Meet the Gould Alumna Behind Inglewood Deal

As Los Angeles football fans celebrate the return of the Rams, who will ultimately play in a stadium in Inglewood, they can thank Amy Forbes ’84. Forbes served as lead counsel in the deal for the redevelopment project approved in early 2015 that included the venue for NFL games.

 

Amy Forbes, photographed at Grand Hope Park, the 2.5-acre green space adjacent to the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in downtown L.A. As pro bono counsel, Forbes negotiated a settlement of litigation to fund the park’s operations.   PHOTO BY BRETT VAN ORT

A co-partner in charge of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Los Angeles office, Forbes thrives on the creative side of her work and on collaborating with architects and community members. All these elements came together in the complex Inglewood deal, where she and her team used a voter-sponsored initiative to secure approval for an 80,000-seat stadium in two months rather than the typical three to five years.

 

“It ended up being this incredibly innovative way to secure project approvals,” Forbes says, “and we surprised a lot of people. But it’s completely grounded in how the California land use system works. We just turned things around and looked at it in a different way. We didn’t accept the constraints and say, ‘We can’t do this.’"

 

Calling the deal a career capper because it drew from all her previous experiences, Forbes, a lawyer for 31 years, credits much of its success to her education at the USC Gould School of Law and to the professor who inspired her most, George Lefcoe.

 

“Everything that I used on the stadium deal I learned in his class,” she says. From Lefcoe’s land use and redevelopment teachings, she acquired a secure academic and practical grounding in fundamentals such as initiatives, legislative approvals, zone changes and the management of a public process. “He made us go out into the community and talk to people and meet with them,” Forbes says. “He shared a pragmatism and a world view that were transformative in my practice. Even the can-do attitude, I would say, I learned from George.”