Frank R. Petrilli

As the leader of Arent Fox's California land use group, Petrilli represents Silicon Valley, San Francisco and other Bay Area and international companies undertaking challenging projects on all matters related to entitlement strategy, land use and land use litigation and compliance under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Clients include Facebook, Bohannon Development Co., CitizenM Hotels, Ensemble Investment Corp. SA and Genzon Group.

Since March he's been working from home in Oakland, though he and his wife took a getaway trip to the Sierras in mid-July. "Camping on a river, it was absolutely stunning and gorgeous," he said. "Fly fishing and cooking on an open fire. Remote and isolated and wonderful." The scenery stood in stark contrast to his office's location on the 21st floor of a downtown San Francisco high rise. "The city is a ghost town now," Petrilli said. "It feels post-apocalyptic. In the office papers are stacked on desks and there's a dead ficus in the corner. As for re-opening, transit and elevators are the limiting factors."

Petrilli advises Facebook on land use, entitlement and transactional matter in connection with the expansion of their Frank Gehry-designed corporate headquarters in Menlo Park, which includes nearly a million square feet of office space on a 60-acre site. He provides strategic counsel to Bohannon Development Co. in the Menlo Gateway project in Menlo Park, which includes more than 700,000 square feet of new office space leased to Facebook plus a luxury hotel.

In these and other deals the pandemic's effects are unclear. "There's uncertainty regarding all commercial space," Petrilli said. "We heard early on that it was a pleasant surprise how productive people working remotely could be, and what a distributed or hybrid workforce could look like. Now, the desire for social capital and culture is resulting in a desire to get back to an office setting. We could eventually see a need for a combination of more office space for social distancing along with a more dispersed workforce."

The Menlo Gateway project was close to completion when the virus struck. "It was the first big development that Menlo Park has approved since the early 2000s," Petrilli said. "The city is trying to strike a balance between appropriate levels of growth and the need for more housing. We were near to bringing the project on line, though I doubt now that Facebook will be moving in anytime soon."

For Petrilli, the coronavirus crisis has highlighted the perennial twin dilemmas in the region regarding housing and transportation. "Will it be a catalyst for a reset of our priorities? There is room for brokering compromises as we recover. Politics and social psychology is a big part of what we have to do."

-- John Roemer