Partner

Howard Zweig is a partner, member of the firm's Real Estate Practice Group and a member of the Education Practice Team.

Education and Nonprofit Institutions. Howard represents primarily higher education institutions and nonprofit institutions. His practice is national in scope, with both clients and their properties located across the United States.

A substantial part of Howard's practice involves acting as legal adviser to education clients, and encompasses nearly all areas of law that these institutions encounter. Howard regularly advises his education clients on corporate governance and authority issues.

Development and Land Use & Zoning. Howard provides clients with counseling and representation in a wide variety of real estate and transactional matters. These include development, acquisition, sale and leasing of commercial, industrial and institutional projects, commercial mortgage loans, construction, and zoning issues.

Howard has been active in numerous development and land use projects in and around Chicago, and currently represents numerous nationally recognized universities in a variety of matters. Howard's projects have included:

• representing two universitites in a 1,000 and 1,500 bed student housing project involving public-private ventures, long-term ground leases and tax-exempt financing.
• representing a university in litigation related to a historic district that was imposed on a significant portion of its property,
• development of a research park for a university, involving the negotiation of a master development agreement, declaration of covenants and ground leases,
• a complex transaction involving an air-rights lease, multiple users and multiple uses for a 60-story building.

Investment & Finance. Howard's real estate activities have also involved numerous acquisitions, sales, leasing and commercial investment and finance transactions. One of Howard's finance transactions included the structuring of a loan secured by the air-rights lease transaction described above. Another recent project for a nonprofit institution was a complex $30 million monetization of non-core assets, including ground leases of land and conveyances of buildings.

In General. Howard graduated with honors from Cooper Union, where he studied architecture and urban planning. He earned his law degree cum laude from the University of Minnesota where he was an associate editor of the University of Minnesota Law Review. He is a long-standing, active member, author and speaker in the National Association of College and University Attorneys. Howard's extensive civic and local governmental activities and leadership roles further complement his capabilities to serve clients well. Howard has also been selected by surveys of peers to the status of Best Lawyers in America, in the specialty of Real Estate Law.