Craig Lawson

Biography: CRAIG LAWSON, President, Craig Lawson & Co., LLC, Land Use Consultants EDUCATION: Graduate Study in Public Administration, USC Bachelor of Arts Degree, Political Science & Business Economics, UC Santa Barbara Craig Lawson is President of Craig Lawson & Co., LLC (“CLC”), a firm he founded in 1999 which provides professional land use and zoning consulting services including due diligence research, pre-development feasibility analysis, preparation and processing land use entitlement applications (i.e. variances, conditional use permits, zone changes, subdivisions), compliance, and government relations. EXPERIENCE: With more than 40 years of public and private sector experience, Mr. Lawson has an expertise in zoning research and land use analysis, pre-development strategies, project timelines, and processing complex discretionary approvals and permits. His firm (with 15 employees) has worked on thousands of client projects, and has successfully processed more than 100 projects in downtown Los Angeles, gaining approvals for more than 20,000 housing units and over 2 million square feet of commercial, retail and office space. Mr. Lawson managed the land use entitlement process several groundbreaking projects including the Metropolis Mega Project (over 1500 condo units in four high rise buildings including Hotel Indigo), Apex, Eighth & Grand (700 apartment units over a Whole Foods Market), Elleven, Luma and Evo buildings (over 600 condo units in three LEED Gold and Silver residential towers near Staples Center), 8500 Burton Way project (residential over retail for Rick Caruso), the Sunset + Vine mixed use project (300 residential units over 105,000 s.f. of retail), the Madame Tussauds Hollywood project, the Helms Bakery District transit-oriented development, and various hotel and retail projects in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, and West Hollywood. He also coordinated the planning and entitlement process for dozens of affordable housing projec