Business Partners

Land Attorneys: McKenna Brinks Signorotti

McKenna Brink Signorotti LLP is a full service law firm focused on real estate, business and wealth planning. Their attorneys have significant experience in all real estate related matters, including title litigation, land use and real estate transactions. Their corporate attorneys represent small and mid-size businesses as outside corporate counsel, and have significant experience in business litigation, entity formation, securities, regulatory compliance, shareholder agreements, business tax planning and exit and succession strategies. Their estate, wealth planning and tax attorneys focus on estate planning, wealth preservation strategies for business owners, tax mitigation planning for high-net worth clients and California property taxes.

Land Attorney: Dan Muller

Dan’s clients include private property owners, business owners, home builders, developers, and public agencies. Dan’s experience includes over 25 years resolving – and litigating if necessary – a wide array of property and business-related disputes involving land use, eminent domain/direct condemnation, inverse condemnation (unconstitutional regulatory and physical “takings”), development impact fees and exactions, redevelopment, purchases/sales, easements and boundaries, other municipal/constitutional law matters, and probate, will contests, and estate planning disputes.

In an era when few cases go to trial and litigators with trial experience are few and far between, Dan’s experience is unusual – and valuable; allowing him to effectively counsel clients and win in court. Early in his career, Dan actively sought increasing litigation responsibility and was afforded the opportunity to handle dozens of cases, from early pleading and discovery stages, through jury or bench trial to verdict. Examples of Dan’s litigation experience include:

• Successfully prosecuting, defending and resolving (for and against public agencies) numerous land use-related writ petitions, involving development entitlements, environmental analysis (CEQA), conditions of approval, development impact fees and exactions, redevelopment, and zoning issues.
• Successfully representing property owners, tenants, businesses, and public agencies in bench and jury trials of eminent domain, inverse condemnation, employment, business, and breach of contract disputes.
• Successfully prosecuting other municipal law disputes, such as quo warranto actions, in which public officials serving on two local agency boards were forced to resign under the “incompatible offices doctrine”.
• Resolving contentious disputes between private property/business owners involving purchase/sale agreements, access and prescriptive easements, property boundaries, damages to real and personal property, breach of contract, tort, and construction claims.

Real Estate Appraiser: John Hillas

John Hillas is the Managing Director of Valbridge Property Advisors | Northern California’s Central Valley offices, where he leads a team of experienced appraisers and mentors budding individuals. With 40 years of appraising in several states under his belt, John’s wide range of experience includes commercial, industrial, and agricultural property types. He draws from his strengths to assist a variety of clients, from lending to private entities. In addition, John is skilled at providing valuations and expert testimony in connection with litigation support, eminent domain, and UASFLA (Yellow Book) format appraisals for Federal transactions.

Civil Engineer: Yushin Imura

Yushin Imura is the managing partner of YCG Civil Engineering Group with offices in the Bay Area and Central Valley. They provide Civil Engineering services in the greater part of California specializing in residential, commercial, and institutional project design. By working closely with architects and developers, they cultivate a shared vision to put ideals into practical with designs on time and on budget. They have successfully designed and managed hundreds of projects and has shown the ability and commitment to assist through all phases of development, from planning to design to construction.

Archeologist: Solano Archaeological Services

Solano Archaeological Services (SAS) is a cultural resources management firm based in northern California with offices in the San Francisco Bay Area, and in the Sierra Nevada.  Certified as a Small/Micro Business (Certification ID: 1756256), SAS is in its fifteenth year of business, maintains a GSA contract (GS-10F-0342T) with the federal government, and retains eight full-time and temporary employees. SAS provides the full spectrum of fieldwork and analytical services including CEQA/NEPA and Section 106-based cultural inventories, archaeological testing and evaluation, data recovery, burial documentation and disinterment/re-interment, construction monitoring, Native American community consultation, prehistoric and historic-era artifact assemblage processing and analysis, database development and management, and lithic assemblage studies. SAS also offers our clients secure administrative office, laboratory, shop, and storage/curation facilities. SAS is fully equipped with advanced submeter Trimble GPS units, corresponding customized data dictionaries, and Pathfinder software.  To ensure crew safety and access to remote and at times inhospitable project areas, we retain specialized field equipment such as satellite phones, and all-terrain vehicles large enough to support a full crew compliment.   

Fieldwork is led by Co-Principal Investigators Jason Coleman, M.A., owner of SAS, and Dr. Brian Ludwig. Mr. Coleman meets the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards and Guidelines for both Archaeology and History, and he is a Registered Professional Archaeologist (RPA# 15338). Well versed in California archaeology, Mr. Coleman has personally field directed over 100,000 acres of survey work in his tenure, as well as large scale testing and evaluation, and data recovery efforts. Dr. Ludwig has been managing cultural resources projects and industry programs in California for 20 years and specializes in overseeing large-scale complex projects for a diverse array of private and agency concerns. His specific technical specialties include lithic artifact analysis, Native American community outreach and consultation, and human remains identification, disinterment, and analysis.