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Nida Shakir Ghaffar

Nida Shakir Ghaffar

Partner
Chicago
phone: 312.662.4659
fax: 312.655.1501
Milwaukee
phone: 414.978.5313
fax: 414.223.5000
Overview

Nida is a transactional real estate attorney who co-leads the firm’s Retail Institute and focuses her practice on real estate acquisitions and dispositions, retail, industrial, and office leasing agreements, condominium developments, and real estate financing.

Nida enjoys being on the cutting edge of the retail space. She is a trusted advisor for retail companies looking to expand their footprint in existing markets and has worked closely with a major online retailer in its leasing arrangements for a new innovative brick-and-mortar retail concept.

She also regularly advises clients as they expand into new markets. She handled all of the leasing negotiations and arrangements for a Wisconsin-based coffee shop that expanded into the Chicago market with five new locations in under two years. When the same company needed to find space to establish a large bakery to service the new locations, again they turned to Nida to handle all the negotiations.  

Her experience also expands beyond the retail leasing space and includes advising developers, retailers and companies on acquisitions and dispositions of their real estate assets, creating and structuring commercial condominiums, and negotiating development and operational documents with co-investors and municipalities. 

Industry

Services

Recognition

  • Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch, Real Estate Law, 2021-2024
  • Frank C. DeGuire Award for Best Published Student Comment

Education

  • J.D., Marquette University Law School
      • Intellectual Property Law Review, Articles Editor
      • CALI Excellence for the Future Award Property
  • B.A., DePaul University
    • cum laude
    • Political Science

Admissions

  • Wisconsin
  • Illinois

Professional Memberships and Certifications

  • Association for Women Lawyers
  • Community Association Institute-Wisconsin Chapter, Magazine Committee
2023 Pro Bono Contributor
Experience
  • Represented Milwaukee County in conveying its medical campus to eight unique healthcare institutions for a coordinated purchase and sale that ensured each healthcare institution would be able to continue providing quality care in coordination with the County post-closing. The complex sale was a four-year effort that included a 298-item checklist. The transaction allowed the County to focus on its core mission and healthcare institutions to better control their own expansion and operations.
  • Represented TricorBraun, an international packaging company, with their real estate due diligence during multiple acquisitions. Now co-manages this client's entire real estate portfolio.
  • Counseled and negotiated leasing amendments for a nationwide grocery operation for its chain of stores.
  • Represented a developer in the acquisition, development, and leasing of a retail development, including the extensive negotiation of a lease agreement with a national retailer as the anchor of the development.
  • Negotiated acquisition, entitlements and public incentives package for $30+ million redevelopment of historic department store into 80-unit boutique hotel, utilizing historic tax credits (HTC), property assessed clean energy (PACE) financing and opportunity zone equity.
  • Negotiated acquisition, entitlements, and public incentives package for $30+ million redevelopment of historic department store into 80-unit boutique hotel, utilizing historic tax credits (HTC), property assessed clean energy (PACE) financing and opportunity zone equity.
  • Represented an international packaging company amid COVID-19 pandemic with force majeure, termination, and amendment clauses in facility leases and warehouse equipment purchase agreements.
  • Negotiated lease agreements on behalf of a major online retailer as the company was expanding to new markets and innovative concepts. Negotiated with landlords and developer/owners to gain high-traffic retail spaces for the retailer.
  • Created leasing agreements for a major online retailer as it developed the "locker space and pickup concept" with an affiliated major retailer in its stores across the country.
  • Negotiated leasing arrangements on behalf of a large coffee shop chain in Wisconsin as it expanded into the Chicago market with five new locations. Also assisted in leasing additional warehouse space that was converted into a new bakery to supply the new Chicago locations.
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Husch Blackwell Elects 36 to 2022 Partnership Class
Media Mentions | October 2020
Best Lawyers® 2021: The Midwest Issue
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Two Husch Blackwell Associates Selected for AdvanceLaw Diversity Mentorships

AdvanceLaw, a collective of over 250 corporate legal departments that helps member companies find and retain outside counsel by vetting law firms and sharing feedback, launched the program earlier this year.