Josh Lonon leads the firm’s Commercial Real Estate Practice Group as chair, its Economic Development and Tax Incentives Group as co-chair, and the firm’s Spartanburg, South Carolina office. He regularly serves as lead counsel for national and regional companies, both public and private, local and statewide developers, and higher education institutions and other non-profits, in the acquisition, development, financing, sale, and leasing of commercial properties. Such properties are often industrial and manufacturing facilities and complexes and large multi-family, office, retail, and mixed used developments. He is experienced in complex financings arrangements for such developments including through the federal New Markets Tax Credit program and USDA Rural Development.
Josh also regularly negotiates with and appears before municipal bodies for land use approvals and to obtain economic development tax incentives such as fee-in-lieu of taxes arrangements, infrastructure tax credits, multi-county industrial and business park inclusions, tax abatements and rehabilitation tax credits for renovation of abandoned textile and historic properties. Josh also has extensive experience with title insurance companies both as outside and inside counsel, giving him keen insight into solving complex title and title insurance issues.
Josh is highly engaged in serving his profession and local community. He currently serves as a member the South Carolina Bar House of Delegates and as Immediate Past-Chair of its Real Estate Practices Section. He is also an executive committee member of the Upstate, South Carolina chapter of the Urban Land Institute. In his hometown of Spartanburg, Josh has chaired and held other leadership positions on boards of several non-profits. He has also served as chair of the City of Spartanburg’s Board of Zoning Appeals and is currently a member of its Board of Architectural Design and Historic Review. Josh is a graduate of the South Carolina Bar Leadership Academy, Leadership Spartanburg, is a Regional Fellow of the Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System, and has been included in the Pro Bono Honor Roll by the South Carolina Supreme Court.
