Karen's comprehensive approach ensures her clients' transactions are efficiently handled with meticulous detail and strategic foresight.
Overview
Karen focuses her practice on real estate and tax credit financing. She assists equity investors, developers, lenders and community economic entities (CDE) in a wide array of real estate transactions involving federal, state and local tax credits and incentives, including new markets tax credits, historic rehabilitation tax credits and low-income housing tax credits. Karen also advises on real estate matters involving the acquisition, development and financing of commercial, senior housing, and multi-family residential properties.
Additionally, Karen has federal and state-level experience in corporate and partnership taxation matters, with a particular focus on compliance and financial reporting for public and private entities. She leverages her comprehensive and thorough knowledge of real estate finance and tax law to equip clients with insights needed to navigate complex and high-impact transactions and achieve the business and community impact goals of each project.
Experience
- Represented an investor in connection with its new markets tax credit investments to develop a $50 million sports and learning complex in Louisville, Kentucky; a 98,000-square-foot office building to provide youth enrichment, workforce development and healthy food access programs in Georgia; a $90 million public health campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; a 14,000-square-foot women's health care clinic in Scranton, Pennsylvania; a 25,000-square-foot animal shelter in Fort Wayne, Indiana; and many other impactful community development projects.
- Represented a new markets tax credit investor in investments across the country to develop affordable homes for sale to low-income individuals.
- Represented an investor in connection with its new markets tax credit and low-income housing tax credit investments for the development of a shelter and affordable housing in St. Paul, Minnesota.
- Represented an investor in connection with its new markets tax credit investment to redevelop and expand the headquarters for The Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis.
- Represented a CDE in its deployment of $70 million new markets tax credit allocation for use in connection with the construction and development of manufacturing and warehouse facilities in Salem, Massachusetts, and Owatonna, Minnesota; a new food bank distribution center and headquarters in Western Massachusetts; a food product distribution center in Tennessee; and a new automobile dealership and training center in Concord, New Hampshire.
- Represented a farmer-owned cooperative to expand and upgrade its cheese and whey processing facility in Minnesota, utilizing over $80 million in new markets tax credit allocation.
- Represented lenders in refinancing of senior loans in connection with the unwinding of new markets tax credit transactions.
News & Insights
News
Publications
"It's Time for the New Market Tax Credit Program to Be Permanent," Bloomberg Law, September 2024
Speaking Engagements
"Tax Credits Update," Business Taxation Update, October 2025
Recognitions
Recognitions
Recognized by Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business as "Up and Coming" in the area of Real Estate in Missouri: Kansas City & Surrounds, 2024
Professional & Civic Activities
Professional & Civic Activities
American Bar Association
Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis
Illinois State Bar Association
The Missouri Bar
Practices & Industries
Admissions
- Missouri
- Illinois
Education
Saint Louis University, J.D.
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, B.S.
