Matt Norton maintains an international practice focusing on commercial real estate and real estate development, including multifamily, retail, hotels, office, and industrial projects, resort and hospitality, commercial lending, corporate transactions and governance, and project and loan workouts, restructurings, and repositionings.
Mr. Norton has represented commercial and residential real estate developers involved in developing and financing a variety of real estate projects in South Carolina, including real estate joint ventures. In addition, Mr. Norton has represented numerous clients in the sale, acquisition, and leasing of commercial and residential properties. Further, he has represented real estate lenders in more than 200 financing transactions including senior, participated, syndicate debt structures, and mezzanine structures, and spends a significant amount of time assisting clients with project workouts and restructurings.
Mr. Norton regularly represents clients in transactions and in structuring and documenting resort, urban, and other planned and mixed-use communities, which may include condominiums, condo hotels, fractional products, private clubs, golf courses, hotels, beach amenities and clubs, marinas, spas, and public use spaces. He routinely negotiates development agreements with governments and assists governments in enacting pro-development legislation to attract and facilitate increased investment. He has recently or is currently assisting clients with the sale, acquisition, development, repositioning, and/or financing of projects in the southeastern United States, Latin America, and a number of Caribbean countries, including projects in St. Kitts and Nevis, Jamaica, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Mexico, Colombia, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Cayman Islands, St. Maarten, Turks & Caicos, and the Bahamas.
Mr. Norton has significant experience in hotel law, including the preparation of consulting agreements, hotel management agreements, asset management agreements, franchise agreements, rental management agreements, amenity treaties, along with documentation associated with the sale, acquisition, and financing of hotels.
Additionally, Mr. Norton has significant experience in golf law. He has represented clients in more than 60 golf course transactions and represented a publicly traded golf REIT for 10 years. He has worked on a variety of golf transactions including acquisitions and sales, leases, sale-leasebacks, workouts and transition agreements, financings, management agreements, private clubs, golf usage and amenity treaties, golf course conversions and repositions, and member buy-outs.