Ken Kecskes is a partner in the firm's Real Estate practice. He advises clients in real estate transactions, joint ventures, financings, and development. His transactional experience includes complex acquisitions and dispositions, real estate secured and mezzanine debt financing, equity investments in real estate projects, and construction and leasing. His land development practice includes initial land use due diligence and entitlement strategy, environmental review, and pursuit of discretionary project approvals.
Ken's practice covers a wide variety of real estate product types, including residential and mixed use communities, military base reuse projects, hospitality, sports facilities, and retail, office, industrial, and biotechnology and high-technology uses.
Ken provides strategic advice to international clients who have an interest in entering or deepening their investments in U.S. real estate opportunities. He has participated in economic missions with officials from the City and County of San Francisco sent to Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong to stimulate interest in real estate investment in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has represented clients based in the United Kingdom and continental Europe with their in-bound investment in US real estate. His experience includes the structuring of transactions involving non-US entities and high net worth individuals and their investments in land, buildings, development projects, and real estate-related businesses.
Ken helps clients with the environmental review and land use entitlement of large scale mixed use development projects. He has advised clients on California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) compliance strategy, including the tailoring of project design features and mitigation measures to address the environmental impacts of development. His experience includes public-private partnership negotiations between local governments and project developers in statutory development agreements and disposition and development agreements. He has advised clients on land use entitlement strategy, general plan amendments, specific plans, permitting, subdivision map processing, and exactions and impact fees. He consults clients on the use of public finance tools to fund large scale projects, such as tax increment financing, community facilities districts, county service areas, geologic hazard abatement districts, and assessment districts.
Ken advises clients on regulatory compliance matters involving their development projects, including coastal development matters at the California Coastal Commission, public trust lands matters involving the California State Lands Commission and California’s port districts, and brownfields redevelopment matters involving US EPA Region nine and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control. He has assisted clients with evaluating the impact of green building laws and climate change on development, including the development of a green development program for a large scale master planned community.
Ken advises both public and private owners and developers of hotel properties. His experience includes acquisition and disposition of hotel properties, construction of leisure amenities, environmental matters, alcoholic beverage licensing, restaurant leasing, parking and service contracts, and hotel management agreements.
