Mary L. Dickson

Partner

Mary L. Dickson is a partner in Morgan Lewis's Real Estate Practice. Ms. Dickson's practice focuses on real estate with a particular emphasis on transactional real estate law including purchase and sale, leasing, finance and land use matters.

Ms. Dickson represents lenders and servicers under the multifamily programs of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and private mortgage conduits engaged in mortgage securitization. She handles apartment and commercial real estate financing throughout the country, with a particular focus on representing national clients in their West Coast operations. She represents clients in the development, negotiation, and documentation of loans for specialized, innovative, or unusual apartment financing, including mezzanine loans, transactions involving 1031 exchanges, ground leased properties, and mixed-use projects. She also provides advice and counsel regarding the origination, closing, sale, pooling, and servicing of multifamily mortgage loans.

Ms. Dickson handles purchase, sale and leasing transactions involving a variety of types of properties, including office buildings, hotels, industrial properties and appurtenant facilities such as pipelines. These transactions range in dollar value from small corporate transactions of one or two million dollars up to hundreds of millions for large resort hotel acquisitions. Her leasing experience also includes supporting litigation in complex unlawful detainer (eviction) actions.

Ms. Dickson's recent engagements include representation of the seller of an important landmark in the entertainment industry—the corporate headquarters location of Sony Pictures Entertainment (and former location of MGM)—for a sale price in excess of $50 million dollars; representation of originating lender in the financing of multifamily property located in the Marina del Rey area of Los Angeles and subject to ground lease from the County of Los Angeles, including sale of loan to Freddie Mac; representation of purchaser with respect to the real estate aspects of the acquisition, development and financing of major independent power project in Kern County, California, which project was heralded by the governor as one of the most important energy projects to come on-line in California in 17 years; representation of a pension fund and its investment manager in the origination and servicing of “mezzanine” loans secured by ownership interests in hotel and resort properties.

Ms. Dickson also has experience with administrative real estate law, including appearances before local government agencies such as the City of Los Angeles, California Planning Commission, Community Redevelopment Agency Board and Building and Safety Commission.

Ms. Dickson is a frequent lecturer for the Continuing Legal Education division of the State Bar of California on title insurance.

Ms. Dickson is admitted to practice in California.