Real Estate Case Studies

Real Estate

Real Estate

Preserving Historical Properties While Development Proceeds

Through various entities controlled by three generations of family members, a client owned a large tract of property, including a lake, underground caverns, a museum, commercial and industrial property, Civil War battlefield relics, and property zoned for residential development. The property had been acquired over a period of 50 years, with no substantive planning for how development would occur. Numerous challenges faced our client, including the fact that the residential land had limited frontage and could not be developed efficiently, while the museum had good frontage but little development potential. Another issue was that easements to access the underground caverns could cast a cloud on title to the individual houses to be constructed on the residential land. Our team came together and over several months of working with each generation of the family, we restructured the clients’ holdings so that the land could be developed efficiently without damaging the cultural, historical and personal significance of the other properties.