Somos Group Leadership

George Fatheree advises clients in large and complex real estate transactions. He also advises professional sports teams, artists, museums, and other arts and cultural institutions across a range of issues and transactions. His clients value his commercial approach, pragmatic advice, market perspective, collaborative style, creative problem solving, and ability to execute time-sensitive transactions. George has experience in a broad range of commercial real estate transactions, including joint ventures, fund formations, financings, acquisitions and dispositions, leasing and real estate M&A with a focus on hospitality, industrial, multifamily, entertainment venues, sports arenas, casinos, and energy deals.

George led a team of lawyers in securing the return of Bruce’s Beach to the descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce, in a precedent-setting case that saw land returned to a Black family nearly a century after it had been taken by the city of Manhattan Beach as a result of racial animus. George developed and implemented a strategy that involved advising on statewide legislation to enable the transfer, conducting genealogical research, determining the proper appraisal methodology, helping defend litigation brought to stop the return of the property, analyzing federal tax treatment and, ultimately, negotiating the terms of the return of the property and the lease back to the county. His leadership of the team led to Sidley winning the award for “Innovation in Equity and Racial Justice” at the 2022 Financial Times Innovative Lawyers Awards North America. George was also named to the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion list in the 2022 Los Angeles Times in recognition of his work on behalf of the Bruce family, as well as for his representation of the Black Owned and Operated Community Land Trust, in its acquisition of a retail complex in Leimert Park, fighting gentrification in the historically Black neighborhood in Los Angeles.