Gregg M. Dorman

Mr. Dorman is a partner in the Chicago office of Seyfarth Shaw LLP and a member of the firm's National Real Estate Practice Group. He has over 28 years of experience counseling and advising local and national developers, investors, retailers, landlords, tenants and contractors in all aspects of complex commercial real estate transactions. His practice focuses on the acquisition, disposition, leasing, land use, development, financing, construction, management and operation of retail, office and industrial real estate projects and transactions. His retail experience includes the ground up development of retail properties, including related acquisition, financing, construction, leasing and management work for owners/developers, as well as the representation of some of the nation’s largest retailers in connection with all aspects of their real estate acquisition, leasing, development, operation and disposition work around the country from free-standing sites to locations in regional malls. Mr. Dorman co-chairs the firm’s Real Estate Development and Retail Real Estate Groups.

In recent years, Mr. Dorman has represented some of the world's largest retailers on a national basis handling sophisticated shopping center acquisition, development and leasing transactions. These representations included leading teams of lawyers in multiple firm offices on complex deals across the country in transactions totaling in excess of 20 million square feet of retail product and aggregating several billion dollars in transaction value. For these clients, he negotiated all acquisition and ground lease documentation, led all due diligence investigations, including environmental permitting, remediation or mitigation, pursued land use and development permits and entitlements, and negotiated development, public economic incentive and reciprocal easement and operation agreements. Mr. Dorman also handled surplus property disposition and leasing and portfolio management matters, conducted national seminars, prepared various national forms and ensured that each attorney on these client teams was trained in all aspects of the client's respective best practices, procedures and protocols in order to achieve a uniformly efficient, cost-effective and high quality work product at all levels across the firm.

Mr. Dorman has represented retailers in several bankruptcy acquisitions of fee and leasehold interests, including a recent transaction for a national department store company in which he led a team of 40 lawyers in six firm offices in a time-sensitive bankruptcy acquisition of a portfolio of department store fee and leasehold interests in several western states, which involved working in tandem with another national retailer on a joint auction bid and working through complex unitary lease structure issues.

His retail experience also includes regional mall acquisition, leasing and REA work for a national department store company, a structured sale-leaseback transaction for a national grocery store chain, the acquisition of a commercial condominium for a national office superstore retailer's downtown Chicago location, the retail lease roll-out for a carpet manufacturer and shopping center leasing, construction and management for a family owned partnership, including negotiating numerous leases with national retailers.

Mr. Dorman's office and industrial experience includes the representation of clients in connection with the acquisition, financing, development, leasing and management of several office and industrial projects, including office leasing for developers and institutional investors of high rise and suburban office buildings, sales, leasing and development transactions in industrial/office parks for a national developer, several industrial build-to-suit transactions for a REIT and industrial leasing for various private investors.

Mr. Dorman has achieved an "AV" rating from Martindale-Hubbell indicating the highest level of legal ability and ethics.

Good to know

Areas of Practice 1) Real Estate, 2) Real Estate Retail, 3) Real Estate Development and 4) Real Estate Leasing
Law School Loyola University Chicago School of Law (J.D.,1984)
Education University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (B.A.,1981)
Bar Member / Association Illinois State Bar Association
Most recent firm Seyfarth Shaw LLP
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