For more than 40 years, Pierce Atwood's interdisciplinary Land Use attorneys have been advising regional and national developers, retailers, utilities, and property owners on complex issues related to their real estate development projects. We help our clients turn their renderings and plans into profitable, tangible development projects by providing guidance at every stage in the process from initial planning through permitting, construction, and occupancy.

Each development project presents a unique set of challenges and potential solutions, and many “land use” issues are not confined to traditional planning and zoning considerations. Our relationships with local planning boards and state and federal regulators, as well as our in-depth knowledge of state and federal land use laws, allows our lawyers to simplify and expedite the land use permitting process. We have successfully obtained federal, state, and local approvals for significant development projects in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and throughout New England.

Our land use attorneys are skilled at identifying potential synergies and business considerations, and we draw upon the depth of the firm, as needed, to meet client objectives. For example, a significant commercial development may involve our land use team, and our state and local tax attorneys for advice on tax increment financing, our real estate attorneys for advice on title, transactional, or ownership documentation, our environmental attorneys for guidance on site assessment, remediation, and technical licensing issues, our construction attorneys to address the bidding process, and our litigation attorneys in judicial appeals.

Areas of Expertise

We represent our clients in all types of administrative and judicial appeals to both challenge and defend agency decisions. We have successfully represented clients on land use issues before administrative agencies such as the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, as well as hundreds of local boards of appeals.

While the goal is always to achieve the desired result without litigation, our lawyers have the expertise and experience to advise clients during the agency process on ways to improve the odds of success on appeal, such as by building an adequate record during the permitting process and preserving legal arguments that pay dividends later in court.

Once a site is chosen, we help our clients design a strategy for efficient project approval by local, state, and federal regulators. We then work with clients to obtain the permits required for a project, including, for example, site plan, zoning, subdivision, wetland, and shoreland approvals. Having reviewed thousands of site plans and successfully managed the permitting process for major commercial, residential, and industrial development projects throughout New England, we regularly identify permitting needs, issues, and solutions. We work closely with consultants to help manage the permitting process from start to finish, avoiding delays and delivering positive results for our clients by saving time and money up-front in the process.

Representative Experience

Pierce Atwood attorney Gareth Orsmond played a leading role as part of a team that secured a waterways license for Cronin Holding’s 150 Seaport Boulevard project, a 250-foot tall, 22-story mixed use development in Boston’s Innovation District.  Gareth defended Cronin in multiple lawsuits brought by the Conservation Law Foundation and worked with former Massachusetts Governor William Weld to reach a settlement.  The project, built around an iconic building designed by Elkus Manfredi, will break ground in the spring of 2018 and will bring about significant public benefits, including 46 units of deeply subsidized senior housing and long-term funding to provide waterfront and Boston Harbor experiences to disadvantaged children from the City of Boston. 

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150 Seaport Boulevard Waterways License

Provided advice to client regarding the Massachusetts Permit Extension Act.

Advice on Massachusetts Permit Extension Act

Environmental and land use policy decisions directly affect our clients.  Our attorneys understand the intricacies of both existing environmental and land use laws and the legislative process.   Whether seeking to advance a client's own bills or respond to bills proposed by others, we develop an overall strategy to achieve favorable legislative results.  This may involve counseling a client through the legislative process, actively working with legislators and legislative committees, and forming coalitions.  We also represent clients in rulemakings conducted at the national and state levels, including under the Superfund Law, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Federal Power Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and state air, natural resource, water, solid waste, land use, and superfund laws.

Projects requiring environmental permits are closely scrutinized by regulators and often by other interested parties. We assist clients in dealing with project opponents, selecting appropriate professional consultants, and developing effective public relations campaigns. We have close relationships with a number of public relations specialists who handle regional and national accounts.

We work closely with our clients to manage the risks of their development projects even before a site is chosen. Our pre-acquisition due diligence process involves reviewing prospective sites to identify the regulatory requirements that would need to be met and to outline the permits required to develop a given location. We also work with our environmental attorneys to review environmental site assessments on contaminated properties to help clients identify risks and seize opportunities for redevelopment.

