R. Mark Carney

Mark has more than 34 years of experience assisting landowners, developers, and financial institutions to assess, acquire, entitle, develop, manage, lease, and sell real estate assets throughout California. He has an unblemished record of success negotiating, securing, amending, and defending approvals of development agreements, specific plans, master plans, zoning code amendments, tract maps, parcel maps, and conditional use permits in highly-politicized entitlement environments. Mark has helped his clients entitle more than 2500 resort hotel and lodging rooms and more than 150,000 square feet of resort retail and restaurant space. He regularly shepherds his clients through compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act, the Subdivision Map Act, the California Coastal Act, and California Bureau of Real Estate regulations. Mark has also negotiated multiple conservation easements and land use permits among Federal and State agencies, non-profit land trusts, and private landowners.

Mark has achieved consistent and demonstrable success representing landowners and developers in a variety of real estate and land use litigations, including: (1) an action by a consortium of developers against a municipality to invalidate and refund developer impact fees improperly levied; (2) an action by a consortium of developers against a municipal water district to invalidate and refund water and sewer hook-up fees that were improperly levied; (3) the successful defense of a developer sued by a bank to enforce a $38 Million personal guaranty; (4) the successful defense of a $10 Million claim against the developer of an 120-lot single-family subdivision by an investor who wrongfully alleged a partnership interest in the development; and (5) various actions to partition or quiet title to real property interests.

Prior to joining Reicker Pfau, Mark was a founding member and 22-year owner of Liebersbach, Mohun, Carney & Reed, PC, a real estate and land use law firm in Mammoth Lakes California, where he remains “Of Counsel.” He lives in Santa Barbara with his wife of 22 years, Valerie Carney, and their children, Brenna and Nolan.

Mark was born in Chicago, Illinois. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1980, and the University of Notre Dame Law School in 1984, where he served as Associate Editor of the Notre Dame Law Review. Mark’s education includes a year of college in Rome, Italy, where he studied Art History, a year of law school in London, England, where he studied International Law, and a year of volunteer work in Chiapas, Mexico, where he taught in a rural high school and ran a literacy program.

• Member of the Council of Directors for UCSB’s Valentine Reserve in Mammoth Lakes
• Member of the Board of Directors for Mammoth Lakes Housing, a non-profit Affordable Housing Corporation
• Youth Sports Coach: Page Youth Center Basketball Program and Santa Barbara Pony League Baseball
• Supporter and Volunteer for the Organic Soup Kitchen in Santa Barbara

• Associate Editor, Notre Dame Law Review

• Represented a Santa Barbara developer in connection with the approval of the conditional use permit required to construct a 104-room boutique hotel within the Coastal Zone in Pismo Beach
• Represented an institutional owner in connection with the approval of the specific plan amendment, tentative tract map, and conditional use permit required to construct a 72-room boutique hotel in Mammoth Lakes
• Represented a Los Angeles developer in connection with the approval of the specific plan, tentative tract map, and conditional use permit required to construct a mixed-use development containing 488 condominium hotel rooms and 35,000 square feet of resort retail and restaurant space on six acres in Mammoth Lakes.
• Current Counsel to an Orange County developer in connection with the proposed development of a full-service family hotel and workforce housing on 30 acres within the Coastal Zone in Santa Barbara County.
• Current Counsel to a British developer in connection with the proposed development of a 550-room hotel, events plaza, ice rink, and 45,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space on six acres in Mammoth Lakes
• Current Counsel to a Canadian developer in connection with the approval of the tentative tract map and major design review permit required to construct a 154-room micro-unit condominium hotel, 21 resort condominiums, and a full-service restaurant on three acres in Mammoth Lakes.