Land Use & Zoning

We represent both local governments and private landowners in a variety of land use and zoning issues, including:

Regularly assist local governments in drafting zoning ordinances, subdivision ordinances and other land use regulations
Advise local government zoning departments and officers in zoning determinations and enforcing local ordinances, and assist their councils and boards in conducting zoning hearings and presiding over zoning appeals
Significant experience in defending local governments' zoning, annexation and other land use decisions against legal challenges, both before local boards and at the trial and appellate court levels
Routinely represent landowners, developers and other private clients in obtaining zoning and other development permits, both through lobbying and through representing them in formal proceedings before government councils and zoning boards
Assist private clients in challenging adverse zoning and other land use determinations before local boards and in the trial and appellate courts
Regularly represent renewable energy project developers (wind, solar, biomass) in hearings before local governing boards to obtain special use permits

Assisted local government client in revising zoning and land use ordinances
Coordinated the permitting of a build out in the Carolinas by a major wireless telecommunications company
Successfully defended challenges to municipal clients' annexations in both trial and appellate courts
Obtained special use permits for a utility scale wind farm after hearings before the board of county commissioners in two counties where the project was sited
Successfully defended legal challenges to issuance of zoning permits
Coordinated the permitting of a major manufacturing facility in Vance County, North Carolina
Represented a national homebuilder in permitting developments throughout the Southeast
Assisted two landfill clients [one private landfill company and one local government] in obtaining special use permits for the expansion of landfills in eastern North Carolina
Represented an electrical cooperative in persuading a municipality to amend its zoning ordinance to lessen zoning restrictions applicable to a transmission line planned by the cooperative