Robert Cowan

Mr. Robert Francisco Cowan is a partner in Bocarsly Emden, working primarily in the firm’s Tax Credit practice, with emphasis on the New Markets Tax Credit, Historic Tax Credit and Renewable Energy Tax Credit, as well as the Low Income Housing Tax Credit.

Robert also represents developers and investors, as well as lenders, in commercial and residential real estate development. Mr. Cowan’s experience includes advising one of the country’s most prolific tax credit investors over the course of multiple transactions with a leading solar industry developer, resulting in approximately 30 megawatts worth of solar panel installations across California, Massachusetts and New Jersey.

Mr. Cowan has advised the same institutional tax credit investor in New Markets Tax Credit financings totaling over $275 million of qualified equity investments across several states, as well as in several transactions involving the rehabilitation of historic properties in California and the rest of the country.

Mr. Cowan also routinely represents non-profit and for-profit clients seeking to utilize tax credit-based financing. Non-profit clients have included the world’s largest LGBT community-based nonprofit in development of a mixed use air-rights subdivision project in Hollywood, a well-known Los Angeles nonprofit in a two-phase financing and construction of a comprehensive homeless intake, assessment and service center, and a Christian health center in the financing and building a new health clinic in downtown Los Angeles’ Skid Row neighborhood.

Mr. Cowan’s for-profit developer clients include an active Southern California-based developer who owns over 2,600 units of market and affordable housing. Mr. Cowan has represented this developer not only in the syndication of low income housing tax credits, but also the redevelopment of one prime square mile in downtown Lancaster, California, into an award-winning 150,000 square foot retail promenade over the course of 3 separate transactions.

Mr. Cowan’s for-profit developer clients also include a Los Angeles-based lifestyle real estate firm with over $3 billion in closed and active developments to date, and a San Francisco based real estate developer who has brokered over $400 million in sales reimagining a historic church in the SoMa neighborhood, into a mixed use retail, business incubator and events space.

Mr. Cowan joined the firm as an associate in 2007 and is fluent in Spanish. Mr. Cowan received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California, his juris doctor from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, and is currently admitted to practice law in the state of California.