Mr. Lamanna practices redevelopment and affordable housing law. Mr. Lamanna has litigation and transactional experience with emphasis in local public entity representation in all matters involving the formation and implementation of redevelopment plans and production of affordable housing. His varied litigation experience involves public agency property acquisition, development, plan adoption challenges, lien subordination actions with lenders, and title insurance matters, as well as those legal actions arising under public law, including election and open meeting laws. His transactional experience includes affordable housing sales conveyances, power plant developments with public financing, ground leasing among government entities, and implementation of large military base conversion and commercial mixed-use redevelopment under the Polanco Act. Incident to these tasks, Mr. Lamanna has assisted in planning commission, city council, and redevelopment agency meetings, drafted redevelopment plan adoption reports and municipal resolutions, responded to public records act requests on behalf of public entities during elections, and participated in seeking State and Federal grant funds for local public clients. Mr. Lamanna also successfully corrected errors in the Community Redevelopment Law by drafting portions of bills presented to the California Legislature by the California Redevelopment Association and advocated on behalf of agency-assisted affordable housing matters before the California Housing Finance Agency.
Mr. Lamanna has participated in the commercial and residential real estate industry since 1986 and practiced law in these areas since June 2004. He has been an associate with the law firm of Kane, Ballmer & Berkman since May 2005. Before joining Kane, Ballmer & Berkman, he represented a group of investors and brokerage clients with the acquisition, management and disposition of commercial, industrial, and residential real estate assets. Prior to law school, he assisted attorneys as a certified legal assistant representing institutional lenders making over $500 million in commercial real estate loans primarily on high-rise office and large residential properties as well as retail, industrial and mixed-use developments. During law school, he served as an extern for California Courts of Appeal, United States District Court, and one of the nation’s largest title insurers, where he finalized underwriting title insurance policies for large retail chain stores and industrial power plant developments; he also served as a law clerk to an institutional real estate owner managing a portfolio of South Pacific properties. In addition to real estate experience, he grew up working in and running small family businesses including a food manufacturing enterprise serving the diverse Spanish-language communities of Los Angeles. Mr. Lamanna speaks, reads, and writes Spanish and also holds a California real estate broker’s license.
Mr. Lamanna taught a seminar in Community Redevelopment Law at the UCLA School of Law which enabled law students to meet and interact with prominent members of the redevelopment law field. He has provided specialized legal advice to a charitable organization which houses the infirm gratis while receiving treatment at the UCLA Medical Center. Mr. Lamanna also volunteers his time with judges, lawyers, and professors teaching bar examination review for lawyer candidates devoted to pro bono legal services at the Pro Bono Bar Review Program – started three decades ago by the late Robert M. Takasugi, United States District Court Judge for the Central District of California. Mr. Lamanna has also served as pro bono trial counsel assisting low-income non-English speaking tenants facing wrongful evictions in private rent-controlled properties.
Gus, his wife and their daughter reside in Los Angeles. |
