Elizabeth has a long history of skillfully performing in fast-paced environments on highly complex and often controversial projects, where litigation challenging the project approvals is a distinct possibility and “bullet proofing” the lead agency’s CEQA documentation is required.

• For a decade, Elizabeth served as Walmart Stores’ land use “relationship partner” for the Central San Joaquin Valley, one of four land use counsel Walmart relied upon in California to ensure its projects fully complied with CEQA and would withstand a lawsuit, if challenged. During this time, she successfully entitled Walmart’s last nine proposed Supercenter projects in this part of the state. These projects introduced newly developed sustainable development features now common in commercial construction. Their EIRs were among the first to grapple with emerging climate change law, well before the CEQA guidelines were updated to guide a lead agency’s environmental review of a project’s greenhouse gas “impacts.”

  Elizabeth’s involvement started at the project site selection and entitlement feasibility stages and continued through store opening. She helped Walmart identify proposed locations that stood the best chance of successful entitlement, and which posed risks of cost overruns and extensive delay. Elizabeth managed the entitlement and environmental review process and large project teams, forming strong and trusted relationships with lead agency staff and environmental consultants. Projects most often required construction of transportation infrastructure improvements, and skillful negotiation with the local jurisdiction and Caltrans to ensure a project was responsible for its proportionate “fair share” of the costs. Elizabeth also counseled Walmart on program-wide issues such as emerging laws addressing climate change and sustainable development, CEQA reform, California initiative law, and compliance with evolving assessment methodologies for traffic impacts and freeway-adjacent air quality impacts.

• Elizabeth has counseled global energy companies on land use and environmental compliance and strategic asset management for their existing California facilities and new development projects, ranging from the reuse of 500 acres of oil field property for residential, commercial and regional open space purposes in southern California, to the local and federal permitting of on-shore facilities needed for the first offshore LNG import terminal to receive a federal Deepwater Port license.
• Elizabeth advised the Los Angeles Unified School District on CEQA compliance during its historic $2 billion facility development program, the largest ongoing public improvement project in the country. She helped entitle the LAUSD’s K-12 Ambassador Hotel project and successfully defended the three CEQA lawsuits filed against it. She was one of a handful of regulatory experts asked to help the General Counsel develop regulations implementing California’s historic Charter School Law. She also helped LAUSD real estate managers document transactions without running afoul of CEQA’s prohibition against an agency “committing” to a “project” before CEQA review.
• Elizabeth steered a non-profit client through the final stages of its 30+ year effort needed to obtain the National Park Service and local permitting authority’s approvals to redevelop its aging church camp facility located in Wawona, a private inholding within Yosemite National Park, successfully defending the project’s EIR/EIS in three courts.