Diane Mispagel is a member of the Firm’s Real Estate and Corporate Practice Groups. Diane focuses her practice on all areas of commercial real estate, including real estate development, sales, acquisitions, leasing, operations, financing and management. She has extensive experience with shopping center leasing as well as Reciprocal Easement Agreements from the landlord, tenant and owner perspectives.
Mrs. Mispagel has assisted clients in the drafting, negotiating and closing on acquisitions and sales of numerous commercial properties of all types including vacant land, land assemblage, single tenant, shopping centers, outparcels, office buildings, apartment complexes and warehouses. She has also assisted both landlords and tenants in the leasing of retail, office, warehouse and distribution centers.
In connection with her clients’ properties, Diane also assists in the formation of limited liability companies and the drafting of the operating agreements including those operating agreements containing complicated waterfall provisions and multiple classes of ownership. She also assists with reviewing and revising loan documents on behalf of borrowers and often serves as local counsel providing legal opinions to lenders.
Diane has also been a speaker at the International Council of Shopping Centers’ Law Conferences.
Representative Experience
Diane has represented clients in all types of commercial real estate transactions including the following:
Drafted, negotiated and closed on acquisitions of multiple apartment complexes ranging in value from approximately $1,700,000 on the low end to $34,500,000 on the high end.
Coordinated land assemblage acquisitions from different owners and/or consolidations of properties for various clients’ developments including for two different shopping centers, an apartment complex and for a developer leasing property to a national retailer.
Assisted clients with both consolidation plats and subdivision plats to satisfy clients’ development needs.
Drafted easement agreements for various purposes, including access, roadways, parking, air-rights, encroachments, cranes and shoring.
Drafted Reciprocal Easement and Operating Agreements for developers who wanted to subdivide and sell off portions of their property.
Negotiated complex Construction, Operation and Reciprocal Easement Agreements on behalf of two different national department stores for new regional shopping centers located in multiple different states as well as in Puerto Rico.
Drafted and negotiated over 25 leases for a national retail department store’s expansion of their off-price store locations.
Negotiated various architect and construction contracts that used AIA forms.
Negotiated loan documents for various real estate acquisitions and/or refinancings (including the negotiation of addendums for/revisions to LaserPro loan documents and/or modifications to attorney prepared loan documents) ranging in values of up to $27,600,000.00 (which loan was also able to be securitized by the lender and required an interest rate cap agreement).
Professional Affiliations & Memberships
The Missouri Bar
The Illinois Bar
Member of CREW
Member of ICSC
Community Involvement
Member of the Lake Saint Louis Board of Adjustment
Former Board Member (including as President) of St. Peters Figure Skating Association
Honors, Distinctions & Ratings
Best Lawyers in America (2024 – present)
Lawyer Monthly Legal Awards:
– Landlord and Tenant Lawyer of the Year USA, 2019, 2020
& 2021
– Commercial Real Estate Lawyer of the Year USA, 2019
– Women in Law, 2018
St. Louis University Law Review
Press
Co-speaker at ICSC Law Conference 2014: “Whose Money is it Anyway? Top 10 Competing Concerns/Issues between Landlords and Tenants regarding Tenant Improvement Allowances”
Co-speaker at ICSC Law Conference 2016: “This is Not Your Father’s REA”
Co-speaker at ICSC Law Conference 2017: “Journey Through the Nine Circles of Hell: A Tenant’s Odyssey in Negotiating Nondisturbace Agreements and Estoppel Certificates”
Practice Areas
Real Estate
Education
B.S.B.A, University of Missouri - St. Louis, Summa Cum Laude
J.D., St. Louis University Law School, Magna Cum Laude
Bar Admissions
Missouri, 1998
Illinois, 1998