Tara Sullivan

Tara Sullivan is an attorney in Holland & Knight's San Francisco office and a member of the West Coast Land Use and Environmental Group. Ms. Sullivan has more than 15 years of extensive land use and policy experience in urban planning, historic preservation and zoning, and her practice focuses on complex zoning matters in San Francisco, advising clients on environmental laws, including the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and historic preservation issues.

Prior to working in the private sector, Ms. Sullivan was a legislative liaison and policy analyst at the San Francisco Planning Department, working on dozens of pieces of legislation, most notably updating San Francisco's Affordable Housing Program requirements, drafting charter language to establish the Historic Preservation Commission and amending two articles of the San Francisco Planning Code related to preservation. She also advised on legislation that strengthened the city's nuisance laws to incentivize the rehabilitation of vacant properties, enabling new eating and drinking establishments in portions of the city and rezoning projects to enable the transfer of development rights. She also served as the appeals coordinator for CEQA and Conditional Use Authorization appeals, defending cases at the Board of Supervisors.

Before joining Holland & Knight, Ms. Sullivan worked as a partner at a full-service land use law firm in San Francisco for 10 years. While there, she worked on large development projects throughout San Francisco, working on several mixed-use projects in the Central SoMa area, including 88 Bluxome Street (Tennis Club site) and 725 Harrison Street, among others. She has assisted owners and developers to create new housing and establish emerging technology businesses, as well as worked with developers to revitalize the downtown core following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ms. Sullivan has extensive training in urban planning and historic preservation. She has evaluated projects for conformance with the U.S. Department of the Interior's Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties and CEQA, drafted landmark designation reports and provided technical assistance on historic building materials.