State-owned Lands Practice Area

An experienced and collaborative approach to helping our clients obtain consent to use state-owned lands.

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Overview

A lease, easement, or other form of proprietary consent is required for all private uses of state-owned lands, including state-owned uplands and lands submerged beneath navigable waters.

Florida takes an expansive view of state ownership of lakes, streams, creeks and other water bodies. Consequently, professional assistance is frequently needed to assess the break point between private property and public lands. Hopping Green & Sams has decades of experience determining when and what type of proprietary approvals are needed. This experience includes appearances before the Governor and Cabinet and the Acquisition and Restoration Council to secure approvals. Over the years, our firm’s experience in this area has resulted in the issuance of a variety of proprietary authorizations.

Areas of Service

Our lawyers have experience obtaining proprietary authorizations to use state-owned lands in a variety of contexts and have a collaborative approach that we believe best serves the success of our clients’ projects.

Projects, especially linear projects, often require the use of state-owned uplands–such as state parks and forests–or lands submerged beneath navigable waters. These projects range from ports to marinas to residential developments which include docking facilities or bridges, to the installation of utilities and pipelines for the transportation of electricity, telecommunications or energy. We have experience in all these various uses and have assisted clients in obtaining favorable authorizations.

In all contexts, our state-lands lawyers take a collaborative and holistic approach. The requirements associated with proprietary consent over state lands can dramatically alter the design and economics of many types of enterprises. Our lawyers recognize the importance of being involved in the project development team from the start to proactively guide the project to address proprietary approvals and can assist in project strategy to help develop projects in ways that minimize the negative economic impacts where possible.

At Hopping Green and Sams, we also value our relationships with the agencies we work with on state-lands projects. From our offices in Tallahassee, we are uniquely situated to be able to meet with state agency staff in person to talk through various ideas and concepts to jointly collaborate on mutually-agreeable outcomes.

Our Team