Bruce Baker is a member of the firm’s Real Estate group and its Construction law team, which represents clients in all aspects of construction law. He is heavily involved in the firm’s construction contract negotiating, drafting, and counseling practice and has, over the past two decades, drafted numerous agreements on behalf of owners with architects, consultants, construction managers, design/builders, and general contractors. He has extensive experience in drafting and negotiation of design/build, EPC, and other hybrid agreements and counseling on construction contracting alternatives.
Mr. Baker has experience in the financing and construction of large-scale energy, transportation, manufacturing, and health care facilities and similar projects, as well as mixed‑use residential and retail complexes. He currently co-leads the Real Estate group’s Student Housing team, where he represents developers and higher education institutions in real estate matters involving student housing facilities. He counsels clients on the application of public bidding requirements to various types of projects and the requirements for professional licensing of architects, engineers, and design/builders. He is also active in claims consulting and the negotiation and resolution of disputes involving owners, contractors, construction managers, design professionals, and sureties. Over the past several years, Mr. Baker has been involved in the construction aspects of the financing of new major league baseball stadiums in the New York City region for the Yankees, the Mets, and the Jets/Giants, and was involved in the Barclays Center arena financing in Brooklyn. He has represented major U.S. corporations in negotiating EPC/design/build contracts for sophisticated manufacturing and materials-handling complexes, airport terminals, and office buildings, and is currently representing an investor-owned utility in the deconstruction of several decommissioned power plants. He has also been involved in performing risk analyses of concession agreements for toll road projects on behalf of developers and lenders.
From 1983 to 1985, Mr. Baker was a senior attorney, Corporate and Litigation, with the General Counsel’s Office of the United States Synthetic Fuels Corporation in Washington, DC.