John C. Condas

John helps clients procure the federal, state, regional, and local government approvals they need to develop their real estate projects. He has successfully led legal due diligence and entitlement teams in nearly 200 jurisdictions and before federal, state, and regional agencies for industrial, residential, mixed-use, edge/enterprise computing facilities, industrial outdoor storage, retail, office, entertainment, self-storage, cannabis cultivation, and other projects throughout California.

John takes a practical approach to help his clients meet their business objectives, efficiently solve environmental and land use challenges, and advance their projects with minimal delays. Equally important, he ensures that their permits are legally defensible to reduce the risk of lawsuits, in particular those based on challenges from environmental groups and others claiming that projects do not meet California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requirements.

John has successfully secured and defended entitlements for complex projects throughout the state, including serving as lead entitlement counsel for the OCV!be project in Anaheim, a $5 billion, 95-acre mixed-use district featuring entertainment, hospitality, residential, and commercial uses. For a national developer, he oversaw land use entitlement and environmental permitting due diligence and entitlements for its extensive assets throughout Southern California. Similarly, he successfully guided more than 150 projects in Southern and Central California through the entitlement process for the country’s third largest home builder.

A former litigator, John regularly advises clients on litigation as a means for achieving their objectives in a timely and cost-effective manner. He also helps them devise strategies to defend lawsuits—for example when a labor union uses CEQA as a negotiation tactic—and proactively pursue legal action when necessary to rein in an over-reaching government agency.

John represents public REITs, industrial clients, private and public home builders and apartment developers, and other land developers in securing and defending land use and environmental permits across the state. He has provided entitlement due diligence and counseling for industrial and logistics projects totaling over 65 million square feet, helped home-building clients acquire more than 30,000 residential lots, and was involved in the two largest multiple species habitat plan sales to the Regional Conservation Authority in Riverside County.

John was a member of the Board of Directors of Great Ajax Corp., a NYSE-traded real estate investment trust (REIT) and served as the 2015 president of the NAIOP Inland Empire Chapter. John taught real estate law for 15 years in the University of Southern California’s MBA and Master of Real Estate Development programs and at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.