S. Elise Batsel

Shareholder

Practice & Industry Groups

Overview

Elise Batsel focuses her practice on land use, zoning, permitting, and transactional real estate. She represents national and local developers and property owners before local, state, and federal governments on land use and land development issues. She has extensive experience representing clients in a broad range of matters involving variances, rezonings, permitting, licensing, comprehensive plan amendments, and entitlements for multi-family commercial, industrial, hotel, master planned and mixed-use projects. She also has experience with economic development projects, as well as Public-Private Partnerships, and advises clients regarding the redevelopment of environmentally impacted sites and environmental and wetland permitting issues.

In the Real Estate arena, Elise represents property owners and developers in real estate acquisitions, dispositions, and complex development agreements.

Elise is also a member of the firm’s Board of Directors.

Notable Experience

  • Represents the leading nonprofit health care provider in the Tampa Bay and West-Central Florida Regions in obtaining all development entitlements for a 773,582 sq. ft. medical facility, including a regional hospital, ambulatory care center, associated medical offices, and commercial outparcels.
  • Represents one of the largest home furnishing and accent retailers in Florida in the development of a 1,200,000 sq. ft. warehousing, distribution and regional headquarters, including a regional showroom, for their central Florida operations in Plant City. Lead land use and environmental counsel, working with the City on the annexation of property into the City, comprehensive plan amendments, rezonings and environmental impact and permitting issues.
  • Represents a full-service investment and development firm in obtaining a variety of land use approvals for a new mixed-use development located along the Gandy causeway. The waterfront development includes a mix of multi-family, townhome and commercial uses including 376 units, a dry storage marina with 245 slips, retail, restaurant and 225 accessory wet slips.
  • Represents a national real estate investment trust (REIT) that focuses on the acquisition, selective development, redevelopment and management of multifamily projects, in the infill redevelopment of an 18.5 acre parcel to a mixed-use waterfront and retail project, including nearly 500 waterfront units, 14,000 square feet of retail/restaurant space, and a 2,000 foot linear waterfront pedestrian boardwalk.
  • Represents real estate developer in a mixed-use project consisting of 243 multi-family residential units, a waterfront restaurant (with public boat slips and outdoor dining options), a 3,959 square foot co-working facility, 8,264 square feet of retail and significant public amenities, including a public park with open space, sidewalks, benches, a waterfront overlook, a new City seawall and enhanced public access to the water.
  • Represents a developer of luxury resorts and hotels, upscale resort communities, golf courses, and hotel-serviced residential and recreational properties, as property rights counsel and in numerous land use appeals regarding the development of a 124-acre waterfront property in Naples, Florida.  The project is a $2.2 billion mixed-used redevelopment project, including a five-star 220-room Four Seasons Hotel with residential condos, a golf course, spa, tennis center, retail space, a sports park, and various restaurants.

Credentials

Education

  • J.D., with honors, University of Florida Levin College of Law, 1997
  • B.A., summa cum laude, University of Colorado, 1993

Admissions

  • Florida

Professional & Community Involvement

  • National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP), Tampa Bay Chapter
    • Board of Directors, 2024-Present
  • Housing Leadership Council of Tampa Bay, Board of Directors, 2024-Present
  • Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW) Tampa Bay
    • Past-President, 2024
    • President, 2023
    • President-Elect, 2022
    • National Delegate, 2021-Present
    • Board of Directors, 2015-2019, 2021-Present
  • University of Florida (UF) Bergstrom Real Estate Advisory Board, 2018-Present
  • Hillsborough County Bar Foundation, Board of Trustees, 2022

Recognition

  • Florida Trend, Legal Elite NOTABLE – Women Leaders in Law, 2023
  • Tampa Bay Business Journal, BusinessWoman of the Year Honoree, 2023
  • The Best Lawyers in America, 2018-Present
  • Florida Super Lawyers, 2017-2018, 2020-Present
  • Excellence Award, (CREW) Tampa Bay Sales Transactions, 2017

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