SAN FRANCISCO – September 15, 2020 – Allen Matkins, a California-based, full-service real estate and business law firm, announced today the addition of partner Caroline Guibert Chase to its San Francisco office. Caroline’s practice focuses on land use law, including California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) compliance. Her extensive background in both urban planning and land use law has allowed Caroline to successfully work on some of the most complex and highly politicized mixed-use, residential, commercial, and institutional real estate development projects in the Bay Area.
“San Francisco’s always-shifting legislation and complex planning code make it one of the most challenging jurisdictions for real estate developers in California, if not the country. Caroline’s keen understanding of, and experience working within, this complicated environment gives her the upper hand when assisting clients to move projects forward,” says Emily L. Murray, co-chair of the firm’s Land Use, Environmental, and Natural Resources Practice Group. “Caroline deepens the bench of the firm’s already dynamic Land Use Practice Group and we look forward to having her on our team.”
Most recently, Caroline helped navigate the rezoning, planning code amendments, design component negotiations, and entitlement approvals for the 1.5 million square foot “One Vassar” project, which features residential, office, and hotel towers in the Central SoMa Plan Area in San Francisco. She has also represented a broad array of educational institutions such as the University of San Francisco, affordable housing developers, and some of the Bay Area’s top mixed-use, office, and residential developers.
Caroline received her juris doctorate, with honors,from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law and her bachelor’s degree in Environmental Design from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is on the San Francisco Housing Action Coalition (SFHAC) Board and is Chair of the SFHAC Legislative Committee. She is also a member of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) Housing Policy Committee and the Urban Land Institute (ULI).
ABOUT ALLEN MATKINS
Allen Matkins, founded in 1977, is a California-based law firm with more than 200 attorneys in four major metropolitan areas of California: Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, and San Francisco. The firm’s areas of focus include real estate, construction, land use, and environmental and natural resources; corporate and securities, real estate and commercial finance, bankruptcy, restructurings and creditors’ rights, joint ventures, and tax; labor and employment; and trials, litigation, risk management, and alternative dispute resolution in all of these areas.
