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Tracey E. Skinner, Esq.
In the Fall issue of Ground Rules, I shared with you the great
projects and programs that the Section Council Members and
certain Section Members had completed or were gearing up to
complete for our members. Now, in this issue, I can tell you
that the member benefits from such work continue to grow.
In the tradition of the Section presenting excellent educational
programs, Guy Flynn and Sheila Brooks-Tahir, from our Education
Committee, recruited Ann Heesters Schroth and Lila Shapiro Cyr,
both from Ballard Spahr Andrew and Ingersoll, LLP, to co-chair
the “Basics of Real Estate Transactions Evening Series”. This
evening series, presented jointly with MICPEL, will be held
once- a-week for 5 weeks. The course will provide a detailed
overview of a broad range of commercial real estate
transactions. The topics of the program range from acquisition
to zoning and cover almost everything in between. The stellar
faculty members are attorneys from Ballard Spahr. This promises
to be an invaluable program for the attorney who wants to
broaden his or her expertise in commercial real estate. Thank
you to the co-chairs and the faculty for working on this series.
(For registration information go to
http://www.micpel.edu/seminars.htm or
http://www.micpel.edu/)
On the legislative front, the Legislative Committee, chaired by
Theresa Shea, began its work prior to the current Legislative
Session. Thanks to the research and drafting efforts of Edward
Levin, of DLA Piper, and Kevin Shepard, of Venable, the Section
is sponsoring two bills, one on the Rules against Perpetuities (HB
188) and the other dealing with the binding nature of successors
and assigns language in documents (HB 186). The Committee also
has commented on current bills dealing with community
associations and is monitoring the ground rents legislation.
(For more on the committee’s work, e-mail
Terry Shea)
For some things that are new, hoping that the Section can copy
the success of the formation of our Foreclosure Committee, David
Freishtat and Nancy Regelin, both of Shulman, Rogers, Gandal,
Pordy & Ecker, P.A., have agreed to co-chair the Section’s new
Land Use Committee. More information will be provided soon.
Also, the Section, through the activity of our ADR Committee,
chaired by Tom Barbuti, is co-sponsoring an ADR Dinner Program,
along with the Business Law Section, on April 11, where Senator
George Mitchell, from Maine, will be the keynote speaker. The
Section’s reach is growing!
Finally, for follow-up notes, Ed Lee, Chair of the Commercial
Real Estate Luncheons, and Michael Swanenberg, Sara Arthur and
Jack Zemil, of the Technology Committee, have worked closely
with Gore Brothers to bring “on demand” webcasting of the
Commercial Real Estate Luncheons to all of our members. As I
have stated before, this project is a work in progress, and your
feedback is appreciated.
However, I think that we are getting close to having a good
webcast product for the Section thanks to the hard work of those
mentioned and their commitment. Also, the Section owes a special
thank you to Gore Brothers for working closely with us and for
providing the technological know-how and innovation and a
generous in-kind contribution of creating the web cast web page. To
view the latest luncheons and obtain related written materials,
if they were made available, go to
http://webcast.gorebrothers.com/.
As you can see, the Section Council and Committee Members keep
working to bring benefits to the Section’s members, and the
benefits continue to grow. If you are interested in working on a
Section committee or have an idea for a program or project,
please contact me at
Teskinner@aol.com or 410.752.2052. |
