Chris is Barclay Damon’s Real Estate Practice Area chair and former hiring partner. He primarily concentrates his practice on real estate law and financial transactions, negotiating and handling real estate acquisition and sale transactions on behalf of clients ranging from individuals and small businesses to international corporations.
As counsel to energy and utility clients, Chris advises on a wide array of development, acquisition, sale and site-control matters nationwide, including the acquisition of hydroelectric, nuclear, and co-generation power plants as well as electric- and gas-transmission corridor developments throughout New York State and from New England through the Midwest. In the oil and gas development industry, Chris provided real estate counsel in the largest-ever acquisition of oil and gas rights in New York State. In renewable-energy development and acquisition projects, Chris represents solar, wind, and hydroelectric owners and developers in negotiating, drafting, and obtaining site-control documents such as solar and wind leases and easements as well as examining and resolving title issues.
Working closely with the firm’s commercial litigation attorneys, Chris provides support with real estate disputes involving easements and rights of way, riparian rights, adverse possession, and complex title issues. Chris has extensive experience representing landlords and tenants in commercial lease negotiations for retail, office, manufacturing, and shopping-center lease transactions as well as real estate development ground-lease transactions.
As a NY-licensed title insurance agent and examining counsel to several title insurance companies, Chris analyzes and examines real estate titles and routinely handles large, complex title insurance policies. He represents institutional lenders in both real estate-secured and non-real estate-secured commercial financing transactions, including conventional mortgage loans, equipment and borrowing-base secured lines of credit, Small Business Administration (SBA) guaranteed business loans, letter-of-credit-secured civic facility revenue bond transactions, and construction loans.