Real Estate & Land Use Litigation

Working closely with our real estate attorneys, we help our clients identify, analyze, and comply with the zoning codes that govern their development sites. Sometimes a development project calls for contract zoning or zoning amendments to existing zoning codes. In these instances, we represent our clients before local planning boards and, when necessary, propose zoning changes that support economic development, urban planning, and conservation goals, while still preserving the experience of a community.

Representative Experience

The $1.5 billion Maine Power Reliability Program was the largest transmission project in Maine's history, with approximately 350 miles of new high voltage transmission line and five new substations. Pierce Atwood was instrumental in helping CMP assess the need for the project through the ISO-New England regional transmission planning process, overseeing the studies to develop the transmission solution for that need, preparing the non-transmission alternative assessment for the project, and obtaining all federal, state, and municipal environmental and land use permits for the project.

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$1.5 Billion CMP Maine Power Reliability Program

Pierce Atwood attorney Gareth Orsmond played a leading role as part of a team that secured a waterways license for Cronin Holding’s 150 Seaport Boulevard project, a 250-foot tall, 22-story mixed use development in Boston’s Innovation District.  Gareth defended Cronin in multiple lawsuits brought by the Conservation Law Foundation and worked with former Massachusetts Governor William Weld to reach a settlement.  The project, built around an iconic building designed by Elkus Manfredi, will break ground in the spring of 2018 and will bring about significant public benefits, including 46 units of deeply subsidized senior housing and long-term funding to provide waterfront and Boston Harbor experiences to disadvantaged children from the City of Boston. 

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150 Seaport Boulevard Waterways License

Provided advice to client regarding the Massachusetts Permit Extension Act.

Advice on Massachusetts Permit Extension Act

Pierce Atwood represents project developer Plus Power in connection with the financing, land use, environmental mitigation and siting of a 150 MW / 300 MWh battery storage facility in Carver, Massachusetts. Cranberry Point Energy Storage is the largest battery storage project under construction in Massachusetts.

Approvals for Lithium-Ion Battery Facility

In a very challenging regulatory environment with significant opposition, we assisted our confidential client in obtaining the necessary permits and approvals to install meteorological towers in two communities in northern New Hampshire. Our efforts included representation before town zoning, planning, and select boards and successfully defending the approvals in Superior Court.

Installation of Meteorological Towers

Since 2017, Pierce Atwood has represented Avangrid Networks, Inc. and its affiliates CMP and NECEC Transmission LLC on all aspects of the development of the New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC), a $1 billion, 147-mile high-voltage direct current transmission line that will interconnect the New England transmission system with the Hydro-Quebec (HQ) transmission system at the Canadian border in western Maine. The NECEC will deliver 1,200 MW of hydropower generated by Hydro-Quebec to the New England grid around the clock for at least 40 years. As found by the Maine PUC, this project promises to reduce the cost of electricity in Maine and New England by tens of millions of dollars each year, increase the reliability of the New England electric grid, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 3.0-3.6 million metric tons annually (the equivalent of removing 700,000 cars from the road).

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New England Clean Energy Connect

Representation of the Skating Club of Boston in the acquisition and development of a new, state-of-the-art, three-rink, 4,000-seat skating facility on University Avenue in Norwood, Massachusetts. We have assisted the Skating Club in all aspects of site acquisition, title matters (including clearing some old reciprocal easements for an office park that was never developed), zoning, wetlands and MEPA permitting, payment in lieu taxes agreements, and development agreements. We also represented the Skating Club in the sale of its existing facility at 1234 and 1240 Soldier’s Field Road in Boston.

New Facility for Skating Club of Boston

Representation of the Town of Westwood (MA) in connection with the redevelopment of Islington Center, Westwood, Massachusetts.

Redevelopment of Islington Center, Westwood (MA)

Pierce Atwood represents Kearsarge Energy, a significant developer of solar energy, in connection with a proposed 17-acre, 5 MW ground mounted solar array in Walpole, Massachusetts. Our attorneys successfully argued that the town of Walpole’s zoning bylaws unlawfully prohibited large-scale solar facilities, paving the way for Kearsarge Energy to move forward with development of its solar facility.

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Solar Development Can Move Forward