Acknowledgements + Symposium Wrap-up
Inclusion and Openness to Ideas
By James M. Meseck, 2023–24 Section Chair

Thank you to our Section members who attended the 41st Annual Real Estate Symposium in Vail, Colorado. We could not have this fantastic event year after year without your support and participation. Thank you to the excellent and thoughtful speakers who taught the members who joined us on a range of topics and updates. We learned the case law and legislative updates and had the 15-minute drill (plus) with a range of new topics and ideas. We heard updates to the federal financial crimes act, premises liability, flood control reservoirs, housing issues, real estate foreclosure basics, best ethical practices, leadership issues, zoning developments, deeds, real estate broker issues, and environmental issues. We had at least 309 total registrants in person and 41 webinar participants. We will be returning to Vail, Colorado again next year!

We also celebrated the life of Willis Carpenter and continued the new tradition of honoring the leadership and spirit of Mr. Carpenter. This year’s recipient of the Willis Carpenter Leadership Award in Real Estate is Beat Steiner. Please congratulate Mr. Steiner for this well-deserved recognition and thank him for his career-long dedication to promoting professionalism in the practice of real estate law. Stay tuned for requests for nominations for the next recipient in 2024.

We were also able to recognize the COVID-Chairs for their outstanding leadership in bringing us through the challenges of the COVID pandemic. Again, enough cannot be said about the leadership of Suzanne Leff (2020), Jean Arnold (2021), Melinda Pasquini (2022) and Amy Brimah (2023). We as a section are stronger and better because of their leadership.

Thank you to the CBA and CBA-CLE staff for supporting all of the events, speakers and networking events that makes Symposium such an excellent experience, including: Jess Ham, Susan McNulty, Evan Brown, Evan Randall, Leilani Thompson, Tyler Mounsey, Lisa Cordova, and Dan Sweetser.

Thank you to all the sponsors who generously supported the Symposium and made it the enjoyable, successful experience it was for each of us and our families. We look forward to maintaining and growing those relationships into the future.

And last but certainly not least, thank you to my fellow officers Amy Brimah and Adam Aldrich for the work over the past year as Chair and Legislative Policy Officer and to Angie Schmitz, as secretary of the Section. I look forward to working with Adam Aldrich continuing as the Legislative Policy Officer, Zak Kessler as the new Secretary and Angie Schmitz, as Vice-Chair of the Section.

An Inclusive Community and the Marketplace of Ideas

The title and theme of this year’s Symposium was the 41st Annual Real Estate Symposium: The Marketplace of Ideas. This theme was selected to highlight and give voice to the diverse set of ideas and competing views on how we ought to use and treat Colorado’s greatest assets – its land, water, and people. The theme was selected along with the topics and speakers with the aim of promoting the CBA’s articulated mission statement. That mission statement is:

The Colorado Bar Association (“CBA”) values its diverse membership and our communities. We are committed to the eradication of racism, discrimination, and any other form of injustice against underrepresented groups. We promote diversity, equity, inclusion and the removal of barriers to success within the CBA and the communities we serve.

With this aspiration in mind, the Colorado Bar Association has been working to advance equity, diversity and inclusion in the legal field and the communities we serve. The importance of having and being part of an inclusive community for attorneys to come together and listen to diverse views cannot be overstated. The challenges that Colorado faces of balancing legislative policies, private ownership rights, the greater or common good, financial interests, crimes involving the use of real estate, affordable housing, homelessness, rights of privacy, business trends, climatic changes and new innovative uses of real estate involving technology is overwhelming.

Therefore, the CBA and the Real Estate Section Council have advanced a number of resources for its members, including, the Symposium, the spring and fall updates, and the CLE luncheon series to bring the different ideas, trends, changes and the impacts and consequences of recent real estate developments to your attention. We strive to make lawyers more effective and to learn about best practices to become well-informed leaders in our communities. My goal for the Real Estate Section is to continue to build on the excellent work of the CBA and build an inclusive community of attorneys where ideas are welcome, explored through discussion, debate is welcome, and no one is excluded because the ideas they advocate for may be unpopular at the time. I encourage you to participate, engage and share your voice in that discussion. It is only through engagement that we can grow connections and our community of real estate attorneys to help overcome the challenges that Colorado faces. The solutions to those challenges will be found in all of us.

J. Marcus Painter, Holland & Hart LLP

In its inaugural year, 2022, the Willis Carpenter Leadership in Real Estate Award was eponymously and most appropriately given to the late, and undeniably great, Willis Carpenter. Considered and referred to as the “Dean of Colorado Real Estate Law,” Willis embodied the very best of professionalism in real estate and beyond. He set a standard to which we can all aspire, with a long track record of contributing to the Colorado Real Estate legal community, improving the sophistication and quality of the practice of real estate law, demonstrating leadership across his profession and his communities, providing mentoring, instilling unparalleled collegiality and respect for peers; and committing himself and encouraging his colleagues to reach for the highest ethical standards.

