Cecily T. Barclay

Firmwide chair of the real estate and land use practice at Perkins Coie, Cecily Barclay focuses her practice on land use and entitlements, real estate acquisition and development, and local government law. She regularly assists landowners, developers, and public agencies throughout California in all aspects of acquisition, entitlement, and development of land, including land use application processing, drafting and negotiating purchase and sale agreements, negotiating and securing the approval of development agreements, general plan amendments, specific plans, planned development zoning, annexations, initiatives and referenda, and tentative and final subdivision maps.  

Current projects include redevelopment of land for market rate and affordable housing, life science campuses, hotels and resorts, and transit-oriented mixed-use development projects. 

Based in the firm’s San Fransico office, Barclay has significant experience in processing entitlements for redevelopment and expansion of regional retail centers, resort hotels, and entertainment centers, biotech/R&D campuses, large mixed-use master-planned communities, and multi-faceted reuse of former military facilities and other infill development sites.  

Her work extensively involves advising on land use initiatives, negotiating school fee mitigation agreements, preparing conservation easements to mitigate for loss of biological resources, and drafting affordable housing programs, Williamson Act contracts, and related issues pertaining to agricultural properties. She assists local agencies in drafting ordinances relating to updating general plans and housing elements, planned development zoning, specific plans, mitigation fees, affordable housing, and growth management.  

Barclay’s practice also focuses on how agencies and developers can apply state housing laws, particularly anti-NIMBY (Housing Accountability Act) and density bonus laws. 

These are some of the reasons that we named Barclay to our National grouping of Lawyers in Real Estate. These are real estate attorneys who have distinguished themselves in both their practice and the larger community.