Chris Morris
Chris Morris helps clients achieve their objectives, delivering results focused legal advice to developers, investors, operators, public sector bodies and major corporate clients.
He helps clients to structure and plan their projects and transactions, understand and manage risk and protect their interests. He draws on his 15+ years of legal experience acting regularly for parties on both sides of the negotiating fence to make him perfectly placed to quickly focus on what will be most important to his clients and pragmatically to deliver the right end results.
Chris deals with real estate development, investment, leasehold and management matters within the private and public sectors, including the development of residential-led mixed use schemes, affordable housing acquisitions and disposals, build to rent and residential investment schemes and town/city centre regeneration projects.
Chris is the real estate lead for the firm's data centre sector team. This is made up of specialists from across the firm to service our data centre operator clients in relation to their real estate, planning, construction, commercial, IT, financing and energy needs. Chris has extensive experience in the acquisition, development and leasing of data centre assets, acting for operators and customers.
Gowling WLG's sector focused approach means that the firm has the legal expertise to advise clients on all aspects of smart city development. Chris is involved in the coordination of the firm's wide and varied experience to support our real estate clients in relation to planning, developing and operating smart cities and smart developments.
Recent experience
- Advising English Cities Fund on the drawdown of land and development in Canning Town of 804 apartments delivering 50% affordable homes, including a 34-storey block, commercial units and a linear park.
- Advising a top UK data centre operator on the acquisition, development and leasing of new data centres.
- Advising Lincoln Rackhouse, the data centre division of Lincoln Property Co., on a joint venture investment with Sprott Korea Investment on the acquisition of the 145,000-sq. ft. data centre in London's data centre submarket of Camberley, with a partial lease and services agreement back to a Fortune 100 financial institution.
- Advising on the development of phases 1 and 2 at an award winning mixed-use development in Bristol comprising of 533 apartments and commercial units.
- Acting on the acquisition and development of a 198 unit build to rent scheme in London, involving an income strip lease.