These are the qualifications for this award going forward, and Willis indeed set a high bar for all of us.  But among a constellation of extraordinary and deserving Colorado real estate practitioners, so many of whom have learned from and emulated Willis, no one was more deserving or appropriate to succeed to Willis’s moniker as “Dean of Colorado Real Estate” and to be the next recipient of the Award after Willis than our own Beat Steiner.

No one, and certainly not Beat, would presume to completely fill Willis’s shoes, but the overlaps of these two giants in Colorado real estate are many, just a few of which include:

• Willis – first inductee – Colorado Real Estate Hall of Fame.
  • Beat – named Best Real Estate Lawyer in Colorado.
• Willis founded POETS – collegial real estate precursor to the Symposium – which Willis also started.
  • Beat took over co-leadership of POETS with Chuck Calvin when Willis stepped down.
• Willis was a chair of the real estate section and many other bar committees
  • So, too, was Beat.
• Willis was a charter member of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers (ACREL).
  • Beat was the chair of the Leasing Committee for ACREL and is still active with the ACREL Leasing and Opinions committees.
• Willis published & taught extensively – many books we all still rely on
  • Beat has done the same, including his current book “Commercial Leasing in Colorado,” published by CLE in Colorado.
• Willis loved mentoring and noodling issues with his colleagues over the phone – He always took my call and always gave valuable feedback.
  • Thank goodness Beat does too to this day.

These qualities have rubbed off on so many of us in supporting each other in a way that is more palpable than in other sections of the Bar – both here and outside our State. These are two practitioners who have always demonstrated passion about real estate law; about their commitment to passing their wisdom on in this apprenticeship model of ours; about being the best lawyers they could be and lifting up their colleagues to be the same; and about being true “professionals” – helping and serving their communities and society with their skills and knowledge – and letting financial success take care of itself.

At a truly bitter-sweet inflection point for my own professional life, Beat officially retired this year after almost 20 years with Holland & Hart. If you have ever talked with Beat, you know that his career began with law school at the University of Virginia– something for which he is … obsessively proud, and something that he can magically weave into any conversation – from fly fishing, to title standards, to trips to New Zealand. UVA law just makes its way in somehow, some way.

With that pedigree, he started his work career on Wall Street at Cadwaleder, but then escaped to Colorado and Davis Graham & Stubbs where he became chair of the firm’s real estate group. And between DG&S and Holland & Hart, Beat led his own boutique real estate firm with some other familiar names - Steiner, Darling & Hutchinson.

Among so many great client accomplishments, Beat led the IBM Plant Site PUD in Boulder County; served as lender’s counsel, then general counsel, for the Telluride Mountain Village, gondola and airport; the base area at Breckenridge; outside counsel to Winter Park Rec. Assoc. (ski area); multiple financing events for Snowmass; and major projects for dozens of other ski areas in the US, Canada and New Zealand. He also led multiple golf club developments such as the Colorado Golf Club, Roaring Fork Club, and the Meridian Golf Club, as well as multiple large ranching and conservation easement deals in Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. And he served as real estate finance counsel for an endless list of “TOO BIG TO FAIL” banks, all while tirelessly providing pro bono help to organizations such as Hope House Colorado and Boys & Girls Clubs Metro Denver. His Bar leadership positions are too numerous to list. Since 1994 he has lectured at least seventeen real estate symposia.

But his greatest pride and joy are his saintly wife Barb, his kids Liz, Chris and Becca, and the veritable conveyor belt of grandkids. As a true measure of their importance to him, Beat mentions them almost as much as his attendance at UVA Law.

Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that “Every calling is great when greatly pursued.” Beat, like Willis before him, made the Real Estate Lawyer calling beyond great. We are all enriched by his devotion and contribution to this field of law and to the Real Estate Bar. Personally, he no doubt “upped my game” and enriched my professional life beyond measure, and I know he has done the same for many other real estate colleagues in Colorado.

Congratulations to the 2023 recipient of the Willis Carpenter Leadership in Real Estate Award, and a hearty thank you for everything to our colleague, our mentor and our friend, Beat Steiner.

Topical Lunch Series
All programs in the lunch series will be presented in-person at the CBA Offices (1290 Broadway, Suite 1700, Denver, CO) and via Zoom, and they start at noon each scheduled day.

October 2023 – TBD
We are still looking for a speaker and topic for October so please reach out to Section Liaison Jess Ham ([email protected]) with any ideas.

