Monthly Archives: April 2012

From 2001 – 2009, Lisa Hauser was co-counsel for the inaugural Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission in defending multiple challenges to the new legislative and congressional districts. These cases were significant due to their statewide importance, complexity and the massive record created by the Commission (resulting in more than 5,000 trial exhibits). Most importantly, Arizona’s constitutional provisions governing redistricting were interpreted by the courts for the first time. Through pretrial motions, six weeks of trial, multiple trips to the Arizona Court of Appeals, the Arizona Supreme Court, and federal court, Lisa and her team led the Commission to victory against half a dozen opposing parties.

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Core Campus, LLC was seeking to redevelop an underutilized infill property located in downtown Tempe. The site, which adjoins Arizona State University’s Tempe campus and is located across the street from ASU Sun Devil Stadium, had accommodated a surface parking lot for several years. Core Campus was proposing to improve the Site with the construction of an 18-story high-rise building containing 423 purpose-built student housing units, 27,000 square feet of commercial space, 6,000 square feet of amenity space and 3 levels of structured parking.

To accommodate the site’s redevelopment, the zoning and land use team at Gammage & Burnham, led by Manjula Vaz, secured zoning and design entitlements for the project.

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Wentworth Property Company, LLC was seeking to redevelop a 135 acre property located across from Arizona State University’s Research Park and along the Loop 101 Freeway corridor in Tempe. The site adjoins single-family residential neighborhoods. Wentworth was proposing to improve the site with the addition of 4 office buildings, 2 hotels, 1 flex use building and 3 retail pads ranging in height from 1 to 8 stories, plus the addition of a 3-level parking garage and parking courtyards containing a combined total of 7,600 parking spaces. The Project, which will be branded Discovery Business Campus, will consist of approximately 2.5 million square feet of building area at build-out.

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A local public company was ready to prepare documents for its first meeting of shareholders. It asked its law firm to assist it in preparing its annual report on Form 10-K and its initial proxy statement. It soon became apparent to the company that it was not getting the amount of attention and help from its regular law firm that the company needed in order to get both of the projects timely completed and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and it had not seen a draft proxy statement four weeks after it had asked for a draft. At that point, the company’s CFO called Joe Richardson and asked if Gammage & Burnham could assist the company in preparing the proxy statement for its annual meeting of shareholders.

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Pat Nolan has been my attorney for far more years that either of us would likely want to admit. I seldom do anything without her involvement. Once though, I did. I invested in a pair of affiliated limited liability companies that another member’s lawyer was organizing. After awhile, I sensed that something just was wrong with how the deal was working.

I asked Pat to review all the documents and her analysis highlighted so many things that had been mis-prepared and ill thought through. I had to call a meeting of all the members of the two companies to let Pat explain what the documents actually said as compared to what we all thought the deal was supposed to be.

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