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Quality representation starts with listening and continues with communication. The insight a client brings to a matter is essential in developing and implementing a strategy for success in a transaction.

Mr. Hague concentrates his practice in land use, real estate and business law. His practice encompasses the representation of community associations. He has extensive experience handling all aspects of municipal land use law, including applications, appearances before planning boards, transactions involving environmental issues, redevelopment agreements with New Jersey municipalities, affordable housing issues, transportation issues, and the evaluation of land use requirements for alternative energy installations. Mr. Hague has particular knowledge related to land title issues and railroad title. He is also highly experienced in real estate sales, leases, financing and construction contracts.

In addition, Mr. Hague has experience related to the evaluation of riparian land titles along New Jersey's Hudson River waterfront and other coastal areas, including working with the landowners of riparian parcels in Bayonne near the Military Ocean Terminal, as well as securing relevant NJDEP and Army Corps permitting and local development approvals for waterfront projects.

Representative Matters

  • Closed in mid-2017 on the acquisition of the real estate for a automobile dealership in Wall Township. The dealership purchase took place simultaneously. Consideration for the land, acquired by two entities, was $4,250,000, financed by a $4,250,000 loan from Ally Capital. The transaction involved collaboration with the firm's Corporate Department on the dealership purchase and entity formation, environmental due diligence handled by the firm's Environmental Department, the evaluation of expansion potential as well as the current use from a land use perspective, and financing and title issues. 
  • Handled three site plan approvals on redevelopment projects over the course of 2017. Significant was a mixed use development in Linden for new construction on a blighted site predominantly owned by the City, with 113 residential apartments and 18,000 square feet of of ground floor retail and restaurant space. Amendments to the redevelopment plan were obtained from the City Council and redevelopment agreements were negotiated by the firm's team.
  • Mr. Hague was a member of the firm's team that advised an international Fortune 500 retailer with regard to millions of square feet of development in various locales, including redevelopment areas, tax abatement (PILOT) agreements, environmental remediation, redevelopment plans, state, regional, county and local approvals, zoning permits and certifications, miscellaneous agreements, construction permitting, and assisted in drafting leasing provisions.
  • Throughout 2015, represented the New Jersey Institute of Technology before the City of Newark Central Planning Board in connection with three major campus improvements: a new parking garage, an addition to the Health Sciences academic building, and the new Wellness and Events Center.
  • Played a supporting role in an Appellate Division victory for our client, a leading real estate developer, paving the way for the client to advance a major project to clean up and develop a former industrial factory site in central NJ. The project was opposed by a neighboring supermarket chain which brought a prerogative writ action in Superior Court to block the project in order to prevent a competing retailer from moving in and competing. The client had obtained a rezoning of the land to accommodate the project, and the plaintiff argued at trial that the zoning ordinance was invalid under the Municipal Land Use Law. The client prevailed at trial, and in the first appeal, the Appellate Division reversed the judgment of the Law Division due to a technical defect in the City's notice, but wrote approvingly, without explicitly affirming, as to the substantive findings made by the trial court. After the City readopted the ordinance, curing its notice defect, the plaintiff challenged the ordinance again, claiming that it was entitled to whole new trial on the merits and to assert new claims, arguing that the prior language of the Appellate Division was mere dicta and non-binding. The Appellate Division affirmed dismissal of the second lawsuit on the grounds of res judicata and collateral estoppel, allowing the project to proceed.

Uniquely NJ

  • New Jersey State Bar Association, Land Use Section
  • New Jersey Association of Railroad Passengers
  • Morris County Economic Development Corporation Housing Committee
  • Has served as a member of the Planning Board of the Borough of Chatham and as attorney for the Planning Board of the Borough of Kinnelon
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Presentations & Speaking Engagements

  • Panelist, Collections and Evictions
    , May 7, 2014
  • Faculty, Real Estate Development from Beginning to End in New Jersey – Construction Financing
    , September 2008
  • Faculty, The Development Approval Process in New Jersey – Redevelopment
    , June 2008
  • Faculty, Representing Parties in Multiple Unit and Mixed Use Property Transactions
    , March 2008
  • Faculty, The Development Approval Process in New Jersey
    , 2006 - 2007
  • Faculty, Real Estate Development from Beginning to End in New Jersey
    , September 12, 2007

Publications & Alerts

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Education

University of Denver, College of Law, J.D., 1976

Lafayette College, A.B. in History, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, 1974 

Bar Admissions

  • Colorado, 1977
  • New Jersey, 1978