Thursday, November 2 – Topic: Water Law in Real Estate Transaction
Presented by Paul L. Noto, Waterlaw, waterlaw.com
Learn more and register online

Real Estate Section Fall Update: “The State of Colorado Real Estate”
October 12, 2023
9:00 AM – 4:25 PM (Check-in begins at 8:30)
This in-person CLE event in the CBA-CLE Denver office has something for every real estate practitioner. Dive deeper into the 2023 Symposium’s hottest topic – The Corporate Transparency Act and related federal regulations governing disclosures in real estate transactions – to ensure you are prepared to comply with these significant changes. Enjoy two nuts and bolts sessions as well as Geoff Anderson’s renowned Property 101 Refresher, which will appeal to the new grad and seasoned attorney alike. Obtain your EDI credit while learning best practices and pitfalls associated with translating real estate documents for non-native English-speaking clients. Finally, explore the evolving, if not unnerving, uses of AI technology in the legal field and its impact on your ethical obligations. We invite you to take advantage of the wealth of knowledge our experienced faculty bring to this program and hope you will join us!
Learn more and register online

BlocPower Opening Business in Denver
BlocPower, an environmental justice company founded in 2014 in Brooklyn, NY, has expanded to the Denver metro area. Using generous city incentives through a partnership with Denver Healthy Homes (part of the City and County of Denver) and their unique $0 down financing model, BlocPower has the opportunity to upgrade heating and cooling systems as well as improve energy efficiency in multifamily housing units in Denver for a significantly reduced cost to owners. BlocPower seeks introductions to property owners of multifamily housing, particularly duplexes and complexes whose residents are income-qualified (at least 2/3 residents are below 80% AMI) that could benefit from their program. The improvements will improve indoor air-quality and health for residents while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions for the benefit of the metro area at large. Please contact Emily Baker, Denver Program Manager ([email protected]), or Adrien Horton, Lead Clean Energy Project Associate ([email protected]).

Primary 2023–24 Volunteer and Fundraising Partnership: Habitat for Humanity Colorado. For this coming year the Real Estate Section Council will be providing volunteer and donation opportunities for our members with Habitat for Humanity Colorado. Please see the link [https://www.habitatmetrodenver.org/get-involved/advocacy/] for more information on Habitat for Humanity Colorado’s ongoing volunteer opportunities. Our next event will be Saturday, October 21st in Evergreen, Colorado. Details on the event and the registration link will be sent out via email. We look forward to working with such an impactful organization.

Colorado Lawyer’s Committee volunteer opportunities, including the Colorado Small Business Legal Program and virtual legal clinics.

Metro Volunteer Lawyers volunteer opportunities, in the areas of Family Law, Elder Law, Probate, Consumer and Financial, Bankruptcy, Public Benefits, and Housing.

Regular meetings of the Council are held the third Tuesday of each month at 3:00 p.m. All meetings are held live at the CBA-CLE Offices at 1290 Broadway, Suite 1700, Denver, CO and online via Zoom, followed by a social hour at the CBA-CLE offices for anyone who can attend. All Section members are welcome to attend the Council meetings and social hour. The next Council meeting will be held on Tuesday, October 17. Contact Jess Ham for Zoom login information: [email protected].

The minutes for all past Council meetings can be found on the CBA Real Estate Section website.

Article Opportunities – Colorado Lawyer
The Real Estate Section encourages all aspiring authors to contribute articles (or even just ideas for articles) for publication in the real estate column of the Colorado Lawyer. Articles submitted need to provide a balanced discussion of new, developing or interesting areas relating to the practice of real estate law in Colorado or nationally. Please contact Susie Klein ([email protected]) or Liz Daniels ([email protected]) for additional information.

Articles, Practice Pointers and Other Contributions Needed for Real Estate Section Newsletter
All members of the Real Estate Section are invited to contribute to the Newsletter. Please submit articles (or article ideas), practice pointers and other contributions to Joan Fritsche, Fritsche Law LLC ([email protected]).

Request for Input on Real Estate Section Web Page
We are working to improve the Real Estate Section page of the Colorado Bar Association website and need your input and suggestions. Are there links or other information you have expected to find on the page only to have your hopes dashed? Have you discovered aspects of the site that you feel could be more user-friendly or informative? Please email your comments to Jess Ham ([email protected]). We welcome your suggestions and we will carefully review all of them. View the Section’s website at cobar.org/For-Members/CBA-Sections/Real-Estate-Law.

Colorado Bar Association Board of Governors
The Real Estate Section’s Representative on the Board of Governors is Katy Dunn, Brookfield Properties Development ([email protected]).

Legislative Policy Committee
Adam Aldrich, Aldrich Legal LLC ([email protected]) serves as the Real Estate Section’s liaison to the Legislative Policy Committee.

Title Standards Committee
Catherine Hance, Mission Hill Hospitality ([email protected]) and Geoffrey P. Anderson, Anderson Notarianni McMahon LLC ([email protected]), serve as the Real Estate Section’s liaisons to the Title Standards Committee.

Trust and Estate Section
Chad Rounds, Kirch and Rounds PC ([email protected]), serves as the Trust and Estate Section liaison to the Real Estate Section Council.

Real Estate Commission Forms Committee
Geoffrey P. Anderson, Anderson Notarianni McMahon LLC ([email protected]), serves as the Real Estate Section’s liaison to the Real Estate Commission Forms Committee.

Ethics Committee
Kate Strauss, Galvanize Law Group LLC ([email protected]) is the Colorado Bar Association Ethics Committee liaison to the Section. 

Additional Information
For additional information regarding the activities and responsibilities of the members of the Real Estate Law Section Council, see the Real Estate Law Section page on the Colorado Bar Association Website.