Mr. Gold received his B.A. degree in 1976 from the University of California, Berkeley, with highest honors and his J.D. degree in 1980 from the University of Southern California. He became a partner with Morrison & Foerster in January 1991, and currently serves as Managing Partner of the firm’s Walnut Creek office. He served as co-chair of the firm’s Land Use and Environmental Practice Group from 1998 to 2003.

Mr. Gold’s practice is dedicated primarily to land use, redevelopment, subdivision, and CEQA matters before government agencies and commissions throughout Northern California. He has extensive experience in advising and representing major corporations, hospitals, and mixed use residential and commercial developers and private and public institutions through all phases of the land use regulatory process. Mr. Gold is frequently retained to find solutions to complex infrastructure and political controversies threatening the successful siting of proposed facilities and projects. Mr. Gold works closely with Morrison & Foerster’s sizeable group of experienced land development, natural resources, and environmental attorneys to provide clients with premier legal services in the growing East Bay and South Bay, the Solano-Sacramento Valley region, and the Sierra foothills.

Mr. Gold serves as counsel to an association of transit village office building, hotel owners and mixed-use developers, with projects totaling 2.5 million square feet of development surrounding a regional transit facility. He has assisted office building and mixed use developers with redevelopment and other “smart growth” projects, including the 2.1 million square foot City of San Ramon - Sunset Development public-private partnership to create a City Center mixed use retail, civic, commercial, and high density residential project. In addition to his involvement with the Bishop Ranch Business Park, Mr. Gold represents EOP and RREEF in entitlement efforts to redevelop an existing corporate campus at the Hacienda Business Park in Pleasanton.

Mr. Gold also has extensive experience with complex permitting issues confronting military base reuse projects, including the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo and Fort Ord in Monterey County. Mr. Gold has successfully guided Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and John Muir Mt. Diablo Health Systems through the siting, redevelopment, seismic renovation, and expansion of major medical campuses throughout California.

Mr. Gold frequently assists technology, telecommunications, renewable energy, and manufacturing companies with the siting or expansion of their facilities. More recently, Mr. Gold has represented a major photovoltaic solar developer with land use entitlement issues related to the siting of solar facilities throughout California. He lectures on AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act, Climate Change and CEQA, participates in the Firm’s Cleantech Practice Group and heads up its Green Building Team.

Mr. Gold has represented clients in the negotiation of development agreements on master planned projects throughout Northern California, including the 1,500-unit Shea Homes Silver Creek project in San Jose, the 11,000-unit Dougherty Valley project in Contra Costa County, the 10,000-unit Twelve Bridges golf resort in Placer County, and the Chevron Park corporate campus in San Ramon.

Mr. Gold has practiced land development in the East Bay for over 25 years and is able to provide clients with a historical and pragmatic legal perspective to their matters. Representative public entity clients include Contra Costa County, where he was selected by the Board of Supervisors to serve as Special Counsel advising the County on the legal adequacy of its updated general plan and to draft a Board-sponsored initiative, the voter-approved 65/35 Land Preservation Plan. He was also selected by the City of Antioch to serve as Special Land Use Counsel for its comprehensive General Plan Update and the 2,700-acre Sand Creek Specific Plan.

Mr. Gold has been named a Northern California Super Lawyer as a land use specialist from 2004-2008, and in 2005 was named as one of the Top 100 Super Lawyers in Northern California. Also, in 2005 he was selected as one of the Top 12 East Bay Attorneys by the East Bay Business Times. Mr. Gold has been listed in the Best Lawyers in America 2007 and 2008 Directory for excellence in Land Use and Zoning Law. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Contra Costa Council and the Contra Costa Economic Partnership. He has been active in the Contra Costa County Bar Association, serving as Chairman of the Real Estate Section of that Association. He lectures for the University of California Extension, the Continuing Education of the Bar, the League of California Cities, and others on CEQA, “smart growth,” the California Subdivision Map Act, and other land use topics. Mr. Gold has been active in major land use legislative proposals. He was selected as land use counsel to the Bay Area Economic Forum’s CEQA Task Force, to provide legal advice on CEQA reform legislation. He has written extensively in the areas of development agreements, takings, the California Environmental Quality Act, and smart growth transit-oriented development. He has been a co-author of California Subdivision Map Act Practice, published by California Continuing Education of the Bar.