Pamela Andes

Practice Areas

Pam is an environmental and real estate partner in the Orange County office and co-leader of the firm's Contaminated Sites Practice. For more than 30 years, she has worked hand in hand with developers and property owners to bring world-class developments to sites challenged with soil, soil vapor, and groundwater contamination.

A strong and steady advocate for her clients, Pam has mitigated hundreds of millions of dollars of environmental liabilities and has shepherded a multitude of complex projects to completion.

Pam’s multidisciplinary skill set and experience, combined with her upstanding reputation among agencies, consultants, and counterparties, can give new developments or redevelopment projects facing environmental concerns a distinct advantage—expedited decisions and a smoother path to resolution.

On the lender side, Pam brings her perspectives in environmental and real estate law to evaluate the risk of financing and/or foreclosing on environmentally challenged collateral.

BINDING AND MINIMIZING RISK

Pam helps her clients—typically large developers, institutional investors, and individual property owners—protect human health and the environment while simultaneously working within the time frame and cost range required to meet business objectives. She routinely identifies and implements creative strategies to make the deals happen.

Pam is often at the center of helping her clients understand and minimize risks through contractual arrangements with counterparties or responsible parties, agreements with regulatory agencies, and/or environmental insurance policies, which serve an important role in resolving many site issues.

She also oversees the work of risk assessors, consultants, litigation experts, and public relations professionals. She has extensive experience with understanding, messaging, and mitigating vapor intrusion, including the complexities of indoor air sampling and vapor barriers, sub-slab depressurization systems, and positive pressure solutions, among others.

COMPREHENSIVE EXPERIENCE

Having worked on all sides of real estate deals from purchase to permitting and from leasing to sale, Pam considers the entire lifecycle of development when looking at an acquisition or project plan. She is fluent in the potential obstacles for the full range of stakeholders—purchasers, lenders, contractors, landlords, tenants, buyers, regulatory agencies, and the public at large—as well as methods for positioning a real estate asset in light of its environmental condition for the property owner's future exit strategy.

Due to her highly-developed knowledgebase, Pam takes the facts of a deal, translates the technically complex into everyday language for her clients, and prioritizes and highlights what matters.

Clients say they rely upon her excellent judgment, efficiency, and responsive and attentive service, as well as her access to an extensive network of additional problem solvers, which she shares freely. A key feature of her practice is her ability to connect landowners and developers to the right people who can help them on their sites, supported by the resources of Allen Matkins attorneys in complementary disciplines.

NOTABLE PROJECTS

Pam has been an instrumental team member in numerous large, complicated projects throughout California, such the Burbank Empire Center, the converted former Boeing facilities in Long Beach, and multiple acquisitions and ground-up developments for a Silicon Valley global technology company. Pam loves to help people, so she also works with individual property owners in cases where decades-old environmental problems on land or in buildings are discovered and require a resolution before properties are sold or redeveloped.

Professional Memberships

Orange County Bar Association

CoreNet Global, Northern California Chapter

State Bar of California, Environmental Law and Real Property Sections