With nearly thirty years in private practice, Daniel S. Gonzales is a skilled and effective counselor and advocate. For almost twenty years, Mr. Gonzales’s focus has been on California real estate law and associated business law matters, representing a wide variety of parties, including public agencies, private institutions, commercial enterprises, and individuals, in an extensive range of commercial and residential real estate transactions.
Mr. Gonzales represents developers, landowners and investors in the disposition, development and commercial use of California real property. He has extensive experience in creating and negotiating long-term ground leases, commercial, retail, industrial, office, and shopping center leases, and secured financing agreements for commercial, industrial, and multi-family residential real estate, shopping centers and office buildings, as well as representing both buyers and sellers in the negotiation, documentation, due diligence and closing of their purchase, sale and exchange transactions. His expertise includes planning and structuring corporations, general and limited partnerships and limited liability companies for real estate projects, disposition and development agreements, landlord/tenant issues, cotenancy arrangements, mechanic’s liens, escrow and title matters, boundary disputes, financing workouts, brokerage issues, construction and architectural contracts, water law, zoning, entitlement and subdivision matters, land use and environmental issues (including, inter alia, CEQA and CERCLA), easements and real property tax assessment appeals. Mr. Gonzales has also represented several California community college districts in the commercial development of their surplus lands, including analysis of the financial and legal implications of such projects, together with advice and counsel on related public agency law matters (including Brown Act issues, conflict of interest issues, Civic Center Act issues, Public Records Act issues, public financing issues, and public contracting issues).
A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Stanford Law School, Mr. Gonzales is a Notre Dame Scholar, a National Merit Scholar, and a National Hispanic Scholar, and was Managing Editor of the Stanford Journal of International Law and President of the Stanford International Law Society. Mr. Gonzales is admitted to practice before all of the courts of the State of California, the U.S. District Courts for the Northern and Eastern Districts of California, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the U.S. Tax Court. Mr. Gonzales has also been selected for inclusion in Who’s Who in American Law and Who’s Who in America, and holds the Martindale-Hubbell highest AV rating.
In the community, Mr. Gonzales served for many years on the corporate boards of YMCA of Silicon Valley and Senior Housing Solutions, Inc., an elder housing nonprofit, where he was elected to several terms as board president. He was also a mediator with the City of Menlo Park Community Mediation Service for ten years, and chaired that agency for several years as well.
Mr. Gonzales is a longtime member of the Santa Clara County Bar Association, and has served in a number of leadership roles, including chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the Minority Access (now Diversity) Committee and member of the Long Range Planning Committee and Quality of Life Task Force. He is currently a member of its Real Property Section Executive Committee and its Fair Election Practices Commission, charged with resolving judicial election campaign complaints. Mr. Gonzales also serves on the boards of the Santa Clara County La Raza Lawyers Association and the Santa Clara County La Raza Lawyers Charitable Foundation.
For relaxation, Mr. Gonzales is an avid amateur musician, playing rock, blues and jazz guitar and keyboards; at the 35th Anniversary of the Summer of Love concert held at Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco, he performed onstage with the 1960s hit musical group the Beau Brummels.