Chris Brown is the Chairman of our firm’s real estate and environmental law department, and has extensive knowledge in the real estate, energy, water, land use, environmental, title insurance, non-profit, secured transactions/banking and entity formation areas of law. Clients come to him for what is not in the black letter law, but for what comes after his over 20 years of practice, including practical knowledge, confidence, business understanding and application, achieving goals and sometimes exceeding by the extra value his knowledge of the area brings to the table.
Establishing his reputation on the foundation of a friendly, welcoming and comforting personality, Chris likes creating and critical thinking where the end product is substantive, like a new facility or non-profit. His experience also includes representing landowners, developers, agriculture, energy companies, business owners, lenders, title companies, banks, non-profits, funeral and cemetery establishments, and government entities. Chris has guided private and public clients through all aspects of real estate and business transactions from acquisitions and financing, entity formation and guidance, to permitting and development, to the holding for investment or the disposition for profit or reinvestment. In addition, should a dispute develop, he will work closely with the firm’s civil litigation and dispute resolution group to resolve the matter. His pragmatic approach allows his clients to achieve an objective in a cost effective manner.
Chris has experience representing clients before city councils, board of supervisors, planning commissions, regulatory agencies and community organizations. The representation of his title company clients and their insureds in title and escrow litigation provides added value to his real estate clients. His environmental legal services include representing clients through all facets of regulatory and legal hurdles related to compliance and cleanup, including UST and superfund cleanups and regulatory violations. His representation of companies engaged in oil and gas, wind power, solar power and other alternative energy projects includes development, financing and operation. Chris takes great pride in being able to foresee hurdles in advance, and taking early action to counter, in order to bring about his client’s goal, often time without the client even knowing how it could have turned out if he wasn’t so forward thinking. His non-profit work gives also gives his life and career deep satisfaction.
Chris cherishes his family time, when he’s lucky enough to have time with his adult children, time with his wife, along with hiking, skiing, rafting, watching a good movie, Peloton cycling, walks, and having a good sense of humor to get through the stressful times of our work.