Zoning & Land Use

Overview

Dilworth Paxson’s Zoning & Land Use group provides expert counsel to our clients, assisting each client to navigate a full spectrum of routine and complex land development issues by diligently interfacing with government agencies in Philadelphia and in suburban and rural Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Our practitioners appear and interface with Zoning Boards, Planning Commissions, Historic Commissions, Art Commissions, and municipal and State agencies such as Streets Departments, Water Departments, environmental agencies, and other approval authorities. Our seasoned practitioners achieve client development goals by leveraging vast knowledge and experience to strategically manage long-standing relationships with critical government decision-makers and stakeholders. Our practitioners pride themselves on unmatched responsiveness and fostering a professional working relationship with each client to facilitate their goals judiciously and with superior efficiency.

Dilworth’s land use team has varied experience, including routine, site-specific entitlement approvals to complex, multi-phase master plan developments. Our clients include public entities, entrepreneurs, mid-size development companies, REITs, and educational and medical institutions in a wide variety of development and construction projects including residential, commercial, affordable housing, recreation, public-private, corporate, and university campuses. Our expertise also includes historic preservation matters, where we have represented clients before local, state, and federal agencies; as well as private preservation groups.

Dilworth’s New Jersey land use team has a multi-faceted land use and zoning practice, routinely representing both municipal and private clients. On behalf of municipal clients, Dilworth lawyers counsel government and planning officials in reviewing pending land use applications, defending municipalities against land use appeals, as well as drafting land use ordinances and policies. Dilworth also represents its New Jersey municipal clients in condemnation actions, property tax appeals, quiet title actions, and general transactional matters. For private clients, Dilworth lawyers pursue an extensive scope of land use entitlements, particularly those that involve review and counsel surrounding redevelopment plans in designated redevelopment areas. Redevelopment-oriented representations also commonly include the pursuit of real estate tax abatements (or “PILOTS”).

Dilworth’s deep understanding of the business motivations underlying each representation guides our land use team to expertly structure entitlements while respecting critical timing and financing considerations to best meet underlying business strategies. We strategically collaborate with Dilworth’s lawyers in the Tax, Banking & Financial Services, and Corporate and Business Departments to ensure an all-encompassing approach when counseling our clients.