Richard A. Schulman
Richard Schulman specializes in a variety of land use and environmental matters including obtaining entitlements for and defending and prosecuting litigation regarding residential, mixed-use, commercial, and infill projects throughout California.
His recent focus and accomplishments include:
- Fortune 500 Retailer: Represents client on an ongoing basis on entitlement matters for distribution center and multiple stores throughout California. Successfully defended the environmental impact report (EIR) for a full-size, 75-foot-tall store in Los Angeles. Later changes to the entitlements recommended by Mr. Schulman were upheld by the Court of Appeal.
- Millenia (formerly known as Eastern Urban Center): Represented client on a variety of land use matters involving the entitlement of a master-planned community in eastern Chula Vista that has been designed as a walkable urban village. The community will ultimately include several thousand homes, commercial and retail centers, a hotel, library, school, parks, a fire station, and a transit station. The project is a unique mixed-use development project about the size of downtown San Diego that embodies smart growth principles.
- Monte Verde: Assisted in representing a developer and owner of over ten thousand apartments nationwide in obtaining entitlements, then successfully defended litigation challenging entitlements. This project redesignated a portion of a master-planned community from hotel to residential to allow construction of four towers that will contain 560 condominiums. The project is currently under construction.
- Vista Del Mar: Successfully represented developer in litigation challenging entitlements and CEQA compliance for five-story condominium project in the City of Chula Vista.
- Costa Verde North and South: Successfully represented client in litigation against the City of San Diego, represented by the City Attorney, challenging condition City imposed on condominium conversion subdivision. Matter concerned two condominium towers totaling over a thousand units.
- Builder/developer Association: Successfully represented a builder/developer association in challenging City of San Diego’s original inclusionary (affordable) housing ordinance. After the trial court invalidated the ordinance, the parties settled on terms favorable to the client.
- Pinnacle: Successfully wrote briefs seeking and obtaining review by state Supreme Court of lower courts’ decisions invalidating provision of covenants, conditions and restrictions (CC&Rs) requiring arbitration of construction defect disputes. Wrote briefs resulting in court’s overturning of lower courts’ decisions.
Mr. Schulman’s practice includes a significant amount of appellate work, and he has argued or prepared winning briefs for several published appellate cases, including before the California Supreme Court. His regulatory finance practice includes community facilities districts, including representing developers in connection with the process of forming districts and issuing bonds.
He has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Stanford Club of San Diego, School Site Governance Council, and the Tierrasanta Community Council. He has also served as an adjunct professor of law and business, teaching full-semester courses in real estate law, municipal law and legal writing. The Los Angeles Daily Journal (the principal legal newspaper in the state) and San Diego Daily Transcript have published a number of his columns on land use issues.