Chuck Wolfe is an environmental and land use lawyer with 24 years of experience whose practice spans a broad range of subdisciplines, from planning and development, environmental compliance, regulation and permitting to increasingly embracing the successful redevelopment of contaminated properties, a.k.a "brownfields".
He has represented clients in several cutting edge negotiations with the Washington Department of Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, including Qwest Field, the Everett Housing Authority/ASARCO site in Everett, the J.H. Baxter site in Renton (future Seattle Seahawks Headquarters/Training Facility) and the Triad/Nortar (Regatta Condominium) site in Seattle, which remains the fastest Prospective Purchaser Consent Decree negotiation in Ecology history. Lead current projects include advising the City of Bainbridge Island in the phased acquisition and liability management for the Wyckoff/Eagle Harbor Superfund Site, which will be reused as a park and Japanese-American Memorial, serving on the team engaged in a comprehensive update of the City of Bainbridge Island's zoning and subdivision regulations; providing land use and environmental counsel for The Hearthstone retirement facility and West Seattle Associates mixed use redevelopments in Seattle, ongoing representation regarding the future Seattle Seahawks Headquarters/Training Facility, environmental representation of multiple purchasers of brownfield sites on the Thea Foss Waterway in Tacoma, advising a private seller of waterfront property in Gig Harbor which will be used as a park and boatyard museum, advising the prospective developer of the major mixed-use Dearborn Street redevelopment site in Seattle, and providing environmental and land use representation concerning multiple properties in Bellevue and Kirkland.
He is also providing ongoing environmental representation to many of the region's lead residential and commercial redevelopers, including Vulcan Inc./Football Northwest, Continental Properties, Wallace Properties, CamWest Development, Kemper Development Co. and Property Development Corporation and in recent years has advised Intracorp regarding certain properties in its portfolio and Charter Bank regarding revision of its environmental lending policy. He has advised smaller companies and individuals on environmental and land use matters in Bellevue, Mercer Island, unincorporated King County, Snohomish County, Anacortes, Poulsbo, Port Orchard, Milton, Bonney Lake and on the Duwamish Waterway in Seattle.
Through 2005, he served as local environmental counsel for Hexcel Corporation, a major multinational composites manufacturer addressing remediation matters at Hexcel's Kent facility. He has handled many other environmental and land use matters in Washington and Connecticut over his career, including defense of several Clean Water Act citizen suits, the purchase of a portion of the historic Simpson Plywood Mill on Oakland Bay in Shelton and resolution of cleanup liability for Time Oil Co. and Advanced Micro Devices.
Chuck is an affiliate associate professor in the Department of Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington, where he is slated to teach two courses in 2007, and serves on the College of Architecture and Urban Planning's Steering Committee. He is the former Chair of both the Environmental and Land Use Section of the Washington State Bar and the Planning and Law Division of the American Planning Association.
He is an accomplished speaker and author and regularly chairs and or speaks at topical regional and national seminars and serves as a Reporter for the national publication, Planning & Environmental Law. He has been a named one of the 10 highest ranked environmental and natural resources lawyers in the state by Washington CEO Magazine as well as a "Superlawyer" by Washington Law and Politics every year since 2002 and was recently named a "Top 40 Environmental/Land Use Law Superlawyer". He is active professionally as a member of the Urban Land Institute-Seattle and will become a member of its Executive Committee in Summer 2008 and recently served as part of the leadership group for ULI-Seattle's April 2008 regional "Reality Check" exercise.
