicial review process for CEQA cases and recently successfully entitled a further development of a hotel at the site.

• The developers in the successful entitlement of the redevelopment of the former U.S. Naval Base at Treasure Island in San Francisco. The project included negotiating an EDC/MOA with the Department of the Navy and the City of San Francisco, the zoning of the property and the approval of horizontal and vertical design documents and a development agreement. The development is creating a new sustainable San Francisco neighborhood on Treasure Island, centered around a new ferry terminal to provide convenient access to downtown San Francisco, with 8,000 residential units, 300 acres of open space and recreation, and 250,000 square feet of retail space. The project was approved in mid-2011 and Gibson Dunn has been assisting in the project’s implementation since its approval. A number of the vertical developments are completed or currently under construction.
• Build, Inc. in connection with a complex 4-party boundary settlement and trust exchange agreement between Build, the City and County of San Francisco, the San Francisco Port Commission and the State Lands Commission to settle disputed trust claims and rationalize the configuration of the public trust on a 26-acre waterfront development site. The land exchange closed in 2022 and paves the way for the development of the site as a mixed-use and multi-family residential development adjacent to a network of waterfront parks.
• Deca Co., the prospective purchaser of an industrial waterfront site with a complex title history, with the negotiating, drafting and implementation of a 4-party boundary settlement and trust exchange agreement between the property owner, the City and County of San Francisco, the San Francisco Port Commission and the State Lands Commission. The final agreement settled disputed trust claims, removed the public trust from the majority of the development parcel and permitted the sale to close in June 2023.

• Advise the developer, as lead counsel in its proposed redevelopment of San Francisco’s Parkmerced, the largest residential project in San Francisco. The project involves a $1.2B plan to transform the sprawling Parkmerced area from a car-centric neighborhood to a state-of-the-art sustainable neighborhood by replacing 1,500 rent-controlled town homes with 7,200 new energy-efficient units over the next 20 to 30 years. We successfully obtained approval of a Development Agreement and related entitlements for the project and successfully defended the entitlements through the appellate courts of California.
• Assist clients on the development of all or portions of master planned communities in multiple cities within Orange County, including the Cities of Irvine, Tustin, and Westminster. This work includes securing ongoing entitlements and subdivision approvals for the Orange County Great Park Neighborhoods, a more-than-10,000-home community built across the approximately 2,000-acre former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, as well as additional non-residential development, including health care, office, and industrial improvements.
• Successful re-entitlement of the Irwindale Brew Yard (the former Miller Coors brewery in Irwindale, California). Gibson Dunn helped secure entitlements to reopen the shuttered brewery after it was sold to the new ownership group. The new entitlements allowed the Brewery to restart operations with added flexibility to respond to continued evolution within the beverage production industry by allowing for beverage manufacturing, bottling, packaging, warehousing and distribution operations in the nearly 1,000,000-square foot facility and allow for the incorporation of rectifying uses (i.e. mixing and blending of juices and spirits with beer and malt beverages).
• Delta Air Lines’ renovation and capital investment in Terminals 2 and 3 at Los Angeles International Airport. As part of the project, Gibson Dunn provided advice regarding a strategy to secure successful environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act and public agency concurrence with the expansion plans.
• JP Morgan in the multi-faceted redevelopment of the Sunnyvale Town Center, a former shopping mall in Northern California. Gibson Dunn successfully negotiated and secured a comprehensive update of the special development permits, housing agreement, development agreements and other entitlements that govern future development of the Center. Our firm was additionally the lead negotiator for the Disposition and Development Agreement and Owner Participation Agreement that further regulates development within the Center, as well as for amendments to a series of ground leases, easements and operating agreements between the property owner and public agencies that own land and the parking structures within the Center. Gibson Dunn also facilitated negotiations with other private land owners and anchor retailers within the Center.