Peterson, Greg D.
Peterson, Greg D.
With 30 years of experience, Greg’s practice encompasses all phases of real estate development and purchase and sale transactions, joint ventures, leases and ground leases, development agreements, complex due diligence, land use, zoning and subdivision entitlement, title and survey review, easements, nested condominiums, and borrower-side financing. Greg has negotiated and closed well over $1.5 billion worth of commercial real estate loan facilities and workouts for borrowers. His industry experience includes office and industrial properties, multi-family residential and mixed-use developments, energy facilities, and open space land conservation.
Greg’s environmental experience includes a wide range of state permitting and related environmental impact reviews, environmental remediation and cost recovery, brownfields redevelopment, indemnities, liability transfer and environmental insurance, brownfields tax credits deals, and the negotiation and crafting of consent orders resolving compliance matters with environmental regulators. Greg has been instrumental, as lead counsel or principal deal maker, in the permanent open space preservation of over 1,500 acres of land in Massachusetts, including the negotiation and drafting of numerous conservation restrictions, both for environmental non-profits and for landowners.
Greg provides strategic counseling to corporations, developers, numerous non-profits, investors, public utilities, educational and health care institutions, and high net worth private owners in connection with complex commercial real estate transactions, environmental, permitting and land use projects, affordable housing, and open space land conservation transactions.
Alongside his environmental work, Greg guides clients through the complex process of legislative and regulatory policy development and drafting. Greg was a significant contributor to the 2006 Expedited Permitting Act and the Smart Growth Zoning Act, chapters 40R and 40S. He provided the successful strategic advice behind three SJC decisions over the last decade, one concerning MEPA law, one confirming the legislative exemption of landlocked tidelands from c.91 licensing, and one concerning a foundational question in the law of easements.
Greg’s experience also includes service as a member and Chair of both the Planning Board and the Affordable Housing Trust of the Town of Carlisle, and as a director of the local land trust. He is a member of the Land Protection Committee of Sudbury Valley Trustees. He represented the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in the negotiation and drafting of the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, which to date has been adopted in eight States and is pending in four more State legislatures. He represented the Real Estate Bar Association on the 2016 Massachusetts Senate Select Commission on Housing.
Prior to joining Casner & Edwards, Greg was a partner at Tarlow Breed Hart & Rodgers, P.C. from 2009 - 2017, and prior to that was a partner at the global law firm, DLA Piper, LLC and the highly-regarded Boston firm of Hill & Barlow.
Education
• JD, cum laude, Harvard Law School
• AB, magna cum laude, Columbia University, (Member of Phi Beta Kappa)
